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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, when the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, first brought this proposal before the House, I was particularly attracted to it. Indeed, I moved the amendment in his absence in Committee and as a result looked in some detail at some of the situations that applied in other jurisdictions. I could see that its applicability here could have quite a lot of merit, but I also see some of the defects. I was therefore very pleased when I saw that the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, had tabled the amendment again for our consideration today. We have had a very good debate this afternoon, but some of the arguments that have been introduced should be examined more closely. My noble friend Lord Walton of Detchant referred to the importance of our Select Committee system. I agree. The Select Committee that considered the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill and was chaired by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and the committee that considered medical ethics in the 1990s and was chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Walton, are very good examples of how this House can continue to inform public debate outside Parliament. Noble Lords will be aware, however, that it is not always easy to establish Select Committees and ad hoc committees. I had the recent experience of putting a proposal before the Liaison Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, who is in his place, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, supported that proposal, which I thought was an eminently reasonable proposal to look at a seriously controversial question. However, that committee could not be established because of all the competition from other issues. We sometimes have to accept the practicalities and accept that the sheer pressure of business, not only on bioethical issues but on the many issues that come across people’s desks, means that it will not always be possible to set up ad hoc committees to consider incredibly important questions. Moreover, Bills do not often come before your Lordships’ House on these issues. We last looked at human fertilisation and embryology in 1990. I might say in parenthesis that I am glad that a joint scrutiny committee examined the Bill before it came here and came out against such issues as sex selection, which the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, identified as one of the fragile questions that we may well return to in due course and which is not included in the Bill. Will another 18 years pass before there is another Bill? As we have heard again and again throughout the debate, the science is extraordinarily fast moving. The noble Lord, Lord Walton, will be aware of an issue that I raised last week when I quoted Professor Yamanaka from a recent New Scientist article in which he looked not at cloning but at the way in which reproductive cells—gametes—could be produced from one person and a new human literally created. The scientific questions to which that possibility gives rise are not the only ones that we want to consider. Professor Yamanaka himself identified the possibility as dangerous and said that there was no regulatory framework to consider it or deal with it. Surely we would want to ponder the social implications for the family, for the individuals concerned, and for the new entities that will be brought into the world—what position they would have and what condition they would be in. We know that this is not science fiction. As the noble and learned Lord will recall, in 1990, during debates in another place in which I took part, the possibility was raised that the way may be open to developments such as human reproductive cloning. The then Secretary of State said that it was not an admissible issue because that was unlikely ever to happen. Yet within 10 years science had changed the rules and terms of the debate, and in 2001 we introduced a full ban on reproductive cloning. The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, said that we have always to command wider confidence. I agree entirely. However good the debates may be in your Lordships’ House, however good our Select Committees may be, there is a need to command wider public confidence. Our existing structures are themselves not enough. It was suggested earlier that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has a difficult role because it is both a regulator and is also at times called upon to take ethical decisions. Alan Doran, the acting chief executive, said as recently as last November at a BioCentre symposium: "““We do not claim to be a national bioethics commission. We are not a body whose primary function is to resolve ethical issues. I do not think the HFEA was set up as an ethics commission””." The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, said that we all need to be our own ethicists. I agree. However, we need to inform ourselves about these very complex questions and we need a sense of where the issues are proceeding. The public on the whole look to us and to the bodies that we establish to give them some kind of lead and to set out the terms of the debate. That was one of the very good things achieved by the committee chaired by the noble and learned Lord on the issue of assisted dying. It did not seek to come to a conclusion. It clearly was divided on the substantive issues but it set out the arguments on both sides and it allowed not only your Lordships’ House but also the public outside to reach a conclusion. We have been told that the Nuffield Council could perhaps fill this gap, but it only meets four times a year and, as we heard, is accountable only to its founders. Sometimes we have to uncouple commercial interests from ethical issues. Many of the papers produced by Nuffield are some of the most interesting I have ever read. Nevertheless, its word is not the only one to be had on this issue; it is not definitive. That is why the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bengarve, was right to say that this should not be the end of the argument. It has been an incredibly valuable discussion today. When the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, comes to reply, I know that she will sum up the debate and suggest a way to proceed. Many colleagues in another place are looking at this question very seriously. I hope they will be able to build on some of the very sensible and eminently productive suggestions that have been made in this debate.