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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, having listened now for several days to the debates on this Bill, including the debates we had on the question of definitions, I would have thought that any bona fide researcher who was engaged or who contemplated engaging in work involving cells, in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, has described, and who was in any doubt at all about whether it came within the Act would be extremely wise to go to the authority and say, ““This is what I am proposing to do. Do I need a licence?””. If the researcher is trying to evade the controls by arguing, perhaps on some technicality, that this did not come within the terms of the Act and is subsequently found to have been in breach, I will not be sorry for him. I think that he would have been able to protect himself and that he should have protected himself. Although I understand the case that has been made by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and by others that some sort of defence of this sort is necessary, I go back to my early training in the law and say that ignorance of the law is not a defence. It may be an excuse and might have some impact on the penalty but it does not negate the offence. I shall be interested to hear from both from the noble Lords, Lord Detchant and Lord Patel, and from the Minister, who I suspect will not like this amendment very much, as to whether or not that is right. Surely the message that we want to send out is, ““If in doubt, ask””. Anything that suggests that that is not the wise thing to do is misguided.