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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, I reflected as I listened to the speech by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York, how right he was to say that we seem to live in a world where one set of human rights suddenly comes forward to trump another set of perceived human rights. That will cause us great difficulty, going forward. Equally, in the moving and challenging speech of the noble Lord, Lord Alli, who was, as always, stalwart against discrimination, I reflected that, sometimes, as one becomes more vigorous against discrimination in one direction, one can just see incipient discrimination coming from another quarter. That is the only point I wish to make; I shall not be repeating any of the remarks that I made in Committee—not one jot, nor one iota. It seems to me that the Government, either by design or well-meaning accident, are now busy deconstructing the meaning of fatherhood. That is where incipient anti-father prejudice could well be creeping in. This flies in the face of the attempts by the Government, which I support and to which I pay tribute, to encourage fathers to pay maintenance, to take paternity leave, and to continue contact with their children after divorce, if that should happen. This approach also flies in the face of the principle of non-discrimination. Here is where I would like the noble Lord, Lord Alli, to think as deeply about what I am saying as I try to think about what he says. By appearing—and appearances matter to the outside world—to be a bit anti-father, and appearing to fail to give proper respect to both sexes, the principle ultimately fails to hold equality of esteem for parenting between the sexes. I do not know how much time the right honourable gentleman the Prime Minister, who inherited this Bill, has to give to its wider and longer social implications. He seems to me as a complete outsider to be an exemplary father, yet his own Government’s legislation in this context is likely, whether by design or because of unforeseen and unintended consequences, to lead little by little to the steady deconstruction of the very meaning and importance of the word ““father”” and thus the reality of fatherhood, and to the incipient devaluation of the role of fatherhood, by the signals that this legislation is giving from this place to the outside world about the meaning of fatherhood. I simply cannot believe—as I predict will be seen—that the country at large supports the removal of the need for a father. That removal sends a clear signal to men that the Government ultimately do not value the unique role of fathers in a child’s life, let alone the message that the Government wish to promote legislation that might turn out to be seen by later generations as discriminatory against men.