---

Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill

I am afraid that I have already taken two interventions and any more would be using up my time. We need only consider the issue of fatherhood to see the flaws in Government thinking. The removal of the need for a father in licensing IVF treatment is not based on evidence of any harm caused by what is in many ways a light-touch piece of guidance. Evidence confirms, clearly and categorically, that fathers have a distinctive importance in the family parental relationship. The absence of a father has a significant impact on a child, which can be compensated for, but not replaced, by a loving mother and supportive parenting. How can it be right that the Bill will not only remove the need for a father in terms of IVF treatment but permit the deliberate creation of a child with the intention of removing from them the chance of ever having a father? Is it in the best interests of the child's welfare to deliberately and permanently write the biological father out of their life? At a time when the Government and voluntary sector initiatives are looking at how best to encourage fatherhood, it is ironic that the Bill, in effect, authorises state fatherlessness. We have often heard that the Government want us to lead in the field of scientific progress, and this debate is often skewed between scientific progressives and supposed religious and ethical reactionaries. Yes, the problem is one of a lack of ethics. That was recognised by Sir Liam Donaldson, who told the Joint Committee that"““this country””" has"““a deficit in medical ethics, both in the input to some of our decisions over the years and, also, in medical ethicists””." So we should be cautious. We should not ignore the fact that Australia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium have banned what the Bill would like us to permit. Rather than being in the lead, the UK stands out on a limb as regards proposing animal-human hybrids. The major problem with the Bill is that the Government are marching us up to the top of the hill of embryonic research. It is as if they are saying, ““We will reach the summit, where there will be treatments for Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, cystic fibrosis and so on.”” That sounds attractive—obviously, we would all want to sign up to cures for those debilitating illnesses. I need only think of my brother-in-law, who has recently been diagnosed with MS, and how much we would love him to be able to have a cure. However, this is not new—as a country we have been marched up the hill since 1990. At that time, people discounted the alternative arguments for supporting adult stem cell research. Funding was restricted, although it has now been restored to some degree of balance. The summit of treatments is still far off, as it was in 1990. The Government are saying, ““We know we have been on this hill since 1990. We've invested millions in limited stem cell lines. We know that there have been no treatments to date and that the problems of immune rejection have yet to be conclusively overcome. Stay on this path—we will get there by a new route, through animal-human hybrids.””. Everyone agrees, though, that the prospect of treatment and clinical trials is a long way off. Faced with that long journey, with many obstacles, we naturally wanted to seek reassurance from the scientists who came to our Joint Committee, who said that they were unable to establish any scientific evidence at this stage. It does not give us reassurance when we look at the summit, which many would say is over-hyped and could well be false. The real progress has been made with adult stem cell research and umbilical cord blood stem cells. Funding has been rebalanced, but umbilical cord blood is the poor relation of the stem cell therapy world. We should be marching up a different hill to ensure that we have regenerative medicine that produces results, relieves suffering and reduces health care costs. Cord blood is producing more than 80 treatments in leukaemia and other areas of immune deficiency and moving into degenerative diseases. If the Government took umbilical cord blood collection and banking seriously, controversial parts of the Bill would not be necessary. Professor Peter Braude has acknowledged that if banked widely and efficiently, umbilical cord blood would obviate the supposed need for saviour siblings. The wide storage of cord blood would increase the availability of matches, not just with siblings and other members of the family but beyond. There is a wonderful opportunity to collect and use that resource that is not being grasped sufficiently by the Government. We are lagging behind other countries in that area of stem cell research. It frustrates me that the Bill condones the creation of commodity humans and part animal, part human entities, but refuses to make provision for the valuable resource of cord blood, which is simply treated as waste in 98.5 per cent. of all cases. When we look at good scientific endeavour, surely we want to look at what produces results, and we are missing an opportunity in this country in the area of umbilical cord blood and adult stem cells. An issue that greatly concerns me, which threads through the Bill, is how we view life in the context of seeking cures and treatments to degenerative or disabling illnesses. We need to take great care to ensure that we are not casting judgment on the basis of quality of life, which values some lives more than others. That has particular resonance when looking at the issue of embryo selection and abortion on the grounds of disability. Jean Rostand, the French biologist, said:"““For my part I believe that there is no life so degraded, debased, deteriorated, or impoverished that it does not deserve respect and is not worth defending with zeal and conviction. I have the weakness to believe that it is an honour for our society to desire the expensive luxury of sustaining life for its useless, incompetent and incurably ill members. I would almost measure society's degree of civilisation by the amount of effort and vigilance it imposes on itself out of pure respect for life.””" According to that judgment, the Bill will, I am afraid to say, make us less civilised through a lack of respect for life. I urge the Government to think again. My children would describe the Bill as a Humpty Dumpty type of Bill—it is broken and ethically flawed. The king's horses and all the king's men have sought to put Humpty together again, but it is flawed fundamentally. Amendments will not be able to do it; the Bill is too short on sound ethics and sound science and it undermines human and family life. We should vote against it.