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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, I recognise the strength of feeling expressed by all noble Lords, including my noble friend who moved the amendment. Since our debate in Committee, the Department of Health has carried out a further analysis of a recent survey that it undertook of primary care trust provision of fertility services. The survey focused particularly on IVF, the service that couples have the most difficulty accessing. It does not answer the specific questions posed by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, but I shall come back to her in writing with those figures, if they exist. The survey had an almost 100 per cent response rate and the responses are currently being reviewed to verify the findings. The initial indications are that 30 per cent of primary care trusts that replied are providing one fresh cycle of IVF with no frozen cycles; 35.5 per cent are providing one full cycle involving a fresh cycle and any frozen cycles that may be possible using embryos stored after the fresh cycle; 27 per cent report that they are providing two cycles; and 5 per cent report that they are providing three cycles. A very small number have temporarily suspended IVF services and will be reviewing them. This is not good enough, but I believe that it signals a move in the right direction in the implementation of the NICE infertility guideline. The survey will be a help to the project that Infertility Network UK is carrying out to raise primary care trusts’ awareness of good practice in commissioning infertility services and should help to inform the thinking of the expert group. For the next steps, I propose that we ask the expert group to consider the spirit of the noble Baroness’s amendment and that we allow it time to consider how best primary care trusts can identify local fertility needs and explain their local decision-making, including the value of primary care trusts reporting to strategic health authorities annually and the SHAs making those reports public. Let us through this debate ask the expert group to consider that when it is fully established and let us look forward to its findings. I hope that on that basis the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.