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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, the Bill allows for donor-conceived people to contact the HFEA on reaching the age of 16 to find out non-identifying information about their donor. Access to non-identifying information at age 16 is a new provision. The Bill also re-enacts existing provisions that allow an 18 year-old donor-conceived person to retrieve identifying information about their donor following the removal of donor anonymity in 2005. The amendment seeks to enable the children of donor-conceived people to contact the HFEA to obtain information from the register regarding their parent’s donor, in the situation where the parent did not contact the HFEA themselves. We recognise that this information is likely to be of interest to the children of donor-conceived people if the donor-conceived person themselves has not accessed it. It would be a piece of information about the child’s genetic history, one step removed. However, the purpose of allowing donor-conceived people access to information about their donor is to fill a gap in the knowledge they have about themselves. Many donor-conceived people feel that they are missing important information about who they are and where they came from because one set of genetic information is missing. Information, including identifying information, about the donor is intended to help address that. For that reason provisions are made to allow such people to find out about their donor, and donors sign up to donate on the understanding that such information will be made available. The Government believe that this sense of a gap would not apply in the same way for the children of donor-conceived people. Though they would have an interest in their genetic grandparent, they would not have the same sense of a gap in their knowledge about where they came from. They would know who their parents are. We also have to consider the donor-conceived person themselves. The amendment would enable their children to request information about the donor while they themselves are still alive. What impact would this have on the family? How will the donor-conceived person feel if they themselves have made a decision not to ask for information and their child takes a different view? We need to consider all the interests and balance them. Since the removal of donor anonymity in 2005, donor-conceived children are able to get identifying information about their donor from the HFEA register. This includes the donor’s last-known address. If they are not conceived as a result of an identifiable donor, but were conceived after the HFEA register began, they can as a minimum find out non-identifying information about their donor. This information is rightly accessible to donor-conceived people and has a direct impact on them. The information is likely to be of interest to their children, but it does not have the same immediacy. All those arguments still stand but I heard the persuasive argument put forward by the noble Earl about the children of donor-conceived adults who may have died. While the Government have considered this issue carefully and reached the conclusion that access to the HFEA register should continue to focus on those directly affected and that it should be a matter for personal decision by the donor-conceived person whether to access the information available, I am persuaded to take this back and look at the issue of the children of donor-conceived adults who have died. That is a particular case. I do not know what, if any, movement there might be on this, but I am willing to take it back. We have one week before Third Reading, so I am certainly not going to say I will come back by then, but I will ask my colleagues to look at this.