---

Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, I have always had huge respect for the noble Baroness, Lady Williams. I have admired her speeches for many years, from when she was in the House of Commons. Yet I am little surprised at the speech she has just made on this issue because there are a number of areas which are frankly misleading. Scientists will read her speech in Hansard open-mouthed with surprise at what she has said. First, let me make it clear that it is far easier in the United Kingdom to do animal research rather than human embryo research. It is simply not true that it is more difficult. As has already been mentioned, a huge number of applications may be considered and go through local ethics committees in all sorts of embryo research, but they do not get to the HFEA first. With animal research, one applies directly to the Home Office for an animal licence to do the research, and it is quite a different kind of system. It takes much longer to get an application through, as I know to my own cost as somebody who has both a licence to do embryonic stem cell research and a licence to do animal research. They are both difficult to do, but the comparison she makes is unfair. Secondly, the noble Baroness mentioned cloning. Cloning has nothing to do with this issue. Human in vitro fertilisation produces a number of fertilised eggs which cannot be used for the treatment of patients. That means that these eggs will be discarded or thrown down the sink. To many of us on this side of the argument, the moral imperative is that such material could be used to protect, maintain and improve research into human health and human diseases. That is what it is really about. Of course there is a shortage of eggs, but eggs do not apply in this situation. Nobody is suggesting that we necessarily clone for embryonic stem cells; that is an entirely different and completely separate issue. As has already been said, original research in this situation would be impossible. One had to do original research based on the ideas that one has. We have already gone through the differences in various debates in this House, which I do not intend to repeat now, between the adult stem cell and the embryonic stem cell. They have different properties. That is a major puzzle, and why we still need to look at embryonic stem cells. You cannot replicate with adult stem cells first what you might see in the embryonic stem cell because of that difference. For example, there is their potential to grow into other tissue types. I have to say that I think that the noble Baroness rather misquoted Professor Jaenisch and, to some extent, Martin Evans. I know that the quotation is of itself correct, but the wrong inferences are drawn. If we look at the letter from the scientists published last week in the Times, we can see that there is tremendous support for the research to continue. It is not fair to say that a wide body of scientific opinion believes that we should abandon embryonic stem cell research, or even downgrade it. That is simply not true. Most biologists believe that it is still a very important area of research. I say that with utter truth. I have no wish to do something that people might find disreputable, but there is broad consensus among people with very strong ethics that this is the appropriate thing to be doing. It is nothing whatever to do with keeping the UK in the vanguard. If something is wrong, as a scientist, I would not want to keep the UK in the vanguard. This is a question of doing research that we fundamentally believe will open doors to important biological questions that we hope may ultimately help people. We must not confuse research on a cell to understand its properties with the issue of therapy, which is completely separate. Translational research is entirely different from basic research. We are here discussing not translational research but basic research. To my mind, it would be catastrophic if we abandoned those embryos, which would be lost after in vitro fertilisation. The only solution would be to destroy them against the wishes of the patients who, in my experience, give them extremely freely and with the great belief that we might find something to help other people in future.