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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill

May I first tell my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State how pleased I am that the Bill is before us on Second Reading. I was involved in debates about the human embryo during the 1980s. Issues were posed in a private Member's Bill, which I will not go further into; I was also heavily involved in debating the legislation in the 1990s. My right hon. Friend was right to describe that legislation as pioneering—indeed it was. It was rightly debated extensively on the Floor of the House. Let me respond to both the right hon. and learned Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) and the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley), who mentioned that we now have 18 years of experience of regulation in this area. I and many other Members will have visited the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and talked to those who work for it. When it was introduced, it was not a blank sheet of paper for the future; it is quite different now from what it was back in 1990. I am pleased that we are updating the regulation of assisted reproduction and embryo research in the light of scientific developments over the past 18 years. In 1990, we were very restricted in what we could do; we need only look at the decisions that the House has taken on the issue, through statutory instruments, which we could not have taken back in 1990. I remember when I was a shadow health spokesman that I had to help a Minister and his Parliamentary Private Secretary to get through a provision on the lifetime of stored embryos. That had not been put in the original Bill—no one wanted to go there, because of the ethical issues at the time. The Committee of Selection hand-picked Labour Members to bring in time scales for the storage of human embryos, so that eggs whose owners had walked away and were untraceable could be got rid of. Those were the types of difficulties that were left because we could not know the detail in 1990. Eighteen years on, the situation is a little different. The Bill will help to maintain the UK's position as a world leader in embryo research, including stem cell research. In addition, it will reflect modern social attitudes and Government policies on the family. Given the changes introduced by the House over the past decade, that is necessary. Research involving human embryos is necessary for the progress of assisted conception techniques. That was true then and it is true now. According to House of Commons Library figures on IVF up to 2005, there are now thousands of IVF births a year whereas many years ago there were hundreds. That is a result of this type of research. Such research also holds great promise for the understanding and development of treatments for a range of diseases and disorders. In particular, embryonic stem cell research using cells extracted from early embryos potentially offers major breakthroughs in medical science. Research involving the creation of human embryos outside the body led to the first IVF-conceived birth in 1978—some Members of the House went to her 21st birthday held down here, when she came to say hello. The UK has a widely admired and established system of statutory regulation, based on an independent licensing authority, the HFEA, which reflects the special status of the human embryo, as recognised in the Warnock report which underpinned the 1990 Act. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire said that that special status should have been enshrined in legislation, but my understanding is that it is based on a gradualist approach to the moral status of the human embryo: that it has an increasing status as it develops. That is my understanding of why we legislated as we did in 1990. The law therefore allows research, but only within certain parameters, such as a 14-day limit on the development of embryos in vitro. The Bill seeks to update the existing law, primarily in the light of technological advances, thereby helping to maintain the UK's position as a leading research base. I want to comment on the three issues that will be subject to a free vote, on which many of us have written. On human admixed embryos, some of the language over the past 18 years has not changed at all, as the Easter sermon in Scotland showed. It is not about creating monsters, as much as people still make that argument about such science, and it never was. If it were, I would not have been as supportive of such science over the years. It is purely laboratory research and aimed at increasing knowledge about serious diseases and treatments for them. Embryos must be destroyed at 14 days, and so far no scientist has been able to develop the embryo beyond six days. Those embryos cannot be placed in a woman or, indeed, in an animal. Interestingly, no one is suggesting that the 14-day limit on which we agreed in 1990 should be changed. Whatever was said at the time, no one is saying now that we got it wrong then. Medical science has come nowhere near trying to give that boundary a shove, and telling us to change what we understood to be right and proper. I do not consider that the science has become out of control. I think that some of the decisions made by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) in 1990 were right, and that that has been shown by the test of time. The Bill seeks to clarify the regulation of human admixed embryos for research. The 1990 Act refers only to human embryos, not to new and innovative ways of creating embryos combining human and animal material, which is why the provision on admixed embryos has been introduced. The Bill proposes that the same licensing process should apply as for fully human embryos, and that the 14-day legal limit should apply to admixed embryos as well. The issue has arisen under the current legislation, as has the HFEA's responsibility for managing the science effectively on behalf of us legislators, and I see no problem with accepting that element of the Bill. Another issue is that of embryo screening and selection, and saviour siblings. The Bill spells out for the first time in law a number of rules relating to the screening and selection of embryos and gametes. In broad terms, embryo screening and selection will be allowed only for the purpose of screening out serious genetic diseases or disorders. The HFEA has licensed screening in a number of cases since 1990, including cases of single-gene disorders such as cystic fibrosis. The Bill will ban selecting the sex of a child except when the intention is to avoid a serious sex-linked disease, and it addresses the issue of saviour siblings. As a last resort, an embryo may be selected so that the resulting child is a tissue match for a seriously ill older brother or sister. That has been licensed in a handful of cases involving rare blood diseases. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) referred to the family of three young children and their mum and dad who appeared on BBC television this morning. They had to travel to America, a total journey of 80,000 miles. They were lucky in the sense that they were able to do that, unlike many of our constituents who might otherwise be assisted in the same way. The Bill makes clear that such activities are lawful, and gives Parliament the opportunity to debate them. I agree with that as well. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North-West (John Robertson), who has now left the Chamber, raised the issue of what he described as ““spare parts””. He asked whether saviour siblings could be created for the purpose of organ transplants. The simple answer is no. Whatever anyone may say, the Bill does not allow embryo selection decisions for that purpose, although other parts of the law—governed by the Human Tissue Authority—do allow it. Another issue that causes people to shuffle around in their seats a fair amount is that of the ““need for a father””. I do not think that the Bill is about ““doing away with fathers””, or about being politically correct. I think the Government are right to recognise the important role that fathers play in their children's lives. There is a range of policies designed to strengthen that role, and to underline fathers' responsibilities. In fact, the Bill will bring conditions into line with legislation already passed by the House on civil partnerships—