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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill

I am happy to be wholeheartedly behind the Bill. It builds on the 1990 Act, which has served us well. It provided a regulatory framework in which clinicians and scientific researchers have worked with confidence. The result is that the UK has been a world leader in the development of human reproductive technologies, and especially in the rapidly developing field of stem cell research. That would not have been possible without the confidence-building framework of the 1990 Act. We have experienced a reverse brain drain in stem cell research. Top American scientists have come to work in the UK because they can work with surety, knowing that they will not be subject to legal challenge for their activities, whereas in many states in America they are actively discouraged and prevented from carrying out that research. A President who shall be nameless stops any federal funding going into embryonic stem cell research. If we contrast our fairly happy state of affairs with that of some other countries that did not get to grips with legislating for these developments, we see what a mess they are in. When we were carrying out the first Science and Technology Committee report on human fertilisation technologies, the fruits of which are very much apparent in the Bill, we visited Italy. We had interesting discussions with the Vatican, and although there was a slight doctrinal difference, which I attribute to St. Thomas Aquinas, the monsignors in the Vatican were not putting out the same sort of ridiculous misrepresentation as certain Catholic cardinals have done in this country, which does the Catholic Church a disservice. That is not the position of the Catholic Church.