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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful for the support from around the House. We are having a brief recap of the debate that we had more extensively in Committee with far more information from the mover of the amendment than I was able to offer tonight. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, is right about the stats—not their flakiness, but their incompleteness. In the three hours’ notice or thereabouts that I had of this amendment, I tried to get more complete coverage. That was why I cited the difference between the Essex authorities. I have the stats for west Essex, mid Essex, north-east Essex, south-east Essex and south-west Essex. There are huge variations within a single county with half a dozen PCTs, where one would expect a similar profile. Similarly, within inner London boroughs one might expect a somewhat similar profile, yet there appears to be little correlation between the size of the authority, its expenditure on IVF and the number of women presenting and receiving treatment. I agree that we need more complete statistics than we have.