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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, I support the amendment and agree with every word just spoken by the noble and learned Lord. However, were the amendment to be accepted, it may be necessary to look at the precise phraseology. I was a chemist in a previous incarnation and as I moved from being an undergraduate chemist to a research chemist, I can remember entering a completely different world where the experiments did not work out. As the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, has said, in research you often do not know what is going to happen because it is a very uncertain procedure. Given that, you cannot be certain that a particular piece of research is likely to achieve its specified purpose, so the phraseology may need to be honed. However, the broad principle of the amendment is to enshrine in the Bill a note of caution. I have only been able to be present now and again during the passage of the Bill through the House, but I have read all the reports as they have come in. There has been an understandable pressure from those engaged in the research to avoid unnecessary regulation, and indeed to deregulate to a degree. That is the natural instinct of those engaged in the research, but against that has to be put the issues so clearly set out for us by the noble and learned Lord. It is right that there is a note of caution written into the Bill so that we do not get drawn into thinking that research on embryos is a normal, natural way of proceeding. It should be done by exception. If the amendment is accepted, it may need to be tidied up in another place, but fundamentally it seems to me to be morally right.