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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I hesitated to intervene earlier; I intervened when the noble Baroness, Lady Knight, made a somewhat similar point—I do not wish to misrepresent her in any sense—during a previous stage of the Bill. The noble Lord made the point that whipping was somehow inappropriate and improper and that the outcome would be different if the Bill had not had, "““the juggernaut of a three-line Whip””." I shall make two points again, because we may be conducting a dialogue of the deaf. First, this is a government Bill, based on proper parliamentary procedures of pre-legislative scrutiny and taking independent evidence, and the Government have the right, and can expect, to get their legislation through. That has been qualified throughout by the right of any individual to take the issue into his own hands and not take part in a vote. I know, from talking to the Chief Whip, that at least eight or 10 individuals on the Labour Benches have done so, and there was never hesitation about that. An issue such as abortion, which has always been regarded as a private conscience matter, remains ring-fenced for that purpose. Secondly, I want to pick up the implied point that the results would somehow be different if there were no government Whip—in other words, that those who are being whipped are in some sense voting against their natural inclination, conscience and compassion. Would the noble Lord say to Members of his own side who have been in the government Lobbies that they were exercising conscience while those of us on the government Benches who went in those same Lobbies were not? I am sure that the noble Lord would not wish to suggest for a moment that only one side has the monopoly on compassion or conscience in this argument. I therefore wish that he would not continue to insist that those of us who believe in this Bill and have voted to support the Government are, as a result, under the sway of a juggernaut that informs our decision-making.