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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, I find myself for the first time throughout the proceedings on this Bill, and indeed on the Joint Committee on which we both served, taking a different view from my noble and learned friend. Perhaps I may advert for a moment to the right reverend Prelate. He acknowledged that the amendment is infelicitously worded for the good reason explained by the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, which is that you cannot know in advance whether research is likely to achieve its specified purposes. Given that, surely the right approach is to say, ““We like the principle, but clearly the wording is wrong. The amendment needs to be taken back and looked at again””. When you add to that the point made, but not wholly answered, by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, that if it must include published, peer-reviewed scientific data that would make it almost impossible to have any new research, I find those arguments quite strong. It would be perverse to then pass the amendment into law at this stage and hope that someone else will amend it later in another place. That does not seem a sensible way to proceed. Nevertheless it is an important debate and it is right and to the advantage of the community as a whole that it is being held. I was struck by the leading article in the Times last Saturday on the use of tissue banks—we have still to come to an amendment on this issue—which stated: "““Stem cell researchers sit uncomfortably on the boundary between invaluable scientific endeavour and inviolable human ethics””." That is exactly right. But when one comes to the end of the article it states: "““Stem-cell researchers need to do little more than move a muscle to spark off a round of agonised soul-searching””." That is a perfectly proper reaction, if I may say so. The article continues: "““Difficult questions will continue to arise and must be scrutinised case to case. With equal measures of determination and sensitivity, policymakers must balance pragmatism and ethics. In some parts of the world, misplaced didacticism would take over and elevate scientific endeavour above personal or religious ethics. Elsewhere, ethics may gain primacy over science””." It concludes: "““It is to the credit of Britain’s democratic process that scientists and ethicists compete to be heard””." Those are very wise words but the article implies somehow that scientists are not ethical. That is not my experience. There may be a few mad scientists somewhere in laboratories who simply dismiss the whole ethical argument, but the overwhelming majority of scientists who are engaged in these sensitive areas are acutely conscious of the ethical argument. Indeed, when the Bill first appeared as a draft, it was called the human tissues and embryos Bill and there was an immediate reaction to say that we were simply putting tissues and embryos together as though they were of the same equality. We were not; we have always recognised, from the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, to which reference has been made, onwards that the embryo plays a very special part and that therefore any research involving embryos has to have regard to the ethical arguments as well. I believe that, overwhelmingly, scientists do that. I sympathise with and understand the purposes of the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, but it would not be sensible to put it into the Bill when even those who support it recognise that it carries some flaws. Perhaps the message to the Government should be, ““Is there not something we could write in here?””. I say this because the Joint Select Committee was critical of the fact that this Bill did not include, as the 1990 Bill did, an underlying ethical argument and purpose. It is something that this Bill lacks and it is not to the credit of this House that we have not yet found a way of rectifying that. I do not think that this is the way for the reasons explained by the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, and others. However, there is a purpose here which somehow needs to be reflected in the Bill. I hope that the House will not pass the amendment. Perhaps the noble Baroness may be prepared to withdraw it on an undertaking from the Government—I do not know whether they are prepared to do this—that they will continue to look at this argument and see whether it is not possible to write into the Bill an underpinning ethical argument. The Joint Committee felt that that was lacking and it is something we ought to put in.