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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, I was getting on famously with understanding this amendment until the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, stood up. She said that, on birth certificates, you might have to consider the parents’ interests and the child’s interests. Surely the whole purpose of a birth certificate is to record the facts. I agree with my noble friend Lady Knight that you cannot get away from the facts. To use an extreme but hypothetical example, in some families things go from father to son to son. That is a biological thing. If a mother has a son who is not the son of the father, does that not cause a hitch? For the certificate to say that the son is the father’s son because that is the social wish of the parents is wrong. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Alton, that, if necessary, you would have to have two certificates, one creating and recording the biological facts and one creating and recording the social facts. That seems a funny birth certificate because it does not record the birth at all.