---

Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [Lords]

Is not the difference between the normal situation—one calls it normal because we are dealing inherently with the abnormal in these circumstances—where a parent is faced with the choice of whether to give approval for an invasive procedure on an existing child whose tissue matches that of another, and a situation where a child has been deliberately conceived and bred for the purpose, that faced with the latter situation a parent would be under enormous pressure and would not, in law, be regarded necessarily as an independent and impartial person capable of taking a decision on consent in the best interests of that child? So, we have a problem of consent. Is not the difference that in one case the child is bred for the purpose whereas in the other it is not and the parent is simply weighing impartially between the two children the interests of each?