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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, there is initially something attractive about the idea of a national bioethics committee, and nobody could put its case more powerfully than the noble Baroness, Lady Williams. She has advanced the argument way beyond where it went in Committee and I would like to address some of her points fairly directly. First, the noble Baroness emphasised that almost every other country in the world has a national bioethics committee. However, she mentioned the United States of America, whose national bioethics committee has become highly politicised; she would also find evidence of such committees in other countries becoming so. She would be the first to agree that that is an undesirable state of affairs. Secondly, the noble Baroness mentioned the advantage of a national bioethics committee being financed by the state, in contrast to other bodies that might be financed by industry and, therefore, have a vested interest. As I think she knows, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics is financed by two great charitable foundations, the Wellcome Trust and the Nuffield Foundation, and there is no question of the recommendation of the council being in any way skewed by vested commercial interests. Another aspect of the work of national bioethics committees shows that there is often tension between long-term research or thinking about major issues and the short-term advice that the Government need. Those do not sit easily together. The fact is that long-term work is certainly needed; some reports from the Nuffield council take, perhaps, three years and cannot be provided quickly. If short-term advice is needed by the Government, Parliament is surely the place to look for it—either in one of our Select Committees especially set up for that purpose, or in a standing committee to which recourse can quickly be made. The noble Baroness should agree about that inherent tension. We would have to ask whether such a national bioethics committee would be expected to provide advice in the short term for the Government, on particular issues that came up, or whether we would want long-term work to be done. The noble Baroness mentioned the reality of what she called fragile boundaries. It is good to have the 14-day rule and the possibility of reproductive cloning, for example, brought to our attention. Yet would a national bioethics committee really be any greater safeguard to crossing those boundaries than what is already in place? After all, one could imagine a situation in which a national bioethics committee had been highly politicised by a Government who actually wanted to break one of those boundaries—sex selection is an obvious instance. I argue that a national bioethics committee would be no guarantee that some boundaries would not be stepped across. Finally, the noble Baroness mentioned the advantage of a national bioethics committee being accountable to Parliament. However, we really need to ask to whom it is appropriate that a think tank on bioethics should be accountable. Surely it should be accountable to those whose opinion it respects. The Nuffield council, for example, regards itself as accountable to experts in the field—to scientists, ethicists and any other experts appropriate to thinking about bioethics. In other words, we hope to be judged on the quality of the work. A national bioethics committee, if it was really doing its work, would surely be looking to its work quality and would hope to gain the respect of those best qualified to judge that work. Accountability to Parliament would be neither here nor there as far as that was concerned. Therefore, while I hugely respect what the noble Baroness says, if those four or five issues that I have mentioned are looked at seriously, the advantages of a national bioethics committee are by no means clear.