Lords Sitting of 8 February 1990

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock (Prayers having been read earlier at the Judicial Sitting by the Lord Bishop of Southwark): The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

Home Help Service
Baroness Masham of Ilton Baroness Masham of Ilton asked Her Majesty's Government:
Why changes have been made to the home help service.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, changes from the traditional home help, providing mainly shopping and cleaning services, to a home care service able to provide personal care have been introduced by many local authorities to enable the service to offer a higher degree of support. That helps dependent people to continue to live in the community in a home of their own. At the same time, authorities are moving towards remodelling their services so that resources are concentrated on those most in need of support.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply. Is she aware that many severely disabled and elderly people are now having acute problems in getting their houses cleaned and that to remove the priority of cleanliness makes them feel demoralised and depressed in dirty houses?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, it is true that cleaning services are a vital support to keeping elderly and disabled people in their own homes. Inevitably, the change to the new type of home care service will mean that some people who have received help with cleaning will no longer have it provided by the local authority. However, I hope that local authorities will recognise the importance that many recipients attach to that home help cleaning service and that, where they deem it to be essential, cleaning services should not be removed or, where they are removed, alternative arrangements and other ways of providing them should be sought.
Baroness Elles: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that cleanliness is paramount in the comfort of a home? Is it surprising that the country is, frankly, becoming so dirty if that is the kind of view taken by local authorities in looking after the people in their care?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, there are two responses to that point. First, it is important to remember that domestic services for those people have not disappeared from the job description of the new kind of home care service. Secondly, my noble friend's point is well taken. For many elderly people who have traditionally looked after their homes, the most distressing part of growing old is to see that their bathrooms are not clean and that their floors are not cleaned and swept.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, will the noble Baroness ask her right honourable friend to have another look at the remodelling because it has resulted in people throughout the country having their number of hours' help reduced? It is true that they may well receive some minimal housekeeping help, but the time has been reduced to less than an hour on the basis that housekeeping is not seen to be important. Other people have had their applications for the services that they have identified turned down. That point is particularly important with regard to arthritic people who rely on the housekeeping and cleaning services to enable them to get around and do the things that they can do. Will the noble Baroness take another look at the effect of the remodelling on those people?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the key issue here is proper management of change. It is the Government's policy to keep disabled and elderly people in their own homes. This is an essential part of that service. It is therefore right that we continue to ensure that an essential part of the service is not lost in the course of managing the change. However, the needs of the elderly are now more complex and it is therefore right that a more professional approach to keeping people in their homes is retained while not ignoring the essential part of the domestic side of their lives.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, it seems to be a change for the worse. I cannot see how a change for the worse could be recommended. Is the noble Baroness aware that there is growing concern among many organisations about, among other things, the cleaning point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Elles? One organisation told me that those who have had a home help for some time have had the number of hours reduced or the home help discontinued and those who now apply for a home help are either refused or are not given the help that they identify.
In view of the increasing number of elderly and disabled people dependent upon home helps not just for help but as a lifeline to the community —the one item in their empty diaries upon which they can rely —is it not a matter of deep concern to the noble Baroness that the service seems to be becoming worse?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord appreciates that I sympathise considerably with the point made in the Question. Local authorities should be reminded of their obligation to the Government's policy of keeping in their own homes people who are dependent on that service. It is also worth remembering that the home help service has expanded from about 47,000 whole-time equivalents in 1978 to about 60,000 in 1987. However, having said that, the business of determining priorities and assessing needs is very much a matter for local authorities. They approach that work in good, bad and indifferent ways.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that, if there is a severe reduction, as there appears to be, in home help, it will create grave

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difficulties for the Health Visitors Association whose members are already complaining about the fact that they have no option but to do some of the work that home helps did rather than their own job as health visitors?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the answer to the previous question proves that there has not been a cut in the service. There has been a considerable expansion in the service. The noble Lord may be referring to the situation where needs change, and to the fact that a person whose need for home help has increased, rather than a person whose need has diminished, will obtain the service. There may be a gap in the services in the way in which local authorities approach explaining the situation to their clients. There is probably considerable scope for improvement in the way that the complexities are communicated.
Lord Glenamara: My Lords, the noble Baroness has confused me by agreeing with everyone. Will she tell us clearly whether the cleanliness criterion has been removed? Has it or has it not?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I hope that, by accusing me of agreeing with everyone, the noble Lord does not think that I am compromising myself on each point. It is important to make clear that, as I said in reply to one question, domestic duties of the home care service have not been removed from the job description. I understand that there is some genuine criticism about in the country that elderly people are confused about why they are losing domestic services and why they are being replaced with services which some might say are not perhaps as high a priority in their lives. There is scope for local authorities to look carefully at the way in which they determine priorities, how they deploy their resources and how they appropriately address the needs of their clients.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that this is a matter for her department? Does she recognise the strength of concern throughout the House? Will she discuss the issue with her right honourable friend? Surely this is an issue for her department and its Secretary of State.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I shall of course draw the comments made today to my department's attention. It is also worth saying that there is an inspectorate which is concerned about the burden on local authorities to absorb all the changes in the field of community care. It is already moving in alongside local authorities to help with the management of change and to give guidance on the issue.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I know that the noble Baroness is as keen on cleanliness as I am and is concerned about those people who cannot do these things for themselves. Will she ensure that her department monitors the situation throughout the country? Will she take it upon herself to undertake that task in view of her interest in this matter?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I can give that assurance that the department will play a real part in monitoring; as also will the local authorities themselves.

Benefits: Housing and Rate Rebates
3.10 p.m.
Lord Stallard Lord Stallard asked Her Majesty's Government:
How many people are currently in receipt of rate rebates and housing benefits respectively.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Social Security (Lord Henley): My Lords, this year 4·5 million households are receiving rate rebates and 0·9 million claimants in Scotland are receiving community charge rebates. Housing benefit for rent goes to 4·2 million tenants, most of whom also receive rate or community charge rebates.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, I am grateful for that information. The noble Lord mentioned that the vast majority of people on housing benefit will already have qualified for the maximum rebate on their rates. Can he tell the House what provision the Government intend to make for those people who are in receipt of rate rebates and who live in an area in which the poll tax will be higher than those rates? The 20 per cent. charge —if I make myself clear —would still be the same. In other words, does he agree that their benefit will be further eroded because the 20 per cent. rebate on rates that they receive will probably be less than the payment that they will have to make for the poll tax?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I am not sure whether I quite understand the noble Lord. That 20 per cent. is set on an average and will give the payer of the community charge the right to demand accountability from the authority. It is up to him then to vote for an authority which will keep the charge at that figure.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, the maximum rebate is 80 per cent. Many thousands of people receive that 80 per cent., which means that they now pay 20 per cent. However, 20 per cent. of the rates will amount to less than 20 per cent. of the poll tax. In other words, they will pay more poll tax than they currently pay for rates. Can the Minister say whether those people will be compensated for that increase.?
Lord Henley: My Lords, income support rates were set to take account of that 20 per cent. Quite simply, people can vote for an authority which will keep down their community charge.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, that surely is not good enough. Is the Minister telling the House that the 20 per cent. is based on the Government's false figure of an average of £278 per person per annum or that it will be based upon the amount that people will actually pay? There is, for example, the profligate Tory-controlled Berkshire County Council which says that the poll tax will be £450 and not £278.
Lord Henley: My Lords, it is pure speculation as to the level at which any local authority will set its community charge. It is up to the electors to vote for an authority which keeps down the community charge to a reasonable figure.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, can the Minister confirm that that means that the Government will call an early general election so that the people of this country can make a decision on how their tax rates are to be fixed this year?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I do not think that the calling of a general election is a matter for me.
Baroness David: My Lords, can the Minister tell us the position of a couple now on income support? As the poll tax is supposed to be for individuals, will each individual receive the 80 per cent. rebate?
Lord Henley: Yes, my Lords.
Lord Hylton: My Lords, can the Minister say whether the current levels of housing benefit will be sufficient to cover the very much higher level of rents that already are becoming payable?
Lord Henley: My Lords, no doubt the noble lord will know that housing benefit is not set at a particular figure. It depends on the income of the individual and on his rent.
Lord Carter: My Lords, is the Minister aware of the circular dated 24th January from the Department of Social Security which states:
"It is highly unlikely, on the basis of experience in Scotland last year, that landlords will reduce their rent charges to take account of the abolition of rates"?
Is he further aware that the circular went on to suggest that the housing benefit payments should take account of that? In other words, it requires the taxpayer to provide the wherewithal to give the private landlord a windfall profit.
How do the Government intend to help those tenants on low incomes who do not receive housing benefit and who will not be eligible for a poll tax rebate? Does the Minister agree that they must pay the full amount of poll tax and the same rent as before, which has not been reduced because of the abolition of rates, or face eviction?
Lord Henley: My Lords, when they renegotiate the rent with the landlord it is necessary for them to take that into account.

Information Technology: Use of English
3.15 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy Lord Campbell of Croy asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether English is increasingly becoming the main language used internationally in information technology and what encouragement they will give to British industry to take advantage of such a development.
The Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Trefgarne): My Lords, English is generally accepted as the main working language in information technology. That stems from the fact that the major programming languages are of American and British origin. As United Kingdom firms themselves recognise, this gives them something of a natural advantage.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply, in the light of which does he not agree that British industry should be able to benefit, since international companies make their recruits in this field undertake courses in English when it is not their native tongue, and Japanese is still little used in this field outside Japan?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, my noble friend is quite right. There is a very considerable demand for expert and particularly experienced programmers in this field. Clearly, if they speak English, and especially if English is their mother tongue, they have a head start.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, does the Minister agree that we are perhaps overlooking something rather important? Is it not a fact that children in Germany and France (and in Japan, for that matter) are not now taught English but are taught American? Is it not also a fact that companies in Britain which provide translation services, translating from any language into any other language but in the main specialising in translating technical papers and journals, now tell us that much of their work comprises translation from English into American? That is not for American clients but for the Europeans, Japanese and others who insist on having English technical publications translated into American. If the Minister can do anything to reverse that trend, I for one would be very grateful.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, as one who undertook part of his education in the United States, I sympathise with the noble Lord's view. However, it is important that documentation relating to particular products meets precisely the requirements of the customer, and that depends very much on his background.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, in view of what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, will the Minister confirm that it is a role of the British Council (which I believe it carries out very well all over the world) to promote English as it is spoken in Britain?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, yes, indeed. The British Council does extremely good and important work in this area. Some 66,000 people were taking advantage of British Council services last year, if my memory serves me right. It is a business worth some £25 million.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, will the Minister confirm that the premise of the noble Lord's Question and his supplementary question as well as the Minister's Answer is correct? One grants that

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English is the major language for international business, but is it not true that the language for information technology is the language of electronic data processing? In other words, if I may use shorthand, it is computer language. Will he agree that the basis of that language is mathematics and that we should concentrate on education in mathematics in that regard?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, there is a difference between the language which a computer uses to talk to itself (if I may describe it in that way) and the language which a computer uses to talk to its user; namely, the language that appears on the screen. The language that the computer talks to itself is highly technical. It is not English or any other language known to the noble Lord or to myself. However, it is important that the computer's capability puts it in a position to talk to all its different customers, whether they speak Japanese, English or any other language.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, will the Minister agree, in the light of his reply to the noble Lord, that my Question was concerned with the spoken languages and not with the technicalities of mathematical computer languages?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am grateful for that clarification.
Lord Pym: My Lords, I should declare an interest as chairman of the English Speaking Union. Does my noble friend agree that at this point in history, when such enormous changes are taking place, there ought to be an increase in our own investment in teaching and spreading the English language by means of the British Council and through the World Service of the BBC? Does he further agree that it would be quite wrong to sit on our laurels complacently content with the present levels and that if we were to make such a further investment the return would be very handsome indeed?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, my noble friend is quite right. I dare say that he is talking about Eastern Europe. He will have heard of the know-how fund that has recently been established by the British Government. Among other things it will be able to provide additional language training.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, will the Minister indicate whether the phrase "sitting on one's laurels" is English or American?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I seem to recall that laurels were a peculiarly Roman institution.

Rental Accommodation: New Building
3.20 p.m.
Lord Jay Lord Jay asked Her Majesty's Government:
How many houses and flats to let started building in the United Kingdom in 1989.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Hesketh): My Lords, it is estimated that 28,000 new dwellings for letting were started by housing associations and local authorities in 1989. The extension of the Business Expansion Scheme to give tax relief for investment in rented housing has been most successful, leading to around £370 million having been invested so far which we believe should result in some further 7,000 units.
Lord Jay: My Lords, are the Government content with the situation in which the number of homeless families is at record levels? We are apparently building fewer houses to let than in almost any year since the war.
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord is aware of the Government's recent £250 million initiative to help with the problems of homelessness. I believe that it is worth reminding your Lordships that my right honourable friend the Minister for Housing recently departed for Denmark to discuss housing for the homeless. The fact of the matter is this. Fifty-seven per cent. of the GDP of Denmark is consumed in government expenditure compared with 38 per cent. in this country and they have a problem.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, does the reply that we have just received from the Government indicate that we shall export our homeless to Denmark?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, it clearly shows that the answer is not to throw money at the problem.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, although the figures that the Minister gave indicating the increase are welcome, is he aware that there was a meeting in Committee Room 4B on Tuesday morning of your Lordships' all-party group on the building industry which was addressed by representatives of the Building Employers' Confederation and they said quite clearly that over the wider spectrum there has been a 25 per cent. downturn in the building of houses and flats over the past 12 months? They were asked for a remedy. They said that the only thing that could stop a further serious deterioration over the next 12 months would be a modest decrease in the bank rate for the money that they had to borrow. What hope can the Minister give that their wishes will be fulfilled in order to build more houses, which are most urgently required?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, being the Government of the long-term rather than the short-term fix, we believe that inflation must be curbed in order to ensure prosperity for the future.
Lord Northfield: My Lords, are the Government working on any new proposals to increase the possibility of houses being built for rent at a low price? Is it not the case that with the land cost of a small house now often 50 per cent. of the cost of the house and perhaps amounting to £50,000 in itself, that means that there is very little chance of getting low-cost rented housing under way in this country?

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Are the Government working on any proposals in this field to improve the supply of land at a low cost, apart from the small initiative in the rural areas, which is very small indeed and has little effect?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, it is easy to denigrate the rural areas. However, your Lordships will remember the department's circular last April which was to help to provide cheap accommodation for those in rural areas. It is very difficult to provide cheap land where property already exists. Although the tone of the noble Lord's question is extremely seductive, to tell someone who owns a piece of property in the City that he should hand it over free of charge is rather different from discussing a meadow.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, is not one of the factors that produce the shortage of cheap land to which my noble friend refers the very restrictive attitude of quite a number of local authority planning committees?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, I do not wish to return to the burdens of last year's Housing and Local Government Act. However, I have to say, as I said then, that the 75 people who signed the petition for the cheap housing to be provided are also the 75 who signed the protest against the planning authority granting planning permission.
The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that with the difficulty of selling large amounts of property, certainly in the South-East, estate agents' books are now very full of property to rent? There is now no longer a shortage of property to rent in the South-East of England. It may be at the wrong price but there is no shortage of property to rent.
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, I wish that I could take as optimistic a view as my noble friend. However, I believe that there will always be a shortage of housing long after even I have left the House.
Lord Jay: My Lords, how many houses to let do the Government expect to be built in the present year?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, expenditure this year in the public sector and with housing associations will be some £4·4 billion together with other substantial sums of money when one takes into account the indicators that come from the success of the Government's BES initiative on rented accommodation.

Business
Lord Denham: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House to know that the Committee stage of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill will be adjourned at about 7 p.m. for about one hour and that during this adjournment the Official Secrets 1989 (Prescription) Order 1989 will be taken.

Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [H.L.]
3.24 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Mackay of Clashfern): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now again resolve itself into Committee. —(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES in the Chair.]
Clause 11 [Licences for treatment, storage and research; alternatively, for treatment and storage only]:
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare): If Amendment No. 51 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment Nos. 52 and 53.
The Duke of Norfolk The Duke of Norfolk moved Amendment No. 51:
Page 5, line 15, leave out subsection (1).
The noble Duke said: The amendment concerns the kernel of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. It is so important that there are no Whips on noble Lords and we are all entirely free to vote according to our own consciences.
Clause 11 is not concerned so much with medical matters as with ethical matters. I fully support infertility treatment to enable married couples to have children. I consider the family to be the most important human unit there is and when children are lacking it is indeed sad. I commend in vitro fertilisation as a wonderful discovery which has enabled so many childless couples to have children but, alas, there is only about a 10 per cent. success rate at the moment overall. We are all proud of the achievement that brought about Louise Brown's birth at Oldham in 1978. It has rightly won world acclaim.
According to every text book in the world on anatomy human life starts at fertilisation and ends at death. At the Committee stage in the Chamber last Tuesday the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, sought to clarify the beginning of life by redefining the creation of an embryo. She said that it comes into existence when a single sperm has completed penetration of a human egg. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has agreed to redraft the Bill on this matter at Report stage.
Professor Winston has mentioned that there may be over 4,000 genetic diseases that might benefit if the human fertilisation and embryology authority were to license further embryo research. However, no genetic disease has so far been identified, let alone cured, by embryo experimentation. I repeat that point: embryo experimentation has neither identified nor cured any genetic disease.
The pamphlet Progress expresses the thoughts of scientists who want more embryo experimentation. They admit that they cannot find cures for genetic diseases. Their purpose now is to identify

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handicapped embryos by embryo biopsy so that the afflicted can be discarded. Having carried out a biopsy on an embryo, they discard the cells which are afflicted with a genetic disease. The hope is that eventually they will be able to replace the embryo in the womb but so far they have not succeeded. Therefore, embryo biopsy amounts to the destruction of the embryo.
The scientists' purpose is to identify handicapped embryos by embryo biopsy so that it may be discarded. However, there is no question of using embryos to cure genetic disease. The scientists admit that. Moreover, there is nothing that they can learn from the human embryo that they cannot learn from the animal embryo in the study of genetic diseases.
I should like to quote from Hymie Gordon, Professor of Genetics at the Mayo Clinic in the United States of America. He said:
"Everything we need to learn can be learnt by studying genetic diseases in non-human primates and other animals … No one has ever been able to tell me as a scientist what particular step in scientific knowledge is going to be achieved by an experiment on a human embryo that could not have been done in an animal embryo".
That quotation was from one of the world's top geneticists.
Recently, immense strides have been made in the search to cure genetic defects. They are all dependent on research carried out on born people who have the diseases. Professor Lejeune identified the cause of Down's Syndrome (Trisomy 21) and it is hoped that he might discover more of the genes which are responsible. There are also great hopes for cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy. I have a disease which is partially hereditary and which was discovered only a few years ago; it is glaucoma. My right eye is only half effective. Strides are also being made in respect of the minor genetic disease by carrying out research on those of us who have it. It is nonsense to suggest that it would be possible to cure the disease by experimenting on me when I was a dot, a one-cell embryo, in July 1915. How can anyone tell me that experiments carried out on a dot in the embryonic stage will cure a genetic disease? How can we be cured —and I include myself as an example —without experimenting and researching on us when we develop the disease? You cannot talk about it when it is not even identifiable in a dot on day one.
A Gallup poll was carried out between 13th to 18th December, 1989. It showed that a majority of British people were against embryo experimentation. Therefore, I am speaking for the majority and not the minority. Furthermore, I have received many letters beseeching me to speak against experimentation, including one signed by the Reverend Canon Oliver O'Donovan, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Christchurch, Oxford. It lists many Anglican bishops and Churchmen and implores me to take the line that I now take. Another letter came from Bolton, Lancashire, listing approximately 200 severely disabled people or their parents from all over the kingdom. Another letter came from John Finnis, Professor of Law at Oxford, supported by the legal
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lecturers at the universities of Leicester and Manchester. I received another signed by 18 of the country's top philosophers from several universities. They all implore me to move the amendment.
Other countries have banned embryo experimentation. They include Denmark, Eire, Portugal, Norway and the Australian states of Victoria and South Australia. The European Parliament has voted against it. A moratorium has now been declared in France while the matter is considered further. In Germany the Bundestag is about to pass stringent legislation. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester, who unfortunately is unable to be present today, has sent me a summary of the Bill that the Bundestag is about to pass. I shall read five sentences of the summary in order to show what is happening in the rest of the European Community. After all, its members have the same kind of feelings as we in this country; they have the same basic religions, and so forth. It states:
"1. In vitro fertilisation may be practised only for the purpose of making pregnant the women from whom the eggs are taken.
"2. No embryo may be produced which is not intended for return to the mother's womb".
The third is important:
"3. Nothing may be done to a human embryo outside the womb which is not for its own benefit.
"4. Genetic manipulation of human cells is forbidden.
"5. Cross-species fertilisation is forbidden".
I am not opposed to the acquisition of medical and scientific knowledge about embryology and infertility. However, I am opposed to the destructive experiments on human embryos. The Hippocratic Oath has until now provided the basic ethics for doctors and medical scientists. It states that doctors must not carry out experiments which hurt the patients with a view to finding a solution to the problems of science. The oath dated from approximately 400 years BC and has been updated. The Helsinki Declaration, which updated it, states:
"In research on a man the interests of science and society should never take precedence over considerations related to the well-being of the subject".
The oath was further updated by the declaration made at Geneva. It states that we must:
"have the utmost respect for human life from the time of conception".
I suggest to your Lordships that we as legislators also have a conscientious duty to follow the Hippocratic Oath and the declarations of Helsinki and Geneva. They apply to us just as much as they apply to the medical profession and medical scientists.
Finally, I hope that the Government will pour in more money to help find cures for those who suffer from genetic diseases. Yesterday evening I met people from a small parliamentary lobby. They were in Westminster Hall because many were in wheelchairs. Some noble Lords addressed them including the noble Lords, Lord Ennals and Lord Henderson. I share with them all their anxieties that they should get better themselves and that it should be possible to prevent any more children being born with their problems. I believe that it is utterly wrong to exploit the stories that research on human embryos could provide miraculous cures for them and their children.
Lord Carter: I am grateful to the noble Duke for giving way. I should make it clear that the parents who were present yesterday were not seeking a cure for their condition but were supporting research to ensure that handicapped embryos would not be implanted. That was the point of the lobby.
However, there is a point which is germane to the point just advanced by the noble Duke. He will remember that last Sunday we were together on the Frost programme when we discussed this matter. When I made the point that research would allow parents who carry a congenital disease to choose to be implanted the noble Duke said —and of course I agree —that he would want to implant a good embryo. Can the noble Duke tell the Committee of the techniques which he would propose to distinguish between the good and the bad embryo and what he would propose to do with the bad embryo?
The Duke of Norfolk: The answer is simple. I believe that an embryo is the start of life and must be given the same status in life as a child, a grown-up person or a Member of your Lordships' Chamber. I can see no distinction between that and the life of an embryo.
In in vitro fertilisation three or four embryos are created and one or two are implanted into the mother. Sometimes too many are inserted and there are multiple births. If you do not insert any which are created, they should be allowed to die. To my mind, those embryos should not be treated as an animal or some other being and be experimented on. I believe that the keeping of spares for experimentation is ethically wrong.
The noble Lord also asked me how one knows whether an embryo is good or bad. Quite obviously, I am not a doctor. I believe that the only way to discover that is that some sort of an inspection or observation is carried out. The noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits, said that he approves of observation on the embyro. If it is found that the embryo is all right then it is inserted into the womb. No inspection of the embryo can be carried out which reveals glaucoma, thank God; otherwise I should not be here.
That was a point made last Sunday on television when I took Alison Davis along with the noble Lord on to breakfast television with my son-in-law, David Frost. She said in the little speech which she made that she had spina bifida and she said, "Thank God they did not scrub me when they discovered I had it and that they allowed me to go on; otherwise I should not be here". Thank God she is still here because she is a wonderful Welsh girl who is making the best out of life, having been to Essex University, and so on. I have now concluded my speech and I beg to move.
3.45 p.m.
Lord Rawlinson of Ewell: I support the noble Duke in the amendment which stands in his name and mine. This is a debate in which no one should mock or sneer at the opinions and beliefs of others. This matter is unlike the mundane subjects which are usually discussed in the House or in this Committee. This goes profoundly to the heart of the matter.
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I have always felt anxiety about what was the right attitude of any parliamentarian in matters of ethical concern. It is quite easy when the proposal is to oblige people by law to do acts which thereafter the state, by sanction, will enforce. It is more difficult when the power proposed to be given is only permissive. When that happens, it seems to me you have to apply your personal judgment. As this is a matter of life and death, I believe that it is only now that one can apply one's personal principles on the proposal before us.
I do not believe that this debate will change the opinions of many, because for many this is a subject of profound belief. No one on either side of today's argument would tolerate a permissive right to kill or experiment on any person with a life separate from that person's mother, however short that existence had been. In other words, infant life to all is sacred.
That is what I found difficult in the very distinguished speech on Second Reading by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York when he said that if the moment of conception is the start of human life, then the majority of souls destined for eternity might never have been anything other than embryonic. It seems to me that the same could be said of infants. Without there being an opportunity to commit right or wrong, infant mortality was the scourge throughout the ages and still persists in many parts of the world.
The question is asked: when does life commence? Surely if it has commenced the killing is not acceptable. To those who reply "After 14 days", I say, "Fourteen days after what?" It must be 14 days after something or 14 days into some existence, progress or potential development. What happens to make "after 14 days" acceptable? Life must come from a cause which starts a process which may last, if uninterrupted, for many years. The interruption is death, which comes at any time, arresting potential and terminating a process.
Therefore, is not life like a flow of what could be a great river with a faint intitial movement like a spring, rivulet or stream, which then becomes a river and ends in the ocean, unidentifiable and gone? At any time the spring may be cut off or the stream may be dammed. Is it not logical to start at the beginning? Those very honourable people —and I accept that they are —who prefer subsection (1) wish it to be permitted to experiment with the most honourable of motives, helping those now alive or yet to become alive. However, the value to them of that which they want to use for experiments is that it has a quality which makes it unique. What makes it unique? It is unique because it has the quality of life. Therefore, they are seeking to use that which has begun in the river or on the path of life.
I ask again: 14 days into what? It is 14 days into life. That being so, I cannot accept that man has a right to dispose of what is living, to bottle it, tag it, place it on a shelf, play with it or destroy it because I profoundly believe that our ancestors were wiser in their generation as to the verities of life and death. I believe that man must not do that. I believe that life must be accepted as having begun and should be honoured even from the very moment of conception. I support the amendment.
The Archbishop of York: I thank the noble Duke for his opening speech, which I think helped to clarify the grounds of his opposition to research although I must confess that I found his clarification somewhat odd. I deeply sympathise with his general attitude towards this matter and I deeply sympathise with him in his own hereditary defect, not least because we discovered in the corridor before the beginning of the debate that we are related.
However, the noble Duke began by saying how much he welcomed the advances that there have been through in vitro fertilisation and then made an attempt to deny the very research on which in vitro fertilisation has been based. It seems to be quite extraordinary to commend this particular result and rejoice with those who have received children which they could not otherwise receive and then roundly say that the very means of producing them were immoral and ought to be banned.
The noble Duke then went on to quote an opinion that all that might be discovered could be discovered through animal research. That again seems to be a deeply immoral point of view, in that if one intends to conduct animal research and apply the results to human beings without any sort of intermediate stage, one is not experimenting with embryos but with fully developed human lives. Exactly the same is true of the quite extraordinary set of provisions which the German Government are proposing to pass. If research is restricted to embryos which are subsequently to be re-implanted into women, one is experimenting on embryos which are to grow up and on women who are to bear children. That again seems to me to be deeply immoral.
In debating this amendment we are not considering whether to allow research because research is already going on and has been going on for 20 years. We are considering whether research should be banned. That is not just a difference in terminology because we have to weigh up whether the arguments against research are so strong as to ban an activity which has already been going on in this country in a very responsible fashion and which has already produced very significant results in the field of in vitro fertilisation.
I do not agree with those who say that it will not produce further results which may have consequences for those with genetic defects. Nobody is claiming that all forms of genetic defect can be dealt with by this means. What they are claiming is that there are some kinds of genetic defect where there is a clearly identifiable gene which might be diagnosed before an embryo is implanted and thus give desperate parents, who are fearful of perhaps giving birth to another defective child, an opportunity to know that they are to have a normal child. That seems to me to be a highly laudable proposition.
Arguments have frequently been put forward that we are dealing with a continuum in which one can talk about "the embryo" which at this stage I prefer to call the conceptus. We need to be careful about our terminolgy. We have reacted against the word "pre-embryo". "Conceptus" can bury the idea in the deepest obscurity of the Latin language and I put it
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forward as a purely neutral term meaning that which is the result of fertilisation up to the time of implantation.
The argument is constantly made that such a conceptus might develop into one of us. Indeed, but there is a great difference between reading history backwards and trying to predict it forwards. When you read history backwards you can trace out a train of cause and event; you can trace back an individual life in which we rejoice now to its earliest beginnings in the womb and beyond in the life of its parents. However, when you are trying to read history forwards you are simply talking of potentialities. What we are talking about when we look at a conceptus is a potential for life. Unless that conceptus is actually implanted in a uterus it has no potential beyond those few days during which experimentation takes place.
The moral difference is quite different from that of infanticide and in a very large measure different from that of abortion. We are now talking of something which has taken place very much further along the road with the growing identity, the growing personal value that the developing embryo has. Nobody in their wildest dreams would want to say that infanticide is justified if research on a conceptus is justified. That is to ignore the whole process which has taken place in between.
One of the difficulties in the debate is that embryology, to coin a phrase, is sui generis. We are constantly trying to apply distinctions which pertain in ordinary life but which do not actually apply in a particular respect. For example, lawyers try to put everything in one of two baskets; it is either a person or a thing. However, there are entities which are neither persons nor things. What we are referring to in the case of a conceptus is an organism of human origin which given the right conditions has the potential to develop and may become a full human person.
In using words like that we need to be conscious of the slipperiness of the terms we use. For example, we use the phrase "respect for life". Do we mean all life, or what kind of life? We use the word "human". We all realise that the word "human" carries two quite different connotations; one is simply descriptive and the other is evaluative. We may describe a hair found at the scene of a crime as a human hair, and that is a simple descriptive use. When we talk about a person being human, we are evaluating as well as describing. Therefore, when we say a conceptus is human, in the first instance that is descriptive. Gradually, as it develops and begins to gain the features of a human person, our word becomes evaluative.
Exactly the same can be said of the words "a being". We ask, what has been produced as a result of fertilisation? If we use the phrase "a being", we must recognise that that has a weak sense and a strong sense. The weak sense of "a being" is that it is an entity; it is simply something which exists. However, we can easily import into it the strong sense if we use it in referring to "a human being"; in other words, a person with an identity, a life of its own, an independence and so on.

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I am sure that we shall never get that right until we see what is happening embryologically as the creation of persons through a process which, although it begins with genetic union, is not simply about a union of genes but also depends on a certain cellular identity which only becomes apparent at the time of the appearance of the primitive streak. It is only then that one can say that those cells will eventually develop, again given the right conditions, into a human person.
I very much hope, therefore, that in discussing this extremely difficult subject we will endeavour to be careful in our use of language and concepts, because it is so easy to be swayed by arguments which look good on the surface but which are wholly spurious when one looks beneath that surface. I believe we are wise to be guided by common perceptions of ordinary people; and I do not mean those who ring up and say "We do not like embryo research". I am sure a great many people who are approached suddenly in the street and asked "Do you like embryo research?" have some horrific picture in mind of fiendish doctors experimenting on poor little screaming embryos.
The ordinary response of people dealing with the first fruits of conception —for example, a miscarriage —is sorrow at that event, but one does not say, "There is a human person who has died". The parents are conscious of their loss. As that conceptus develops into a fetus and eventually into a baby, obviously the consciousness of loss and the value of what had been created increases. We have a similar scale of value which we operate when we talk about abortion. I do not want to muddle this debate with talk about abortion because in a way it is a different ethical issue. I simply want to make the point that we recognise that at different stages we impute different values to what is there in the womb.
In deciding this particular amendment I hope that we will not be persuaded just by one single criterion. We are dealing with a very complex balance of arguments. We owe it to the scientists to take seriously what they are trying to do, to respect their integrity and to provide them with a clear framework in which to work. We do no good if our prohibitions are so severe as to be regarded by them as unreasonable and unjustified and of such a kind as to prevent potentially valuable and responsible work. Therefore I hope that the Committee will reject this amendment.
4 p.m.
Lord Walton of Detchant: In opposing the amendment tabled by the noble Duke and the noble Lord, Lord Rawlinson of Ewell, and in explaining why I feel it right to table an alternative amendment in order to make it possible under the Bill for research on the human conceptus up to the 14-day deadline to continue, I do not propose to rehearse in detail all of the arguments which I put before your Lordships in the debate at Second Reading. However, I believe that it would be right for me to try to correct some misunderstandings and misconceptions relating to the current position and future prospects which make the continuation and
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development of such research so vital to the interests of humanity as a whole.
Let me make it clear at the outset that, whereas I personally prefer that the fertilised ovum up until the appearance of the primitive streak at about 14 days should be called a conceptus or, as some have called it, a pre-embryo, I must of course accept that in this Bill as it stands it is identified as an embryo from the two-cell zygote stage onwards. However, I am totally convinced, as the most reverend Primate said in the debate at Second Reading when he supported the view of many other clerics and philosophers, including some of the Roman Catholic faith like the eminent Norman Ford, that individuation of the embryo does not begin until the appearance of the primitive streak at the 14th day.
At this stage a large group of cells which earlier were indistinguishable from one another by present techniques either biochemically or under the microscope, of which many are destined to form the placenta and membranes and only some to participate subsequently in forming the fetus, have differentiated in such a manner that the origin of an individual can for the first time be clearly discerned. Hence I and the great majority of scientists who have carefully considered this problem believe that it is wholly proper to accept the 14-day limit, beyond which, as the Bill proposes, research on the human conceptus would be illegal.
It is true, as some noble Lords mentioned in the debate at Second Reading, that there are a few scientists who question the validity of that time limit but they are in a very small minority. I personally am in no doubt that the inestimable benefits to human health which will undoubtedly spring from research now being performed or contemplated on the conceptus well within the proposed statutory 14-day limit cannot and must not be frustrated. This view is supported by the very great majority of scientists who work in or who have specialised knowledge of the field. Hence I must refute totally the thin-end-of-the-wedge or slippery slope argument put forward by those opponents of research who have suggested that later this time limit might be progressively extended.
I turn now to the arguments of those who have challenged supporters of research to name any human disease in which so-called embryo research, which is really research on the conceptus, has led, to date, to significant advances in treatment. I agree that as yet there are none, but those who regard this acknowledged fact as being a valid argument for banning such research have either ignored, or have perhaps failed to understand, all of the arguments in its favour.
Certainly explosive developments in molecular biology and DNA recombinant technology, all of them laboratory-based and many resulting from studies carried out on blood and other tissue samples from human subjects with inherited diseases and their relatives, have succeeded in identifying the exact chromosomal localisation in the human genome of the abnormal genes responsible for diseases such as cystic fibrosis, Huntington's chorea, haemophilia, myotonic muscular dystrophy, one

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form of peroneal muscular atrophy and Duchenne muscular dystrophy, to name but a few such conditions. All of this has occurred within a very few years and advances are being reported almost daily.
In that tragic, progressive and ultimately fatal affliction, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, whose devastating effects upon the patient and the family I described in my speech at Second Reading, the gene has not only been located but has been fully characterised and sequenced and the essential protein component of the muscle cell, now called dystrophen, which is missing as a consequence of the defective gene has been identified. In this and in many other inherited diseases such discoveries have brought much closer the ultimate prospect of effective treatment for the disease, we hope, through being able ultimately to replace the missing protein through techniques of what is loosely called genetic engineering.
But gene therapy is in its infancy; the obstacles which stand in the way of replacing in every muscle cell a protein as large as dystrophen are formidable, and I think it unlikely that such a treatment will become available for at least 10 to 15 years. Opponents of research have often quoted the views of Professor Lejeune who in 1959 made the major discovery that Down's syndrome is due to the presence of an extra chromosome. Since then he has travelled extensively to promote his view that the treatment of genetically determined disease cannot be achieved by embryo research.
Of course I accept that view, but he has totally ignored the growing weight of conclusive scientific evidence that the prevention of many such diseases will not be possible without it. I accept that these major discoveries in molecular genetics have been made possible without embryo research, but what opponents of such research seem unable or unwilling to appreciate is that it is the next crucial step, bringing untold hope to the relatives of such patients, which could not possibly be achieved if such research were banned.
What especially disturbs me is that some scientific advisers to the Pro-Life Group, among them at least one close personal friend, appear either to have brushed aside the clear, conclusive and incontrovertible evidence from many impeccable sources which confirm that view or have not accepted it. Let us not forget either that present techniques of in vitro fertilisation in which eggs harvested from the infertile woman are fertilised outside the human body before the resultant conceptus is implanted in the woman's uterus have only about a 10 per cent. success rate even in the most skilful and experienced hands.
Only by studying this process in greater detail and by developing techniques to improve the viability of the resultant conceptus and to ensure that it ultimately becomes embedded in the inner wall of the recipient's uterus will the effectiveness of this procedure be improved. Such advances, too, would be totally frustrated if research were to be be banned, as would some exciting current research on the prevention of chromosomal abnormalities.
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To return to what in my view is even more important —that is, the prospects for the prevention of inherited disease—perhaps I may remind the Committee that when the female ovum is fertilised, cell division soon begins and within the first few days floating free in the uterus are groups of undifferentiated cells, each forming a conceptus. At this stage there is no means of identifying which cells will subsequently form the membranes and placenta and which will ultimately create the primitive streak from which the embryo and fetus will ultimately arise. But by about the fourth or fifth day a blastocyst begins to form, and in this a small nodule or basal cell mass begins to differentiate as the harbinger of the primitive streak, and an outer layer of cells begins to be identifiable as the origin of the placenta and membranes.
Since in the process of normal human reproduction about 80 per cent. of blastocysts are shed spontaneously and only one in five attaches to the wall of the uterus at about the sixth or seventh day, this blastocyst is not yet in my view a viable embryo but only has the potential to become one.
But now we come to the crucial point. Duchenne muscular dystrophy is transmitted from one generation to the next by an X-linked recessive gene, like colour blindness and haemophilia. This means that it is passed on by apparently normal carrier females, half of whose sons will suffer from the disease and half of whose daughters will themselves be carriers. Fertilisation in vitro by her husband's sperm of ova obtained from the carrier female, who will normally have had at least one affected brother or other affected male relative on the maternal side of the family, can then be followed by development of the conceptus to the blastocyst stage, with removal by biopsy of a single cell to determine whether or not the gene is present, with a view to implanting in the uterus of the carrier female a conceptus shown not to be carrying the gene. This technique would thus allow a female carrier to bear unaffected sons and non-carrier daughters.
I must stress that the technique of extracting DNA from a single cell removed in this way from a blastocyst is now being developed rapidly, and I and the scientists working in the field are satisfied that within the next year or two at the most a gene-specific marker will be produced enabling this technique to become not just a prospect but a reality. I must also stress, first, that this development will not require any manipulation of that basal cell mass from which the primitive streak and embryo will ultimately develop. Such manipulation would indeed be likely to prevent an embryo from developing further. The cell removed is taken from that group which will form the placenta and membranes, and research on animals has shown that such a biopsy can be performed without detriment to the subsequent development of the blastocyst and embryo.
I would also stress that those who talk about spare embryos being killed are in my view indulging in unjustified hyperbole. A blastocyst found to be carrying a defective gene would simply be allowed to denegerate naturally, as indeed do many which fail to be implanted in the uterus in the process of normal human conception.

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Perhaps I may also deal with the views expressed by those who have suggested that all the information derived from embryo research could be obtained by animal experimentation or other means. I trust it is clear from what I have said that the remarkable developments in the prevention of Duchenne muscular dystrophy which can be made possible by embryo research could not under any circumstances be taken further by any form of animal experimentation. There is indeed another rare X-linked disease called Lesch Nyhan syndrome which exists in mice. Research on mouse embryos has been shown to identify the presence of that gene in the embryo at the blastocyst stage. But the technique has been demonstrated as not being applicable to the human subject, so that work cannot immediately be transferred to research in man.
The substantial and significant differences in genetic constitution which have evolved even between the higher primates —I use the term of course in the zoological rather than the ecclesiastical sense —on the one hand and man on the other mean that only work on the human conceptus can ever properly yield the results upon which so many infertile couples have pinned their hopes. And the arguments which I have adduced in relation to the prevention of Duchenne muscular dystrophy will undoubtedly within a very few years apply to many other inherited diseases in which the defective genes are now being located and characterised.
Lastly, I should like to deal with the arguments of those who have quoted the work of Verlinsky of Chicago, who is attempting to obtain information about the genetic constitution of the unfertilised egg by examining the chromosomal material in the polar body that is discarded by the egg and which plays no further part in development. Without doubt this is competent. well conceived, pioneering work. Nevertheless, distinguished and reputable British scientists with whom I have discussed Verlinsky's research are satisfied that, despite recent advances in DNA technology, studies carried out solely on the discarded polar body are unreliable as a means of detecting a genetic abnormality with any degree of confidence.
Furthermore, Verlinsky's work requires removal of the polar body before it is discarded naturally, and there are very real fears that such manipulation of the ovum prior to fertilisation might on the one hand impair the fertilisation process or on the other, lead to chromosonal abnormalities and consequential abnormality of the fetus. It is clear that in the present state of knowledge the Verlinsky technique can offer no substitute for the type of research on the human conceptus now being licensed under the authority of the interim licensing authority and which would be authorised under strict control by the statutory licensing authority if the amendment proposed by the noble Duke and the noble and learned Lord were to be rejected by the Committee and if that which I have tabled were ultimately to prevail.
I hope I have been able to convince the Committee that as a committed Christian myself I believe that the performance of such research within the 14-day limit and under the strictest control of a statutory
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licensing body, with all of the safeguards which the Bill enshrines, is not only entirely compatible with the Christian ethic but will have untold benefits for human health. While I understand the sincerely held objections of the opponents of research who believe that the embryo begins at conception, nevertheless I find it very difficult personally to see how anyone deeply concerned about the welfare of suffering humanity could fail to recognise the potential benefits of such research.
4.15 p.m.
Lord Kennet: The noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk, read out the provisions in the Bill now before the German Bundestag. We should be grateful to him for that; it was most useful. The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York then denounced them as inadequate. I think he may have missed the provision which said that nothing shall be done to an embryo except for its own good. That would in itself nullify the most reverend Primate's fears about the effects the provisions might have. It is a detailed point.
The noble Lord, Lord Walton, has spoken with great authority and experience about the good results which have flowed from this research so far and which would be expected to continue to flow if the research continued. He said that he is in no doubt that the research should continue. I wish I could say that I am in no doubt. I agree that good results have flowed. I agree that they may be expected to continue to flow if the research continues. But that is not the end of the matter.
After two or three months of concentrated thinking —that is, as concentrated as I am capable of—and discussions, which seem to have been almost continuous, with groups of persons more learned on both sides of the question than myself, I have come to the conclusion that all these good results are outweighed by the fact that we may not experiment on the newly conceived embryo because it is a single and genetically unique collection of cells, part of which, given favourable conditions, may become a baby or more than one baby. I do not see that benefits, even benefits as great as those which have been correctly spoken of today in the Committee, can outweigh that fact.
Lord Harvington: Perhaps I may intervene for just a moment in the debate. I shall be very short in what I have to say. I shall certainly not join in the most learned discussions which we have heard from both sides of the Committee. I think that the Chamber is well appraised of what we are really dealing with in this clause. It is quite simple. However, I should like to put noble Lords on their guard.
There are events taking place outside this place of which we should be careful and about which we should beware. I say that because yesterday members of the Progress Group were distributing a leaflet in the street outside this Chamber. I have a copy with me. Moreover, I am sure that other noble Lords may have seen this document. It concerned someone who experienced difficulties over the matters we are now discussing. It contains a statement from a mother of a handicapped child. She described the condition of

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her daughter, Kerida, as mentally handicapped with no speech, a club foot, partial vision and epilepsy. The statement continues:
"I love her, but I would give anything for her to have enjoyed a full life rather than the limited life she must lead".
Those are most worthy sentiments. However, I think that the document demonstrates very clearly the lamentable way in which parents who have handicapped children have been misled by the experimentation lobby.
I have several points to make. First, it is most unlikely from the description given that the condition of this child is a genetic one. For example, a club foot is thought to be caused by mechanical damage. The other factors mentioned indicate either damage during development or complex congential causes. Those are not the kind of conditions which embryo biopsy could detect.
Secondly, this woman is clearly under the impression that embryo biopsy might have allowed her daughter to,
"have enjoyed a full life rather than the limited life she must lead".
However, nothing could be further from the truth. If the condition of her daughter could have been detected at the embryonic stage which, as I have said, it almost certainly could not, then she would have been discarded and washed away down the laboratory sink.
I cannot for one moment believe that that is what this obviously caring mother would have wished. We must ask ourselves how she could have gained such a false impression of the facts of embryo biopsy. We must be very wary of that kind of campaign, based as it is on such misinformation, misrepresentation and manipulation.
Other equally misleading claims have recently been made. It has been said that embryo biopsy would allow genetic disease to be wiped out. To that claim four points must be made. First, embryo biopsy on human beings has not yet succeeded and, indeed, may never do so. Secondly, a very high proportion of congenital defects and gene mutations occur in families with no history of such disorders and no high risk factors. Unless every pregnancy is to be screened, embryo biopsy techniques could not affect those cases.
Thirdly, it has been calculated that even if every embryo with cystic fibrosis were to be destroyed, it would take 1,250 years just to half the gene frequency. Fourthly, notwithstanding all that, wiping out the patients is not the same as wiping out the disease.
I hope that the Committee will not allow itself to be taken in by the claims of the special interests promoting embryo research —or at any rate some of them. I should like to quote the words of another mother of a handicapped child to whom the facts of the matter had evidently been better explained. Debbie Hill gave birth to a severely disabled son in 1986. His name was Timothy. He died at the age of six months. She said:
"In his short time with us, Timothy brought to us a great deal of love. Parents like us have a choice. They can decide whether
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to take the risk of having more children. But conceiving babies on a sale-or-return basis is wholly wrong".
I shall not keep the Committee any longer because there are other noble Lords who are much better qualifed than I to speak on such matters. But surely no subject could be of more vital importance to human beings than this one. However, I have one point to make against what the noble Lord, Lord Walton, said. I was waiting for him to tell us why so many countries on the Continent have condemned this research out of hand.
4.30 p.m.
Lord Ennals: I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Harvington, spoke before I did because he referred to Lynne Dodd. I should say that I know this lady and I am aware of the conditons from which her child has suffered. She is well aware of what this research is all about. I shall not say that she is better informed than the noble Lord, but she is absolutely committed and dedicated in this respect. She knows that there is no way in which her child will be helped. Her only motivation is to speak on behalf of MENCAP. I should perhaps at this stage refer to the wonderful work which has been done for that organisation by certain noble Lords in this Chamber; namely, the noble Lords, Lord Renton and Lord Allen of Abbeydale. Lynne Dodd supports the campaign because she does not want any unnecessary handicapped children to be born, if it can be prevented.
The noble Lord also gave an example of a point which I wish to make. Since the Second Reading debate on 7th December statements have been made about the objectives of this research which are seriously inaccurate, unfair to those concerned and, I think, designed to create fears which are quite without foundation. The noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk, for whom I have the greatest respect —indeed, I am most grateful to him for attending the meeting with parents yesterday—referred to a letter which he received yesterday from Mr. Ian Brown of Bolton, Lancashire. I received the same letter, as no doubt did other noble Lords. I read it with great care. It contained 181 supporting signatures of parents or relatives of handicapped children. How those people could have been so misled as to sign such an inaccurate and distorting letter I cannot imagine. I find it difficult to understand why the noble Duke gave credence to a letter which, if he had studied it carefully, he would have known was a gross distortion of what this Committee is debating today.
The letter claimed that,
"there had been sensational and misleading publicity implying that embryo research would free generations from disabling diseases".
Never has such a claim been made. It accused researchers of saying that,
"we are not interested in your condition. All we want is to weed you out".
They were, it alleged, creating for the public the illusion that embryo research would bring treatments and miracle cures. I have met many of those who were involved in that research and those who support

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them. I have never heard any such claim. The letter went on:
"This search and destroy programme will wreck our chances of ever having children at all".
They urged noble Lords —I imagine that we all received the letter —
"to reject the deceitful claims of the embryo research lobby".
I hope that those who have supported the pro-life movement will dissociate themselves from the distribution of this distorting material.
The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor spelt out on Second Reading exactly what the research is about and why it is important: first, to promote advances in the treatment of infertility; secondly, increasing knowledge about the causes of congenital disease; thirdly, for developing methods for detecting the presence of gene or chromosomal abnormalities in embryos before implantation; the noble and learned Lord explained that research could enable the underlying abnormality to be detected in the first few days after fertilisation, using a technique referred to as reimplantation diagnosis; fourthly, to increase knowledge about cases of miscarriage with a view to paving the way for improved treatment. As we know, all of this is under the strictest control. As the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York said, this has been going on for 20 years without, so far as I know, any allegations of lack of effective control.
As a layman, I find it hard to understand how warm-hearted, charitable, Christian people can say that this is immoral, distasteful and wrong. Yesterday I attended the same meeting of the group as was attended by the noble Duke. About 200 parents were there representing people who have had muscular dystrophy, Tay Sachs disease, Huntington's disease and other diseases of a genetic nature. They came to plead with us to support them. I wish that more noble Lords could have been there because they represented all the charities that are involved in supporting and helping these people who have children who in one way or another are handicapped.
The noble Duke referred to Alison Davis, who appeared with him on television. I congratulate both of them on their performance. Her association is giving full support to the legislation before us and to the amendment so brilliantly presented by my noble friend Lord Walton.
I felt that two of the most moving speeches on Second Reading came from the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, and my noble friend Lord Carter. They both spoke from the depth of their experience. I told the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, that I would quote him. He said:
"I fervently reject the extreme notions … that those scientists are somehow tampering with nature; that because nature has decreed that if some couples should be childless and some children handicapped it is wrong to push back the frontiers of human knowledge to try to help them".
I say, "Hear, hear" and "Cheers" to that statement.
My noble friend Lord Carter said:
"My judgment on both in vitro fertilisation and embryonic research into congenital diseases is based on two basic considerations. The first is the intention of the parents and the second is the supremacy of individual conscience.…
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The parents' intention is wholly good and incorrupt, to create another human being and, thanks to research, to choose that that human being should not be handicapped".
Those two statements were made by two Members of your Lordships' House, each on a different side, both greatly respected, both Christian people, both speaking from the depth of their experience.
I say to those who support the noble Duke that unless we ourselves have had handicapped children —and I have not —we cannot really know what it means. Yes, of course there is love; there is more love because the child is handicapped. But there is great hardship which none of us would want to take on ourselves. None of us would say, "Handicap is so wonderful, I want to have a handicapped child", that is absurd; no one would say that. If we do not say it then we must say that we should like —
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: I may be wrong, but what is my noble friend trying to say? Is he trying to say that if we find or are able to find that an embryo is damaged and will produce a handicapped child, that embryo should be destroyed'? That is what it sounds like. Perhaps he will explain himself.
Lord Ennals: Perhaps my noble friend himself does not understand the legislation or the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Walton. We are talking about —
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: Will the noble Lord allow me —
Lord Ennals: With respect, perhaps I may answer the question which my noble friend has put to me. There is no suggestion that after 14 days, when an individual or the beginnings of an individual has been created, that should be destroyed. The most reverend Primate has explained it well. During this period there is a brief time when it cannot be said, "This is a person, a human being with identifiable characteristics".
Having heard my two noble friends —and they are friends—speak at Second Reading, and others like them, simple families, not Peers, how can we say no to them? I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, that to refuse help to those who might be helped is contrary both to religion and to humanity as I understand it. I plead with the Committee to support the amendment and reject the proposal made by the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: I wish to put a slightly different point of view from that put forward hitherto. I wish to base it upon the law. I totally agreed with my noble and learned friend Lord Rawlinson when he said that we must not make fun of or underestimate the sincerity of those who hold views different from ourselves. The reason for that is rational. It is that both views are sustainable. We have heard both views sustained by rational, responsible and sincere people. We know that that is true.
However, perhaps we may consider the status quo before the Bill was introduced at all, and what we

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are talking about in discussing the terms of the Bill. I was tempted at various stages in the debate to enter into the realms of philosophy, religion and science —all of which interest me intensely. But I know that I am only a journeyman lawyer and perhaps an experienced legislator over 50 years.
What we are discussing is something which has been going on legally for 20 years. That is the point from which I start. The question which we have to ask ourselves is whether any, and if so what, criminal sanctions ought to be applied to those activities. Clause 36 of the Bill proposes certain criminal sanctions for breaches of its terms, as it stands. If the Bill had not been introduced at all there would be no criminal sanctions whatever that I am aware of.
The question which is of great importance seems to me to be this. There are those who think that any form of experimentation with an embryo is immoral. They are fully protected by the Bill. Nobody asks them to indulge in such activities; nobody asks them even to co-operate in such activities. There are those who think that they are both desirable and valuable in the interests of science. We have heard one very well informed speech this afternoon on one view, and we heard that view explained at rather greater length on Second Reading. The truth is that both views are sustainable and both views are held by responsible individuals.
We have three alternatives before us. The first is to have no Bill at all. That alternative is still open to us. For a long time I was of the opinion that that would be the best option because a form of self-discipline had been developed among responsible scientists of which I largely approved. It is that discipline which is in operation at the moment without legal sanctions of any kind. In my opinion, the Government have shown great courage and are perfectly right to say that the time has come when we have to legislate. That excludes the first option which is to do nothing.
The second option is to prohibit these activities altogether; in other words, to do the same thing by force of the secular criminal law as was done in effect by the religious experts of the time to Galileo to stop the scientists doing what they are doing. That is a perfectly viable option and some Members of the Committee believe in that. However, no one is suggesting within the ambit of this Bill that criminal sanctions of some kind should not be imposed for certain activities. The Government are perfectly right to suggest that by this Bill we have to institute some form of criminal sanctions to prevent irresponsible behaviour and to prevent activities by eccentrics or worse which no civilised human society could tolerate. However, I am bound to say I was not very impressed by the German legislation. I believe they were probably influenced by their own rather unhappy history of the past 50 years into legislating as they did. However, that is their business and not ours. Our business is to try to arrive at a rational, wise and responsible solution.
I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, will forgive me for referring to her. She and her
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committee proposed that there should be substituted for a voluntary system of discipline a system of compulsory licensing. That is what we are discussing in Clause 11. What we are now being asked to do is to use Clause 11 to destroy the system of compulsory licensing bit by bit —that is the real purpose behind this amendment and others —and to substitute a total prohibition, backed by criminal sanctions. That is a road down which I do not propose to go.
It might be true that on both sides the lobbies who feel deeply have said things which are exaggerated and which perhaps one could not go along with intellectually. However, simply as a legislator I find myself charged with three alternatives. One is to do nothing. However, the Government have been right to say that we must now reach the stage of legislation. That is the conclusion of the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, and it is also my conclusion. I hope that it will also be the conclusion of the Committee. The other is total prohibition. That course would involve going down a road which has failed every time it has been tried in history. It started before the time of Galileo and it was the road which led ultimately to Tyndale being strangled in a Dutch prison for translating the scriptures. It was the road which led Galileo to be condemned by the Holy Office. It is the road which ultimately has always failed.
The road which I believe is right to pursue is that responsible people with a responsible licensing system should be allowed to proceed with responsible activities with which some people do not agree but which others regard to be necessary or desirable. That is the road down which I hope the Committee will go. It is for that reason and not because I claim any special scientific, philosophic or religious knowledge that I propose to vote against the amendment moved by my noble friend the Duke of Norfolk. I propose to pursue the line suggested throughout the Bill which is that of a licensing system limiting the activities but not prohibiting them.
4.45 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of London: I suspect that for many Members of the Committee, as well as for myself, this is one of the most difficult decisions that we have ever been called upon to make. It is certainly one of the most difficult I have been called upon to make during my time as a Member of this Chamber. On the one hand, we are moved by compassion, and properly so. Some of us are moved by compassion not through personal experience in our own families but through ministering to many handicapped people throughout our pastoral ministry. But, on the other hand, I hope that we are also moved by a concern for the extension of knowledge as that is a proper human activity. Yet as regards voting on this amendment, I have a profound concern which I must confess was not wholly or largely relieved by the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham.
I shall illustrate my point which may sound rather like the slippery slope approach. However, I can put it in a more respectable way than that. I believe it is not simply the slippery slope approach. I can express it in the words of a report from the Church

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of England of 1985 entitled Personal Origins. The report stated:
"There are further arguments which relate to the sphere of social morality and they involve judgments about whether society possesses the maturity as well as the means for restricting research work within acceptable bounds of objectives and practices".
It is the phrase "maturity of society" which I wish to speak briefly about now. I must confess I have some sympathy, as had the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, with the state of having no Bill. However, with the advent of the Bill this matter is brought into the public domain. That means that we do not merely have to consider the integrity and the good will of scientists and research workers, but we also have to consider the attitude of society as a whole. At the moment I do not find society as a whole very well disposed towards recognising the sanctity of human life or the responsibility of the individual. That is a factor I must take into account.
Moreover, when I consider what has happened to legislation in the past 20 years or so, I am not greatly encouraged. When I think of the way in which the legislation on divorce or abortion has developed over those years, I am not encouraged. I can remember some time ago hearing speeches in relation to the proposals for the laws on divorce or abortion which were very similar to what we have heard today. In those speeches the speakers assured us that the legislation would never go beyond what they were proposing. They said it was not their intention to go any further and that what they were proposing represented the limit of the legislation. I believe that stance is living in cloud cuckoo land. We have to face the fact that legislation so often has unintended effects, however well intentioned it may be.
I also am not encouraged by the devices which it has been found necessary to include in the Bill for describing fatherhood. They do so in a way which does not reflect the nature of creation at all but is a kind of legislative figment. I believe that has something serious to say about our attitude to creation, of which we are part.
I listened with the greatest interest to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Walton, and I was much encouraged by his remarks. However, as he attacked the slippery slope arguments and listed all the developments which might occur later, I found myself getting more and more worried. What legislation will be imposed for those developments?
Lord Ennals: What are the fears of the right reverend Prelate as to where the noble Lord, Lord Walton, is likely to take us? What is this slippery slope?
The Lord Bishop of London: My fear is that before too long we shall have legislation extending the 14-day period. Such developments have been stated in regard to previous legislation. I am trying to be realistic.
The more I hear about the possibilities of research, the more worried I become as to whether our society can handle the situation. The Bill is the first attempt to legislate on the matter. It is clear that if the amendment is carried there will still be the
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possibility of work in regard to infertility. My feeling is that we should take that step now. I endorse the comments made by the noble Duke. However, I find it very difficult to believe that we can responsibly pass the second part of this clause. For that reason I shall support the noble Duke.
Lord Stallard: I was becoming rather depressed when listening to some noble Lords. However, the right reverend Prelate has restored some of my confidence because he has introduced the moral issue, which should transcend many other arguments that we have heard but apparently does not.
I would not dare to speak as a scientist or as a medical man in this very academic debate. I can speak only as one of millions of committed Christians up and down the country who are extremely concerned about the effects of experimentation. Millions of committed Christians are concerned about the prospects for the future. As the right reverend Prelate correctly says, 14 days is the beginning. There is no guarantee that somebody will not discover that 28 days is preferable. It has been stated that some of the necessary changes do not take place for 30 days. Then we go on until the entire Christian argument has been destroyed.
Lord Diamond: When the noble Lord states that we go on and on, he means that new legislation could be put before your Lordships. Your Lordships would then have an opportunity of deciding in the light of what has happened and in the light of further evidence whether to take a certain view. That is the point that we are deciding today. The idea that the Bill commits us to all kinds of provisions that are not wanted is absolute nonsense.
Lord Stallard: The noble Lord has underlined what I have said. We can go on and on with further legislation and further discussion and probably less evidence.
I shall probably need to read the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Walton, before I can fully understand it. I would not like to say whether other noble Lords understood the speech immediately it was delivered. Many things need to be looked at. I was impressed by the fact that the noble Lord appeared to be dismissing the arguments of scientists. We have all got letters and we have all read papers. I read the book to which the noble Lord referred and many others in order to try to understand this matter. However, if the noble Lord did not agree with what was said, he appeared to dismiss it. I do not think that his dismissive comments were quite fair to some of those who disagreed with him.
The noble Lord made reference to Professor Lejeune. He said that he knew and respected him. However, he dismissed his findings because they did not agree with his own. The findings are listed in various documents. The noble Lord said that he accepted some findings and rejected others. Where does that leave us? We are now in the midst of a scientific argument. If it is not a scientifc argument, it is an academic argument between lawyers. Most of us have to fall back on our basic beliefs.

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I am pleased that the right reverend Prelate introduced an argument that is much bigger than both of those arguments. Where does it all begin? When does fertilisation take place. The noble Baroness, Lady Elles, adequately summed the matter up the other day. I think that her speech is well worth reading in this context.
It is very patronising to say "We respect you, although your views are different, but you are entitled to your views". That kind of statement is made by people who do not want to accept a different point of view. It is patronising to say that they respect our views when they proceed to take no notice of them. It is a similar situation to saying that those who were opposed to slavery did not have to keep slaves and, therefore, they did not have to try to make slavery illegal. I do not believe that that is the correct approach to deal with what I consider to be a fundamental moral issue.
It is a difficult argument to present when one is of the cloth, as it were, but the fundamental argument is the moral issue. I was a wee bit disappointed when I heard the speech of the most reverend Primate. That is no doubt a terrible thing to say, but I thought that he was involved in a scientific argument. I was delighted when the right reverend Prelate introduced the other aspect of the matter because there are obviously differences between them, as there are in the scientific and other worlds. The moral argument is the main argument. Sadly, the other arguments will continue. As far as I understand the matter, this destructive embryo research violates the rights of human beings. It must be illegal for the same reasons that slavery or assault or any other crime against human beings is illegal. The consciences of those of us who are for or against the amendment are not the real issue.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, stated that the amendment was put down in order to destroy the clause and to make nonsense of the Bill. I have been involved in debates on many Bills over a long period of time and it is not unusual to put down an amendment that will have the same effect as this amendment. It is not unusual to delete this section or that section for this reason or that reason. It is a perfectly legitimate parliamentary procedure which is held up as a bogey as part of the campaign against those of us who are taking what I consider to be the correct moral position.
I support the argument that was put forward very eloquently by the noble Duke and supported by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Rawlinson, because I happen to agree with it. I think that the noble Duke and the noble and learned Lord were correct to discuss the matter from a moral point of view. I shall support the amendment.
Lord Renton: I rise merely to say that those of us who at MENCAP over recent years have had to take a decision to form an attitude on this important matter have come to the conclusion that, while there is research, there is hope.
5 p.m.
Baroness Elles: I was grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham when he suggested that there were three alternatives: one is not to have a Bill and then there are the two alternatives in Clause 11. The fact that there had not been a Bill has of course allowed research to go on in this field for 20 years without any legal framework whatsoever. It is therefore on these grounds specifically that I congratulate Her Majesty's Government on having the courage to take an extremely difficult matter in terms of morals, science, ethics and law and bring it before your Lordships' House.
It will then of course go to another place where a decision can be taken so that those scientists involved in this kind of work will know exactly where they stand —either that they are working within a proper legal framework and are entitled to carry on with research or, in accordance with the way that the vote goes this evening, that they are not. But at least everybody will know what the legal position is. It has been unfortunate that for so long we have been deprived of this legislative framework.
I want to make it perfectly clear that so far as I am concerned, and I believe the vast majority of your Lordships, I am in favour of scientific research, without which there would be no progress for the benefit of mankind. We are therefore not discussing whether research per se is good or bad. What we have to consider tonight is whether the research should be continued on the human embryo and the human embryo only.
There are some who seek to stop the flood in that direction and to turn it in another direction. I would certainly concede to those scientists who do their research at the moment that while we believe that we seek for the benefit of mankind one way, the scientists who are now working in this field believe that they too will reach that optimum position.
I want to make my position perfectly clear. First, what are the objectives of this research as set out? I have here the Medical Research Council's press notice. I accept that there may be other reasons as well, but may I just read out the four major points that the MRC makes in the press notice. The first is to improve in vitro fertilisation techniques. It accepts that only about one in 10 attempts at IVF result in successful pregnancy. I should like later to deal with the fate of the 92 per cent. who actually fail to become pregnant.
The second is to help to reduce the number of abortions in those who are at risk of passing on serious genetic disease to their children. We have heard over the years reasons why people are going to be able to reduce abortions, and I am not going to enter into the ethics of whether it is right or wrong to have an abortion. All through the 1970s we heard of free contraception in order to stop abortions. What has happened? Year after year the numbers have increased so that now we have 180,000 abortions, which is about one-third of the total live births in this country. It should be said that of that figure under 1 per cent. are in fact performed for severe medical reasons in order to stop the birth of

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defective children. I am sure that none of us could in any case possibly refuse that to a woman.
The third point is to help to understand, and therefore to prevent, miscarriages. The fourth is to insist on the development of simpler, safer and more effective methods of contraception.
We were particularly given to understand on Second Reading that one of the objectives was to control populations in less-developed countries. Frankly, I do not think that it is a purpose of your Lordships' House to consider that kind of matter. It is for those countries themselves to decide their own population control or otherwise. I understand also that if human embryo research is used in this field there will be drug tests on human embryos before the 14 days. If any scientist wishes to get up and confirm that that is totally wrong I would be grateful, because then we would have it in Hansard and be able to refer to it in the future.
But are these overriding objectives? Where is the mention of the fundamental purpose of scientific research in the medical field of genetic and congenital disease? There is no mention of cure or healing. Surely these are the purposes of medical research. Surely this is what we want to achieve for those children who have genetic or congenital diseases.
The noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk, has already mentioned what progress the pro-research organisation has referred to in Freedom of Choice. Research using human embryos is not and never has been concerned with treatment of genetic or chromosomal disorders. The Committee should be aware that this is not the stated purpose of human embryo research.
Destruction has replaced curing and healing in accordance, as I understand it, with the kind of programme that is envisaged; that is, de-selection before implantation of the embryo. Yet fast developing research is coming along with very encouraging results in gene therapy by molecular biologists. One has only to study the major results that are coming out of the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford and the States. Indeed, it is perfectly possible, without any research on the human embryo, to achieve the amazing results that they have. Of course other scientists have already discovered ways of mitigating the effects of spina bifida and muscular dystrophy as well.
I should just like to take one or two minutes of the Committee's time to discuss a matter that has not been raised by any Members of the Committee, and this is for obvious reasons. I have had many letters, and I have been approached by individuals and organisations, to ask in all this what the position of the woman is. It is the woman who has to produce the ova over the years to provide the necessary gametes which form the human embryo. We know that there are shortages of eggs for research. We know that on sterilisation women are asked to donate their eggs. What unconscious pressure will be put on women, for instance, to have sterilisation?
A woman said to me only yesterday that, IVF treatment having failed, she was left in a terrible situation. She is just one of the many of the 92 per
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cent. who were given hormones and drug treatment with effects to the human body which are still not known. I use the words of these women; they are not mine. I was fortunate. I confess that I thank God every day for having had two healthy children, so I can understand what it is, first, not to have them and, secondly, not to have a healthy child. But the fact is that these drugs do terrible things to the insides of women.
They cause haemorrhages, they cause ovarian cysts, they cause ovarian cancer, and I do not want to go into all the physical details of what happens to women. These women feel, rightly or wrongly, that they are being exploited by the scientists for the use of their eggs for human embryo research and for the use of drugs on their bodies in order to produce super-ovulation.
This is what has been put to me. I undertook to raise this in your Lordships' House so that noble Lords knew, possibly when voting in favour of human embryo research, that this was what they were subjecting women to. You are putting them into the situation where their bodies could be used for research before research happens on the human embryo. This is something that people should realise.
I know that such matters are anathema to your Lordships, and I quite understand it. Frankly, they are not particularly pleasant for me. But the fact is that I undertook to raise this matter so that noble Lords should know when taking these decisions whom they are affecting. You are not just affecting a human embryo, whether it be a two-cell zygote, a conceptus or whatever you like to call it. You are affecting the bodies of women who are producing the eggs which then go towards the formation of the human embryo. Any noble Lord who has read about how the selective reduction of multiple births is perfomed would never want his wife or daughter to undergo that kind of operation and treatment.
Therefore, it should be said that if your Lordships, as men, had to undergo the forms of treatment under these new reproductive techniques and suffer the pain endured even under the ordinary IVF treatment —the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, referred to that the other night —and the kind of treatment, suffering and degradation, may I say, on failure perhaps to have a child or become pregnant, I am certain that the vast majority would go into the Lobby voting against research.
Lord Rea: Perhaps I may first answer one of the points made by the noble Baroness with regard to development of effective methods of contraception which might be useful in the third world. There is no question of our forcing that contraception in a paternalistic way upon the people of the third world. The methods being developed may be more useful and most easy to use in countries where there are no widespread medical facilties. That is why they may well be chosen as suitable for use by medical and other people in those countries, if they should wish to use them. There is no quesion of our forcing it upon them.
Baroness Elles: I am grateful to have an opportunity to reply to the noble Lord. I served for

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many years in the United Nations. Many delegates at the United Nations, particularly the women, were horrified at the idea that the Western industrialised countries—I am not saying anything about the Medical Research Council —should produce drugs and various forms of contraceptives that would be used only for population problems in third world countries. I was faced with that problem over and over again.
Lord Rea: There is no question of those products being used only in third world countries; they have also been extremely useful in this country.
It is fair to say that it is a basic premise of those who are against pre-embryo research that it is morally wrong and dangerous to interfere with or destroy what is in effect a human being. I count myself as one who fiercely defends the legitimate rights of every human being. In the issue before us we should consider not only the rights of every conceptus —less than the size of a pin-head before achieving human form and long before developing consciousness—but also the rights and choices of would-be parents and parents who might wish to have normal offspring. Noble Lords will consider that that is a not unnatural desire.
We should also consider society's need to reduce by every means possible the proportion of handicapped children in its midst. It has been suggested by some that those of us who favour pre-embryo research would deny the right of handicapped people to live —the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk, implied that, as did the noble Lord, Lord Harvington —and that we undervalue their lives. Far from it; a major purpose of the research is to enable us to detect and then replace genetically damaged or abnormal pre-embryos with normal pre-embryos.
That is not to belittle in any way the huge achievements of many handicapped people and their parents against great odds. However, as a doctor, I echo the words of my noble friend Lord Ennals when I say that I have seen many times the worst side of handicap as it affects the individuals concerned and their families. I doubt whether any handicapped person would prefer to be handicapped rather than able-bodied or able-minded. To follow the analogy of the noble Lord, Lord Harvington, he might well have had a healthy and non-handicapped child in place of his handicapped daughter who would have had equal charm but would have been a different personality. He would have had another charming person instead and would never have known that daughter. He would have had a non-handicapped daughter instead. It was perhaps not the correct analogy to use because the condition that he mentioned is not a genetically determined one.
Nature is prolific. As the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, said on Second Reading, less than one-fifth of all pre-embryos which are conceived naturally develop into human beings. The noble Lord, Lord Walton, also referred to that point. A woman produces over 400 ova during the normal reproductive lifespan and many thousands more are
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left in her ovaries at the end of her reproductive life, very few of which are fertilised. To collect, fertilise and observe a few of those and the resulting pre-embryos for purposes which increase human well-being, as is now happening, is to me not only morally defensible but morally correct.
5.15 p.m.
Lord Zuckerman: Perhaps I may return to a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Elles. I understood from what she said that women will undergo a traumatic experience in providing the embryos which might be used in research, assuming that the Bill receives noble Lords' assent. Was she referring to women who go to a fertility clinic or any other clinic or to a laboratory and ask to be injected with the hormone concerned —the noble Lord, Lord Walton, knows what hormone that is, as do I —in order to provide a number of oocytes for experimental purposes? I was under the impression that the Bill dealt entirely with women who seek help in infertility clinics and who go voluntarily to those people who are licensed to do what is necessary. There may be super-ovulation, as the noble Baroness indicated.
Since this was once my field of research, may I at the same time point out that the figure of 400 for the oocytes that are ovulated normally is only an estimate. We are citing figures in this debate that relate to a subject where none can be precise. When we say that ovulation occurs on Day 14, it might in fact be 13, 15, or 16. I hope that no one will attempt to use indiscriminately any of the tens of thousands of oocytes found in the ovary for in vitro fertilisation. We do not know by what process the 400 or so that are normally ovulated are selected, and anyhow, the majority of oocytes in the ovary are degenerating, and will continue to do so —and a post-menopausal ovary cannot be reactivated.
Baroness Elles: Perhaps I may be allowed to reply.
Noble Lords: No!
Lord Jenkin of Roding: The noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, with his wide and deep experience, mentioned one of the points with which I should like to deal briefly. I have met some of the women who have sought treatment and I found the description of my noble friend Lady Elles quite incredible.
When I visited the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Hammersmith Hospital I was privileged to talk to some of the women —a number of other noble Lords were there at the same time —who were faced with the most desperate dilemma. Their families had produced not one but several genetically handicapped children and they knew precisely what the odds were. A couple desperately wanted to have their own children and found the whole process of in vitro fertilisation and genetic separation and reimplantation an absolute godsend. That was the way they would ensure that they had a child who would be born whole, entire and free from the family genetic defect.
On the issue of whether research should be allowed, I find the proposition embodied in the amendment quite extraordinary. It suggests that it

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is perfectly all right to treat patients on the basis of the results of research that has been done in the past, but that no more research should be done. I find that a very difficult proposition, particularly when one talks not only to doctors but to the patients. They know that the chances are slight. I believe that only one in 10 is successful. They know that there are other diseases which are not yet amenable to this process. They know that there are many problems of fertility which have yet to be resolved. Yet today we are invited to say that no more research should be done.
The noble Lord, Lord Ennals —my predecessor as Secretary of State for Health —this afternoon spoke with great passion and from his long experience of contact with many organisations representing handicapped people and their families —as indeed I have. For me it comes down to the question of choice. It is their choice whether they will use the information that has been discovered. It cannot be "disinvented". Are we to say to them in future, "Yes, you can use that which is there for now but anything after that is bound to be a good deal more hit and miss because we are not allowed to experiment". I find that an astonishing proposition.
Then one comes to the heart of the Bill, in a sense; namely, the test devised by the committee chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock. Some say that 14 days is a purely arbitrary figure. The fact is that it is impossible to rationalise from a priori reasoning from the past. There are no principles and no precedents. We are dealing with a mass of new knowledge. New knowledge demands new decisions and sometimes quite new tests. It seems to me that it is broadly a matter of trying to understand precisely what it is that differentiates in a continuous and complex process the point at which the primitive streak first emerges. In these debates we have been enormously assisted in our understanding by the noble Lord, Lord Walton.
I have talked to a number of doctors and moral theologians. I listened to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York who today made an immensely persuasive speech, as he did at the Royal Society last night. I believe that we, as legislators, are at the point when we must make a practical decision —do we carry on with this research and how do we decide which way to go? I believe that the committee chaired by the noble Baroness got it right. It is the proposal that has been put in the Bill by the Government, courageously it has been said, and I hope that we will support it. I hope that we will reject this amendment and support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Walton.
Lord Swann: I know that the time of 5.30 p.m. has been bandied about as a moment when something might happen. I shall be very brief. For most of my life I have been a scientist but I shall not talk about the science of this problem. Others have done that and can do it much better than I can. Very tentatively and with some apprehension I want to voice an amateur thought about the logic and the morals of this amendment.
I believe that in one respect Amendment No. 51 is illogical. While seeking to ban research it still allows —I quote from the Bill:
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"activities in the course of providing treatment services".
Not surprisingly. They have brought great good to humankind,. But no medical treatment emerges from thin air. On the contrary it is the result of much painstaking research, experiment and practice over many years, and one must remember that that necessarily involves research on human beings. Every medical treatment has involved that at some stage. Even the introduction of a simple drug, although much of the research can be done in a laboratory and on animals, by law requires testing on human beings to ensure that it works and does not have undesirable effects.
Treatments of the kind that we are considering, like all the others, are the product of much research. Therefore I find it curious that the amendment should seek to ban further research which is aimed at making more effective those very treatments that it allows. How can one justify banning research when one approves of using the fruits of that research both past and present? There seems to be a serious inconsistency here as well as a moral confusion which troubles me.
Of course one could get round the illogicality by banning treatment, but it seems to me that that would involve a prohibition that is so morally repugnant that I cannot believe that this House would ever approve it. I believe that there remains therefore only one solution that satisfies both logic and morals; namely, to allow scrupulously regulated research —as does the first option in Clause 11 —on terms that are set out at considerable length later in the Bill. I hardly need say that I would welcome such an outcome and feel bound to vote against this amendment.
Lord Bridge of Harwich: I enter the debate with diffidence. I speak simply as a layman who has listened attentively to the arguments in this long-running controversy and tried to evaluate them as best I could. At this stage it would be quite inappropriate for me to rehearse the arguments afresh. They have all been thoroughly canvassed. However, I hope that it is not inappropriate to try to isolate and define three quite separate issues and assess their importance in relation to the decision which the Committee will make.
The first and central issue of course is the moral issue. The opponents of research assert, as an absolute moral imperative, that the conceptus from the moment of fertilisation of the egg must be treated as having the status and attributes of a human person. The question is: are those who make that assertion right?
Everyone accepts that they are entirely sincere, but are they right? I suspect that most, perhaps all, noble Lords will already have made up their minds on the answer to that question. Certainly I shall not argue it. I simply say that I do not believe that they are right. Any doubts that I may have felt at the beginning were wholly resolved by the deeply thoughtful speeches made both today and in the two earlier debates on the subject by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York.
The second and quite distinct issue is what I call the slippery slope issue. It is at this point that the

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opponents of research take up their fall-back position. In effect they say that even if research on the conceptus, in the first 14 days after fertilisation, is morally unobjectionable, if that is permitted to continue and not prohibited now, there will be increasing pressure to allow research on embryos at a later stage in their development beyond the 14-day limit and beyond the appearance of the primitive streak, when all should and will accept that that research would be morally objectionable.
The answer to the slippery slope argument to my mind is found in Chapter 11 of the report of the committee of the noble Baroness, which indicates perfectly valid, pragmatic reasons for choosing a biologically sensible and defensible cut-off point. If I had felt any doubt about that, such doubt would have been resolved by the immensely impressive speech that we have today heard from the noble Lord, Lord Walton. When this Bill becomes an Act of Parliament, that cut-off point will be given Parliamentary sanction in the form of the provisions of Clause 3 and it will be given the sanction of the law. Once it has that sanction, I simply do not understand why it is said that it will be difficult to maintain the cut-off point. It can and should be maintained.
In exercising the judicial functions of this Chamber, we are frequently confronted with the argument, "You must not allow this wholly meritorious claim because if you do you will be developing the law beyond a certain point and you will be inundated with a flood of wholly unmeritorious claims". That is an argument to which we seldom find it appropriate to give any weight in the legal sphere. I suggest to the Committee that the floodgates argument attracts no greater weight in the ethical sphere.
There is then the final issue. It appears to be an issue as to whether the research has any potential value. Some of the opponents of research have told us that some scientists deny that it has any value; alternatively, they say that is has only minimal value; or they say that whatever it can achieve can be achieved equally well, or perhaps better, by other means. As against that, there is what appears to me to be the great weight of scientific opinion and authority of those engaged in the research, of those supporting the research, and of those who set up the voluntary licensing authority to ensure that the research is carried out under the appropriate conditions envisaged by the committee of the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock. And, finally, the issue now has the immense weight of the support of the noble Lord, Lord Walton.
However, even if there are some scientists who genuinely doubt whether this research has potential value, how can that possibly be a reason for prohibiting the research by law? Therefore at the end of the day the case against research, in my submission, stands or falls by the claim which the opponents make to exclusive occupation of the moral high ground. If they are right in asserting that research upon the conceptus is morally equivalent to the kind of experimentation that was practised on live human subjects in Hitler's concentration camps, then of course we should all join them and vote to
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prohibit such research. But if one believes, as I believe, that that comparison is totally invalid, then there is no other ground on which it can possibly be right to deny to humanity the potential benefits in terms of alleviation of human suffering that this research uniquely promises to offer.
Lord Robertson of Oakridge: Perhaps I may take up two points made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bridge of Harwich. First, he said that he believed that the embryo was not a person in the first 14 days. The point is not whether or not one believes that it is, but whether one knows that it is not. Unless one knows that the embryo is not a human being in the first 14 days, one cannot take the risk of carrying out research on him.
The second point is the slippery slope argument. I have a great respect for the medical profession but I think that it has done itself a great disservice in the way that it has let the abortion service get out of hand. By that I mean that if Parliament had known that we would see upwards of 150,000 abortions a year, and that in parts of the country doctors would be giving abortions on demand and that no one would be taking disciplinary action against them, Parliament would never have passed the 1967 Act. Until that situation is put right, the remainder of us have to be a little sceptical that the medical profession will take only what it is given and not take another yard.
The Lord Chancellor: We have had a full, extremely interesting and highly important debate that I am sure holds the interest of all noble Lords and of many outside this Chamber. We are discussing the very centre of the Bill, and a matter that goes to the heart of what life is about and what it is right and not right to do by way of research in the first 14 days after sperm and egg have been mixed together.
My noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham mentioned that in relation to this matter there are in effect three options. The first is to leave matters as they are, unregulated. One must remember that over the past 20 years or so there has been a good deal of work in this area that has been carried on without any legal framework whatever because it is an entirely new area which the law has not hitherto attempted to regulate. This Bill is brought forward by Her Majesty's Government upon the view that it is the duty of government to present to Parliament a Bill in which this matter can be regulated according to the will of Parliament. I believe that it is right —I believe that most Members of the Committee will feel that it is right —that Parliament has the responsibility to lay down the law in this area. If that is so, then that disposes of the first option.
Two options are left. I should like to begin by trying to set the amendment of my noble friend the Duke of Norfolk in the context of the Bill and other amendments so that we may try to see what the issue is that the Committee is called upon to decide on this amendment. It is the amendment of my noble friend the Duke of Norfolk, and that amendment only, which we are deciding at the moment. Other

981
later amendments have an effect on the matter. I shall try to explain just how I see them arising.
If the amendment of my noble friend the Duke of Norfolk, Amendment No. 51, is passed the effect that he seeks to achieve will be that all research on embryos, as opposed to the use of embryos for the treatment of individual women, will cease. There will of course be some tidying up needed to the Bill, for example, to delete subsection (3) of Clause 11 as proposed in further amendments. But, in a sense, it is a purely technical action. On the other hand, if Amendment No. 51 is rejected, and subsection (1) remains in the Bill, the Committee has then to decide what to do with subsection (2) on which there is an amendment, Amendment No. 54. Perhaps I may put it this way. If Amendment No. 51 is rejected, then in logic Amendment No. 54 should be accepted because that would take out of the Bill the subsection which does not permit research. But if Amendment No 51 is rejected it is not by any means the end of the matter.
The Bill does not propose that all research on embryos should be permitted. Schedule 2 to the Bill sets out the area within which research would, if Parliament so wishes, be allowed. There are already some amendments down which would alter the permitted area of research set out in Schedule 2 and we shall come to these later. The point that I wish to make to the Committee now is that, whereas prohibiting research is a clear-cut decision, allowing research in principle in relation to the amendment will give rise to further debate as to exactly what limits should be set on research.
As I have indicated at Second Reading —and I should emphasise it now —the Government believe that on these amendments, and on Clause 11 as a whole, the proper course for each Member of the Committee is to vote according to his or her own conscience as he or she sees the judgment to be correct. I do not mean for a moment that one necessarily goes on one's own individual preference but on what one conscientiously believes to be the right thing to do, or the right judgment to make in this very difficult situation.
As I said on Second Reading, the role of a government Minister in this situation and in that capacity is to set out, as far as he can, the relevant facts as regards these complex medical and scientific issues, and then to put as dispassionately as he can the arguments on either side of the debate which relate not only to medical and scientific issues but also to ethical and moral questions.
I shall attempt to do that briefly. It has been done by speakers on all sides of the debate with a great deal more authority than I have. At this stage it is right that I should attempt to summarise the situation as I see it. It will necessarily be a summary and I hope that it will be of help to the Committee in coming to an important and difficult decision.
On Second Reading I began by dealing with the arguments for embryo research and followed with the arguments against because that was the order in which these propositions appeared in Clause 11. On this occasion the first amendment we are discussing is to prohibit embryo research and, therefore, after
982
setting out the factual position as I see it, I propose to put the arguments against research before those for research. Needless to say, the length of the argument is no indication of its strength.
I shall therefore begin by trying to give the best factual account in my own words. Eggs for in vitro fertilisation are obtained either from a woman who wishes to have children or from a donor. The donor is usually a woman who is going to be sterilised and who gives her full consent for eggs to be removed from her ovaries while sterilisation is taking place. Before eggs are taken the donor will have been counselled and will have decided exactly what her wishes are; for example, whether or not she wishes her eggs to be used for the purposes of research. The common factor in all cases to which the clause applies is that eggs are brought outside the woman's body; in other words, on fertilisation all eggs are outside the woman's body.
When the eggs have been taken in that way, they are put in a dish with sperm and in a proportion of cases fertilisation takes place. In cases of treatment it is usual to try to fertilise all the eggs which have been taken because the process will not always be successful and some of the eggs which are fertilised may then be seen to be defective. Therefore, in cases of treatment it is usual to have some fertilised eggs which it is not intended to implant. Your Lordships will recall from the Second Reading debate that the noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits, for example, drew a distinction between the use of fertilised eggs which were, in this sense, spare and the use of fertilised eggs which had been specifically obtained from a woman for research purposes.
If these fertilised eggs remain in the dish —that is, if there is no other human intervention —they will, in a suitable nutrient solution, develop for a fairly short time and will then deteriorate naturally. If your Lordships take the view that any research is permissible, we have in the Bill taken the period of 14 days as being the limit on permissible research and have done so on the basis of the primitive streak.
The position is that once an egg has been brought out of the human body and fertilised, there has to be some further human intervention if it is to become a fetus and develop further. In other words, the fertilised egg has to be transferred into the body of a woman if there is to be any prospect of further development beyond a few days. I am advised that this has to be done at least five or six days after mixing of sperms and eggs. Only in the environment of a woman's body can the fertilised eggs, or some of them, go on to develop their full potential and become in due course, if all goes well, a baby.
I emphasise that at all stages in the progress up to birth the potential for further development can cease. With eggs which are fertilised in the normal way in the woman's body following sexual intercourse, I am advised that for some reason a great majority of the fertilised eggs will not implant into the woman's uterus. In the same way, perhaps a quarter of the fertilised eggs which do implant will at some stage miscarry, often in the first three months of pregnancy.

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Finally, in this factual survey it may be helpful if I say a little about the nature of the fertilised egg in these early days. At the beginning it is an undifferentiated number of cells which are gradually proliferating. I understand that it is not possible to say which of these cells will develop into the baby and which cells will form the placenta and related structures which are needed to support the embryo and then the fetus through the remainder of its time in the uterus. Nor at this stage is it possible to be clear that a single fertilised egg will not produce twins or in rare cases a larger number of babies. At this stage there is a clear genetic composition but it is not clear how all or any of the cells will develop. I shall not go into the uncommon case where a person has a "mosaic" genetic composition because I do not believe it is relevant to the issues we are discussing.
After about 14 days from the mixing of the sperm and the egg the primitive streak develops and becomes visible. This primitive streak is the first absolutely clear indication of the differentiation of the cells which will develop into the baby, or, if more than one primitive streak appears, into a multiple pregnancy.
In this factual account I have sought to give the House a layman's account of what is an extremely complicated and, as yet, not wholly understood process. It is the duty of legislators to deal as best they can with what is known at the time. In this area there will clearly be in the future, as in the past few years, scope for considerable development and extension of knowledge. This is why the Bill provides for three ways in which that knowledge can be taken into account. The first is by the mechanism of the licensing authority and the scope with the licences which it will issue authorising treatment and, if Parliament allows, research. The second is by the reports which the licensing authority will make not only on the detailed processes of licensing but on its information on the growing knowledge in this field. The third is the power in the Bill, in certain carefully specified areas, to make changes by means of regulations to take account of new scientific and medical knowledge. I am sure that Parliament will wish to keep a close scrutiny on what is happening in these fields, whatever happens in respect of this amendment.
Before turning to the arguments on either side of this important issue, I should like to draw to the attention of the Committee a research report by Dr. Jennifer Gunning which the Department of Health published on Monday, copies of which are available in the Printed Paper Office. The report is entitled Human IVF, Embryo Research, Fetal Tissue for Research and Treatment and Abortion: International Information. I hope that it is a dispassionate account of practice in a number of European countries, the USA, Canada and Australia. The report was drawn up following an intensive programme of desk research and field visits carried out by Dr. Gunning last Autumn. Until the summer of last year Dr. Gunning was the secretary to the Interim Licensing Authority. The report was commissioned in order that in its debates on the Bill
984
Parliament could have as much information as we could provide as regards the way in which the matter has developed in those countries.
I now turn to the arguments which can be advanced in favour of Amendment No. 51. Perhaps I may remind the House that if accepted, it would have the effect of prohibiting all research involving human embyros within the definition of an embryo contained in Clause 1(1). We have already discussed that definition in the context of the amendment moved by my noble friend Lady Elles in her Amendment No. 3 and it is possible that we may return to that definition at a later stage in the proceedings on the Bill. However, I am sure that the Committee was right to defer definitive consideration of the definition in Clause 1(1) until we had addressed the central issue of today's debate. In the light of the decision taken today there will be an effect in respect of the definition. Therefore, Members of the Committee can approach the question of this amendment on the understanding that that definition will be adjusted to take account of the Committee's wishes in that respect.
Those who have spoken in favour of the amendment have done so with clarity and eloquence. I simply seek to summarise their position. For those who have spoken in support of the amendment the embryo has the potential of human life, of becoming through a successful pregnancy a human being from the moment at which fertilisation occurs. Thus in the circumstances I have described earlier when this process is carried out not as a result of natural processes but through mixing gametes in a glass dish, each of the embryos so created carries with it that potential. Taking this stance leads those who hold this view, which is a fundamental conviction and central component for many of their religous beliefs, to equate research on human embryos with destroying human life. This is because the processes involved in such scientific research inevitably are harmful to the embryo and fatal to its prospect of eventually, if all goes well, being born.
I think that the matter can be put most plainly in the words of my noble friend the Duke of Norfolk in moving the amendment. From the point of view of this argument, the embryo has a status of a living child, a human adult or as he said, a Member of your Lordships' House. I believe that that is the central part of the argument in favour of the amendment.
There is a second strand in the argument, which is that for Parliament to permit, in however tightly controlled circumstances, research on human embryos is to take the first step down a slippery slope which might lead to altering the genetic structure of the embryo in order, so to speak, to produce human beings to design. Another version of this argument is that permitting research up to 14 days might be the thin end of the wedge or the opening of a floodgate as scientists could always argue later for changing the basis of the legislation as new research possibilities emerged.
Thirdly, those who oppose research argue that research involving human embryos cannot produce any benefits which it is not posible to obtain in other

985
ways; for example, through research on animals. In their view it cannot be demonstrated that research which has been carried out now for at least two decades has in fact brought benefits in terms of the claims which are made on its behalf.
On that matter, I think I should remind the Committee —I hope I have this right —that the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, expressed his view that major prevention of birth with genetic disease will not be possible without such research. He does not say, as I understand him, that any substantial advance has been made in that area as yet but he believes, in the light of the information which he gave, that that would possible.
All Members of the Committee will know that many parents can be advised on the basis of present knowledge that there is some risk —and sometimes that can be expressed as a probability —that a child born to them in the natural way would be born with a particular genetic disease. The possibility of major prevention in that connection is something which people in that position might value.
That is but a brief and no doubt incomplete account of the arguments which are made in favour of Amendment No. 51. If I may put it in a nutshell, those who would vote for this argument would say that whatever the benefits of research involving human embryos, the respect which should be afforded to the embryo in view of its potential to develop into a human being is so fundamental that we should turn away from that prospect and, as would be the effect of this amendment, expressly prohibit in legislation any such research in this country.
That is a moral judgment and question on the basis of the facts. I do not believe that it is possible to reach a sound moral judgment without a fairly close appreciation of the facts. That is why I have sought to set them out as best I can.
I turn now to the arguments against Amendment No. 51. That amendment would allow research involving human embryos to be licensed by the authority to be set up within the range of controls which the Bill provides through a comprehensive scheme of licensing. Those who have spoken in favour of that amendment have also spoken with conviction, eloquence and clarity. Again, I think it may assist the Committee if I attempt to give an account of their arguments.
Those centre on the benefits which it is argued such research can bring,. The objectives of research are as follows and I can do no better than repeat the words in paragraph 3(2) of Schedule 2 to the Bill which indicate the purposes for which a licence for research, if research is permitted, can be given. These are:
"promoting advances in the treatment of infertility; increasing knowledge about the causes of congenital disease; increasing knowledge about the causes of miscarriages; developing more effective techniques of contraception; or developing methods for detecting the presence of gene or chromosome abnormalities in embryos before implantation".
More generally, the paragraph goes on to cover research for the purposes of increasing knowledge about the creation and development of embryos and enabling such knowledge to be applied.
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Before I look in turn at these purposes for research, I ought to make the general point that doctors would consider it unethical to use a new treatment before they were as sure as they could be that it was unlikely to be harmful. Thus, Steptoe and Edwards before they carried out the first IVF procedure which led to the birth of Louise Brown in 1978 carried out a considerable programme of research before they were satisfied that it was appropriate to try out the procedure on Louise Brown's mother. It is worth drawing this point to the attention of the Committee because the effect of Amendment No. 51 is that, had it been in force at the time, it would have prevented the development of the IVF technique and indeed would prevent any improvement to that technique which could be achieved in the future.
I now turn to the purposes of the research and I think it may be helpful to mention those briefly. First, many doctors and scientists argue that research assists in promoting improvements in infertility treatment. At present IVF has a low success rate which was mentioned repeatedly —perhaps ranging between 10 and 20 per cent. —and research is considered necessary to achieve improvement; for example, on the interaction of the embryo with its environment, on the processes of the creation of embryos and on the freezing of eggs for all of which it would be appropriate and indeed, it is argued, necessary to study embryos in vitro.
Secondly, research has the potential for increasing knowledge about the cause of some congenital diseases and offers the prospect of preimplantation diagnosis through testing developing eggs at an early stage to identify those which will be affected by or carry serious genetic diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy or others.
Thirdly, research is said to be helpful in increasing knowledge about the causes of miscarriage where problems with implantation are likely often to be associated with defects in early embryonic development. Research on embryos in vitro offers the prospect of improved clinical treatment for women.
Finally, there is the argument that research may assist in the development of new contraceptive methods, notably those based on vaccines, with the aim of ensuring that failure rates are minimal and that they have no adverse effect if pregnancy nevertheless happens. There are of course other benefits which, some would argue, have not yet been thought of. Those who support research argue that if Amendment No. 51 were carried, those doctors and scientists engaged in work involving research on human embryos would be likely to emigrate so as to pursue their work in countries where embryo research was not restricted.
That completes what I seek to put before the Committee at this stage. I should like to mention that what the Committee are asked to do is to lay down, on this aspect, the law for the whole country. It is absolutely plain —and this was referred to —that the Bill contains a clear provision protecting those with conscientious objection against having to take part in any of these procedures.

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It is a very serious and important question that the Committee face. It is essential that we should all understand this. So could I say that those who wish to vote for Amendment No. 51 will, by that vote, prohibit all research on human embryos as defined in Clause 1(1) of the Bill as it stands.
It is worth pointing out that although inevitably the debate today has centred on Clause 11(1) and (2), that provision was drafted to give a clear-cut choice about whether or not Parliament should permit or prohibit research. It is possible, as I said, to take other positions, notably, as for example the one the Chief Rabbi, the noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits, mentioned in arguing that research should only be permitted on embryos which become available as part of the IVF procedure; in other words, that no research should be permitted on embryos specifically created by whatever means for the purposes of research and not for the treatment of infertility.
The Committee should be clear that if it votes for Amendment No. 51, the prohibition would be absolute and any such intermediate position, which would allow research but in more tightly controlled circumstances, would not be sustainable. That is on the basis of the Bill as it stands. I am not excluding the possibility that other amendments may be put forward. On the basis of the Bill as it stands, if Amendment No. 51 is carried, all research on embryos would be prohibited and that, I understand, is what my noble friend who moved this amendment and my noble and learned friend Lord Rawlinson have in mind.
As I have said already, this is a matter of moral judgment in the light of the factual situation, as the Committee will appreciate. I do not believe it is right to take a moral judgment without seeking to appreciate the facts, but once the facts are appreciated, the matter is one, I believe, entirely for moral judgment. This is certainly a very important decision. I respectfully agree, from my own point of view, with what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London said, that he found this an extremely difficult decision to take. He indicated what he would do. I do not propose to do that.
Lord Ashbourne: Perhaps —
Noble Lords: No. The Duke of Norfolk.
The Lord Privy Seal (Lord Belstead): This is a decision for the Committee and the Committee is making its decision pretty clear.
The Duke of Norfolk: May I thank the noble and learned Lord for his masterly summing up. It was abundantly clear and abundantly fair to both sides of this very important debate. I should like to thank everybody for their speeches, which enlightened me a great deal. I now, without further ado, propose that Amendment No. 51 be carried.
6.5 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 51) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 80; Not-Contents, 234.

DIVISION NO. 1

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Liverpool, E.

Ashbourne, L.

London, Bp.

Baldwin of Bewdley, E.

Longford, E.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Lothian, M.

Blake, L.

Lyell, L.

Blatch, B.

Lytton, E.

Braye, B.

McFarlane of Llandaff, B.

Brentford, V.

Masham of Ilton, B.

Buckmaster, V.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Camoys, L.

Melville, V.

Chester, Bp.

Merrivale, L.

Clanwilliam, E.

Milverton, L.

Cockfield, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Coleraine, L.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Norfolk, D. [Teller.]

Cox, B.

Northesk, E.

Craigmyle, L.

Oxford and Asquith, E.

De L'Isle, V.

Parmoor, L.

Ellenborough, L.

Peel, E.

Elles, B.

Perth, E.

Falkland, V.

Petre, L.

Ferrers, E.

Pitt of Hampstead, L.

Fitt, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Gainsborough, E.

Rawlinson of Ewell, L. [Teller.]

Gladwyn, L.

Greenway, L.

Reading, M.

Haddington, E.

Rees-Mogg, L.

Harvington, L.

Ripon, Bp.

Havers, L.

Robertson of Oakridge, L.

Hemphill, L.

Ryder of Warsaw, B.

Hesketh, L.

Salisbury, M.

Holderness, L.

Sidmouth, V.

Hooper, B.

Simon of Glaisdale, L.

Hunt of Tanworth, L.

Stafford, L.

Hylton, L.

Stallard, L.

Iddesleigh, E.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Kennet, L.

Strange, B.

Kinloss, Ly.

Swinfen, L.

Kitchener, E.

Tordoff, L.

Lauderdale, E.

Winchester, Bp.

Lindsey and Abingdon, E.

NOT-CONTENTS

Aberdare, L.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Addington, L.

Brain, L.

Adrian, L.

Bridge of Harwich, L.

Aldington, L.

Brightman, L.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Briginshaw, L.

Allen of Abbeydale, L.

Brimelow, L.

Allenby of Megiddo, V.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Alport, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Ampthill, L.

Butterfield, L.

Annan, L.

Butterworth, L.

Ardwick, L.

Byron, L.

Atholl, D.

Caithness, E.

Attlee, E.

Caldecote, V.

Aylestone, L.

Callaghan of Cardiff, L.

Balfour of Burleigh, L.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Bancroft, L.

Campbell of Eskan, L.

Barnett, L.

Carlisle of Bucklow, L.

Belstead, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Bessborough, E.

Birk, B.

Carnarvon, E.

Blease, L.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Blyth, L.

Carnock, L.

Boardman, L.

Carr of Hadley, L.

Bonham-Carter, L.

Carter, L.

Borthwick, L.

Chorley, L.

Boston of Faversham, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Bottomley, L.

Cocks of Hartcliffe, L.

989

Colwyn, L.

Lockwood, B.

Congleton, L.

Long, V.

Craigavon, V.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Crathorne, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Croham, L.

Macaulay of Bragar, L.

Cross, V.

McGregor of Durris, L. [Teller.]

Dacre of Glanton, L.

Dainton, L.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Darcy (de Knayth), B.

Macleod of Borve, B.

David, B.

Marsh, L.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Marshall of Goring, L.

Delacourt-Smith of Alteryn, B.

Marshall of Leeds, L.

Mersey, V.

Denham, L.

Meston, L.

Denington, B.

Mills, V.

Diamond, L.

Monson, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Moran, L.

Donoughue, L.

Morton of Shuna, L.

Dormand of Easington, L.

Mottistone, L.

Downshire, M.

Mountevans, L.

Dudley, E.

Mulley, L.

Eden of Winton, L.

Munster, E.

Elibank, L.

Murray of Epping Forest, L.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Nathan, L.

Ennals, L.

Nelson of Stafford, L.

Erroll, E.

Newall, L.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Nicol, B.

Faithfull, B.

Northfield, L.

Flowers, L.

Ogmore, L.

Fraser of Carmyllie, L.

O'Neill of the Maine, L.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Onslow, E.

Gainford, L.

Oram, L.

Gallacher, L.

Orkney, E.

Galpern, L.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Gibson, L.

Pender, L.

Gisborough, L.

Perry of Walton, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Peston, L.

Goodman, L.

Platt of Writtle, B.

Graham of Edmonton, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L.

Greenhill of Harrow, L.

Prys-Davies, L.

Griffiths, L.

Pym, L.

Grimond, L.

Quinton, L.

Grimthorpe, L.

Rea, L.

Haig, E.

Reay, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Renton, L.

Richardson, L.

Halsbury, E.

Rippon of Hexham, L.

Hampton, L.

Robson of Kiddington, B.

Hanson, L.

Rochester, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Rodney, L.

Hatch of Lusby, L.

Russell, E.

Hayter, L.

Russell of Liverpool, L.

Henderson of Brompton, L.

Sainsbury, L.

Henniker, L.

Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

Hirshfield, L.

Seear, B.

Hives, L.

Seebohm, L.

Home of the Hirsel, L.

Sefton of Garston, L.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Serota, B.

Howie of Troon, L.

Shackleton, L.

Hughes, L.

Shannon, E.

Hunt, L.

Shaughnessy, L.

Hunter of Newington, L.

Shepherd, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Sherfield, L.

Ilchester, E.

Skelmersdale, L.

Jeger, B.

Slim, V.

Jellicoe, E.

Smith, L.

Jenkin of Roding, L.

Somerset, D.

Jenkins of Hillhead, L.

Soper, L.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Southwark, Bp.

John-Mackie, L.

Stedman, B.

Joseph, L.

Stockton, E.

Kearton, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Killearn, L.

Strathclyde, L.

Kilmarnock, L.

Sudeley, L.

Kirkhill, L.

Swann, L.

Kissin, L.

Templeman, L.

Lawrence, L.

Terrington, L.

Listowel, E.

Teviot, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B. [Teller.]

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

Thomas of Swynnerton, L.

Lloyd of Hampstead, L.

Thomson of Monifieth, L.

Lloyd of Kilgerran, L.

Thorneycroft, L.

990

Thurlow, L.

Whitelaw, V.

Trefgarne, L.

Wigoder, L.

Trumpington, B.

Wilberforce, L.

Tryon, L.

Williams of Elvel, L.

Ullswater, V.

Willis, L.

Underhill, L.

Winstanley, L.

Walpole, L.

Winterbottom, L.

Walton of Detchant, L.

Wise, L.

Warnock, B.

York, Abp.

Weinstock, L.

Zuckerman, L.

White, B.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
6.18 p.m.
The Duke of Norfolk The Duke of Norfolk moved Amendment No. 52:
Page 5, line 15, leave out ("Authority") and insert ("Secretary of State").
The noble Duke said: This amendment puts the Secretary of State in charge more than the authority. I beg to move.
Lord Ennals: I oppose this amendment moved by the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk. If the Secretary of State is to have the power which the Bill now says the authority shall have, it will totally undermine the role of the authority. I believe that it would do great damage to the concept of the Bill. I hope that the noble Duke will not proceed with the amendment.
Baroness Elles: I support my noble friend the Duke of Norfolk. This amendment is in line with the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act under which the Secretary of State is in charge and is responsible to Parliament for all acts connected with animals, particularly in the field of scientific development. Since we are considered as other animals, it is perfectly logical and reasonable that the same standing should be accorded to this Bill as to the Act concerned with animals.
The Earl of Perth: I support the amendment on the basis that the authority will become another quango. I can see the time when the Secretary of State or Her Majesty's Government are asked questions to which they will say, "It is not our affair". We have seen so many other cases. I see no reason why this amendment should result in any diminution in the authority of the authority. Somehow we need to have Parliament —and therefore the Secretary of State —responsible.
The Lord Chancellor: I understand the view that the licensing decisions should be the direct responsibility of the Secretary of State, who would of course be directly responsible to Parliament. It is a view which has been prominently deployed at various stages in the debates following the Warnock Report. It is also a view which has been carefully considered by the Government but to which, in the end, we have decided not to give effect.
One reason for this is to be found in the amendments discussed on Tuesday which invited the Committee to agree that the authority should be informed by the views of persons having wide knowledge or experience in the fields of law, social

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work, philosophy and religion, as well as medicine or science. In advising the Committee not to accept the amendment, we said that it would be wrong to confine Ministers; for example, by not mentioning other disciplines such as nursing and counselling. But we also made it very clear that in making appointments to the authority Ministers will be likely to want to select people with experience and from the disciplines mentioned.
I said this because the Government are very conscious that the kind of decisions and the kind of guidance which the licensing authority will need to give has to be based on wide experience. It will need to reflect the coming together of people, from different backgrounds and traditions, who can provide wisdom on subjects which are intensely personal for the person who is receiving treatment and for the clinician who is considering what is best to do for his patient and for any children who may result from successful treatment. The authority will also have to help society to think through what is right to do on issues of great ethical, moral, medical, scientific and legal complexity.
Speaking for myself but I believe for my ministerial colleagues as well, we do not have the detailed specialist experience across these various fields and the advantage that comes from working in a closely-knit specialist group which would help us to take decisions on whether a particular licence should be granted or a particular paragraph of guidance drafted. Our role is a different role. It is to ensure that the right appointments are made, of people with wisdom, experience and breadth of vision. It is also to ensure that, for example, the code of practice which the authority will provide is not in its detail but in its general format and coverage the kind of document that Parliament and the public in this country believe to be right and helpful to recipients. Responsibility for individual decisions could actually inhibit Ministers from carrying through effectively the duties under the Bill which I believe are suited to them. It is for these wider responsibilities on the running of the Act that Ministers should properly be responsible to Parliament.
It may be argued that in taking decisions Ministers would be guided by the authority in an advisory capacity. But if Ministers always agreed with the authority's advice their role would be superfluous. And in so far as they rejected its advice on individual cases or issues they would be overriding the detailed expertise that the members of the authority may possess. Again, Ministers' roles should be rather different. If they were to believe that in large measure the decisions of the authority were wrong or its guidance was in fact misguided, their right under the Bill, and their duty to Parliament, would be to change the composition of the authority.
I am very concerned that the amendments, by running together the separate roles of an executive licensing body and an overseeing Minister, would produce a lower quality of decision and a cumbersome system of administration when what is needed is specialist experience and expertise coupled
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with individual wisdom from members, but with a general oversight on behalf of Parliament which is provided by the machinery for reports, and the policy responsibilities of the Secretary of State and his responsibility for making appointments.
The option proposed by the amendment was one of those canvassed in the consultation document published in 1986 which preceded the White Paper published a year later. That option was put forward in the consultation document because it was clear in debates on the Unborn Children (Protection) Bill, introduced by Mr. Enoch Powell in 1985, that there was a body of support for this concept. However, the results of the consultation exercise were unequivocal and 70 per cent. of those who replied indicated that they favoured the approach recommended by the Warnock Committee of setting up an independent statutory body. The Government endorsed that view in the White Paper and stand by it now.
In their view it would not be right for politicians to become involved in the day-to-day administration of clinical and, if Parliament agrees, research issues of a difficult and delicate kind. The Bill provides for the authority to have a very detailed and strict system of control of certain treatments, the storage of gametes and embryos and, if Parliament agrees, research involving human embryos. The provisions which follow Clause 11 set out this licensing procedure in some detail and give the authority powers to grant, refuse, vary and revoke licences, to make general or specific directions to licence holders and require it to prepare, agree with the Secretary of State and publish a code of practice which gives further detailed guidance on how it expects licence holders to operate.
My noble friend Lady Elles mentioned the position on animal research. There is a significant difference between the research contemplated in Clause 11 and the procedure for dealing with animal research, where the Home Secretary is directly involved. The system is necessary because in that case the purpose is to prevent pain to the animals concerned and to ensure that the project is appropriate in this regard. It is a less detailed and more overall responsibility than would be contemplated for the grant of licences in this Bill. In the light of those considerations, perhaps my noble friend will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
The Duke of Norfolk: In view of the fact that the authority will be so widely drawn, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 53 not moved.]
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 54:
Page 5, line 23, leave out subsections (2) and (3).
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Murton of Lindisfarne): As Amendment No. 54 has been agreed to, Amendments Nos. 55, 56 and 57 are pre-empted.
Lord Grantchester Lord Grantchester moved Amendment No. 58:
Page 5, line 32, at end insert —
("( ) The Secretary of State may, either in consequence of representations made to him or for any other reasons, after consulting the Authority, by order provide that the activities set out in Schedule 2 to this Act for which licences may be granted and activities under existing licences granted by the Authority shall be restricted in such manner and as from such date or dates as shall be specified in such order.").
The noble Lord said: This is a minor amendment. I put it forward in the hope that the Bill will be thereby improved. I was induced to put forward the amendment in order to keep some parliamentary control over the treatment activities set out in Schedule 2. The basis on which the Bill appears to work is that the licensing authority may grant licences for treatment services under Schedule 2. That is done by a licence committee consisting partly of members of the authority itself and, in a minority, persons from outside. The revocation of licences is also left to a licence committee under Clause 17 of the Bill, subject to a right of appeal under Clause 19 in certain circumstances.
My amendment is designed to give the Secretary of State power to restrict activities of those which may be licensed and to act quickly if he is of the opinion that certain activities go beyond those which ought to be carried on and are therefore contrary to the public interest. A reason for proposing this is what happened in relation to the drug thalidomide. In that case, as a result of the use of that drug, very great disadvantages and distress were caused, and the use of the drug had to be restricted and abandoned. Here we are allowing the authority to license treatment services which may develop over the years and which may involve treatments to be carried out even during the pregnancy period. Moreover, drugs may be used which turn out to be as undesirable in their effect as was thalidomide in regard to the unfortunate children.
In those circumstances, put shortly, my amendment would allow the Secretary of State to shut down certain activities by restricting licences in a way that he thought fit. He could do that as soon as it appeared to him to be desirable to do so in the public interest, without having to refer to the authority and go through the procedures of revocation of licences and the resultant appeals and other such matters which may then be involved before the revocations take effect. We hope that the power will never need to be exercised but it is a safeguard which the public and Parliament should, in my submission, require and one which would assist the Bill in its passage through this Chamber.
6.30 p.m.
Lord Prys-Davies: I listened carefully to the supportive speech of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. He described his amendment as being a minor one. However, if I understood him correctly, it seems to me to be a major amendment. I say that because it enables the Secretary of State to restrict the activities which are listed in the schedule. On any grounds, having listened to certain representations, if he believes that he ought to restrict the activity then he can do so. This proposal
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seems to me to give the Secretary of State unlimited power.
I am not certain whether the amendment would also enable the Secretary of State to restrict an activity which has been authorised by the authority. If that is so, it seems to me to be undermining the whole authority of the licensing authority. Moreover, it would dissuade doctors from ever undertaking any work under a licence, although it had been granted by the licensing authority. At least, that is my understanding of the noble Lord's speech.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: I do not think that this proposal is an improvement to the Bill. In my view it is constitutionally objectionable to give the Secretary of State —who is, after all, a member of the Executive —a right to override the clinical judgment of doctors who are concerned in what is otherwise lawful. I think that it would undermine the authority's function under the Bill. I can assure the noble Lord on the Cross-Benches who moved the amendment that I was a Member of the Cabinet throughout the thalidomide saga and it would have been quite impossible for an amendment such as his to have had the slightest effect on the course of events.
Lord Butterfield: I hope that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor can answer this question. Is it not true that the use of drugs would come under the provisions of the Medicines Act? Therefore, would it not be for the Medicines Commission to decide whether such treatments were safe? It seems to me that there is a risk here of some reduplication so far as concerns the use of medicines in these circumstances.
Lord Hylton: I should like to say a brief word in favour of the amendment. It states that representations must be made, first, to the Secretary of State. It goes on to state that he must consult the authority. However, after that, presumably he must make up his own mind. It may be desirable that the kind of representations, or who should make them, should be clarified a little further. But, on the face of it, I should have thought that this was a useful reserve power to have in the Bill.
The Lord Chancellor: The intention of the Bill is that the authority which will be established thereunder will carry out its statutory functions of control and licensing effectively and be worthy of full public confidence. As the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, mentioned, the authority will have the power to give or refuse licences and subsequently to withdraw or vary licences which it has granted. For example, if it should turn out that a particular licence which had been granted had in the judgment of the authority undesirable effects, for some reason which was not anticipated at the time when it was granted, it would have the power to revoke the licence. Of course, as the noble Lord pointed out, procedures will be necessary in such a case to give the licence holder an opportunity to have the matter properly discussed.
This clause, as I understand the basis upon which it is put forward, would give the Secretary of State

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a kind of short cut to overcome such a difficulty. It would enable him to withdraw the whole basis of the licence by statutory order. I think it would be very difficult to believe that the Secretary of State could properly do so even under the terms of this amendment without giving the people in question —that is, those who were seeking to support the licence —an opportunity of representing the case in the other direction. Therefore the system is a licensing system with fair protection for the public as regards judgment on the practices on the one hand, and the people who may be operating the licences on the other.
The authority will also issue a code of practice which will need to be approved by the Secretary of State and be placed before Parliament. It will also be required to present a full report of its activites to Parliament. We debated an amendment which sought to make the presentation of these reports more frequent than is specified in the Bill.
Accordingly, I suggest to the noble Lords, Lord Grantchester and Lord Hylton, that the purposes of the amendment are really achieved by powers which already exist in the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, referred by way of example to the thalidomide case. I do not think that he was really suggesting that this proposal would deal with medicines in quite the same way; he was simply giving that case as an illustration of a situation where what people thought was all right at the time the drug was put on the market turned out to be far from all right. He was merely suggesting that something of the kind could happen under this machinery. For example, a licence could be granted and after it had come into effect it might turn out that it was producing bad results. That is exactly why the licensing authority is given power to revoke licences. I believe that that is the correct system.
Moreover, as the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield, mentioned, medicines are controlled under the Medicines Act. However, that aspect does not really affect the matter. The noble Lord, Lord Grantchester merely wished to give an illustration of what may happen under this system. I hope that in the light of those considerations that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Grantchester: In the light of those explanations I should like to withdraw the amendment, subject, however, to the one caveat. I had in the back of my mind that the authority and its members would be interested in the actual carrying on of the activities and the treatment services. The idea was to give an overall parliamentary control. However, having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
The Lord Chancellor: Before the noble Lord sits down perhaps I may deal with a further point that he made. I refer to the idea that the people who grant the licences may not all be members of the authority. I think that Clause 9(5) requires the licence committee to be constituted entirely of members of the authority. I must apologise to the noble Lord for not dealing with that aspect earlier.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 59 not moved.]
Clause 11, as amended, agreed to.
Schedule 2 [Activities for which licences may be granted]:
The Duke of Norfolk The Duke of Norfolk moved Amendment No. 60:
Page 25, line 40, leave out from ("embryos") to end of line 42 and insert ("will survive if placed in a woman").
The noble Duke said: This is a very important amendment. The Bill allows that embryos may be assessed to ensure that they are,
"in a suitable condition to be placed in a woman".
It does not define what is meant by "suitable condition". I am concerned that if we leave the Bill as it stands, it opens the way for all kinds of practices which we should all find unacceptable. We can imagine parents who wanted a boy or a girl or a blond child or a blue-eyed child, asking the doctor to select an embryo with these qualities. If the doctor considered that only a child with the qualities that the parents wanted was suitable, he would be allowed to select that embryo. In India the desire of many parents to abort a girl fetus is a major social problem and also, I would say, the worst form of sexual discrimination.
The possibilities of such unethical practices increase a thousandfold with in vitro techniques. This is eugenics, and it is one of the most dangerous prospects opened up by IVF technology. The effect of eugenics is one factor which has motivated the German parliament to introduce its commendable Bill which I mentioned earlier. Even without genetic manipulation, which we all wish to see banned, it would be possible to breed children with any desired characteristics by careful selection of embryos, particularly now that it is possible to create many embryos at once. The amendment seeks to prevent any kind of eugenic selection of embryos. Of course there would be no point in replacing embryos which could not survive or any that might pose a threat to the mother. But all other forms of selection should be banned. I beg to move.
Viscount Caldecote: I support the amendment. I was speaking to a doctor, a gynaecologist, a few days ago who is invited on occasions to do exactly what my noble friend the Duke of Norfolk suggested might sometimes happen. That is determining the sex of the child to be born. Surely that is not something which we would feel was a good thing.
Lord Swinfen: I wish to support the principle behind the amendment. I wonder what happens if the embryo does not survive. The amendment says, "will survive". We have already heard this evening that quite a large number of embryos formed naturally do not survive. I should have thought that the amendment could have been improved by the addition of words such as "are very likely to survive". It would take a lawyer, not me, to get the wording right. I wondered whether, if an embryo is inserted into a woman and it fails to survive, an offence might be committed.
6.45 p.m.
Lord Ennals: I wish to hear what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has to say. We cannot possibly ensure that an embryo will survive if placed in a woman. I do not know why the noble Duke thought that one could provide any such guaranteee, so I hope that he will not press the amendment. However, I am anxious to hear what the noble and learned Lord has to say.
The Lord Bishop of Southwark: I also wish to support the principle behind this. I should be grateful to hear whether the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, or the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, could define more sharply the words "in a suitable condition". In the normal usage of the English language, that could not really be taken to mean with blue eyes or fair hair. I share all the noble Duke's anxieties about the wrong direction that this might take.
Lord Brain: There is one small point which was brought up. With some of the diseases that are sex-linked there is a definite need. I quite agree about blue eyes and such characteristics but regarding whether a male or female embryo will be replaced in a woman, that is one of the suitable conditions that might be excluded. One would not be able to select that if the noble Duke's amendment were passed.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Hooper): I am sorry to disappoint some Members of the Committee who expected to hear from my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor. I think that my noble friend the Duke of Norfolk is unduly concerned in attempting to alter the Bill with this amendment. As currently drafted, subparagraph (1)(d) of paragraph 1 of Schedule 2 permits treatment licences to be issued for practices designed to ensure that embryos are suitable for being placed in a woman. I believe that that does not mean that they conform to the desire of the woman for a baby with blue eyes or other such characteristics, but are suitable for the purpose of implantation and creating a viable embryo.
In seeking to narrow the grounds on which a licence can be issued under this provision to practices designed to ensure that an embryo will survive if placed in a woman, the amendment would not help. The wording in the Bill is designed to ensure that in the course of treatment defective embryos are not unwittingly placed in a woman. If a woman undergoing in vitro fertilisation has a moral objection to a defective embryo being discarded, it is of course open to her to decide to have it placed in her, but I think that that was not the purport of the amendment of my noble friend the Duke of Norfolk. We believe that the mother should be in a position to know as far as possible whether the embryo is suitable. It is for those reasons that we feel we must oppose the amendment.
Lord Ennals: I wish to ask the noble Baroness whether it could relate to things like temperature or
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some other suitable condition at the moment when it is implanted. Could it refer for instance to temperature or the way in which the embryo was protected before use?
Baroness Hooper: I presume so. As I understand it and as I am advised, suitable in this context means medically suitable. That must take into account, I imagine, such things as temperature.
The Earl of Halsbury: How can one be satisfied that an embryo will survive if placed in a woman when we know that 90 per cent. of them do not?
The Duke of Norfolk: The purpose of my amendment was to stop what I call the brave new world scenario coming along in which mankind is being manipulated by the abilities given through in vitro fertilisation. That itself is a wonderful thing. However, having heard what has been said, I wish to reserve the possibility of bringing the matter up in some other form, if necessary at Report stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Earl of Perth The Earl of Perth had given notice of his attention to move Amendment No. 61:
Page 25, line 44, leave out paragraph (f).
The noble Earl said: This amendment was considered on Tuesday with Amendment No. 21. I pressed that amendment to a vote and unfortunately it was defeated, but I remain hopeful that not everything is lost. I shall say no more at this moment except that when we come to Amendment No. 70 I may make further remarks.
[Amendment No. 61 not moved.]
Lord Harvington Lord Harvington moved Amendment No. 62:
Page 26, line 1, leave out paragraph (g).
The noble Lord said: Paragraph 1 of Schedule 2 describes the kinds of activities which may be licensed when providing treatment services. The kinds of activities that are to be allowed are listed under the headings (a) to (g). It is stated under heading (g):
"such other practices as may be specified in, or determined in accordance with, regulations".
That would appear to give a completely blank cheque with regard to further practices being allowed by regulations. I find that quite unacceptable. We could ask what is the point of giving a list of allowed practices if we then finish up by saying that anything else may be allowed. Further, what is the point of our debating what should be allowed today if we are going to open the door to such a change in the future?
It is true that it is provided that regulations under this part of the Bill would need to be made by affirmative resolution. As the Committee knows perfectly well, that is a resolution of both Houses. However, in my view this is a matter for primary legislation. We should deal with it now. We are debating the fundamental principles involved today. Those Members on both sides of the Committee who are most concerned about this matter have come here today to see this matter resolved. There have

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been a great many Members of the Chamber present today. It would be wholly wrong if we were to see our decision watered down in six months' time or if we all had to turn up again to debate these matters once more in the context of some government regulation that had been tabled. In my opinion that is not the way to do things. The provision contained under heading (g) is unnecessary and should be deleted. I beg to move.
Lord Adrian: Surely what is being considered here are treatments. That has nothing to do with research. That is dealt with later in the Bill under licences for research. We are concerned here with licences for treatment. The words "such other practices" refer to treatment practices. I am not aware that the medical profession, when considering a new treatment, has to apply to Parliament for primary legislation to allow it. It seems to me that it would be a fatal mistake to ban all practices other than those that are listed. I strongly oppose this amendment.
Lord Ennals: I think the provision in the Bill is necessary. It certainly should remain and not be deleted. It is important. If we are to place confidence in the authority —that is what we intend to do —and the Secretary of State is to determine who will be on it and we are satisfied that it is a responsible body, it is important that there should be a degree of flexibility. We do not want the authority to say there is something which does not fall absolutely within the terms of the headings (a) to (f) but which needs to be done as regards treatment. To deny that kind of flexibility in the area of research which will lead to certain forms of treatment is wrong. I hope the amendment will not be passed.
Baroness Hooper: As the noble Lord, Lord Adrian, pointed out, the provision in the Bill is designed to take account of new treatments which may become available and the Government believe it is right to make provision for possible future advances in fertility treatment. The rapid advances in techniques, even since the publication of the Warnock Report in 1984, show how difficult it is to forecast now everything that may be possible even in a few years' time. In the Government's view therefore it would not be desirable to have to wait for new principal legislation in every case.
However, the Government recognise that this is an area where Parliament has particular concerns. That has been evidenced by the response to the debates on this Bill. Those Members of the Committee who have concerns should feel reassured by the fact that any regulations which are made under this heading would have to be laid in draft and would be subject to an affirmative resolution of each House of Parliament. On that basis I trust my noble friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Harvington: I have listened to the comments of my noble friend the Minister and to those of the Members of the Committee opposite. That has drawn my attention to the fact that I may be
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mistaken in what I am trying to do. I have also listened to what the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, said. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Blatch: I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

Official Secrets Act 1989 (Prescription) Order 1989
6.55 p.m.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Earl Ferrers)The Minister of State, Home Office (Earl Ferrers) rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 18th December 1989 be approved [5th Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Earl said: My Lords, the draft order has been considered by the Joint Committee of Statutory Instruments. It has two simple purposes. The first is to prescribe employees and board members of certain bodies, office holders, and some employees of these office holders so that they may become treated as Crown servants for the purposes of the Official Secrets Act 1989.
The second is to prescribe certain bodies so that they can control or can authorise the disclosure of protected information. The draft order is, I hope, largely self-explanatory. There are just three general points that I should like to make which I venture to believe will assist your Lordships.
First, everybody who is listed in the order is already subject to the Official Secrets Act 1911. My right honourable friend is not therefore seeking to impose additional burdens or restrictions by this order. The effect of the order is simply to apply the lighter controls of the 1989 Act in place of the heavy, blanket protection in Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911.
Secondly, the Government do not believe in unnecessary prescription. My right honourable friend has not therefore sought to prescribe everybody who may regularly receive information which is protected by the 1989 Act. His proposals bear only on those who not only receive but also produce sensitive information in the limited categories which the Act covers. The prescription order affects about 27,000 people. Your Lordships may like to compare that with the 500,000 or so who at present are treated under their own legislation as Crown servants for the purposes of official secrets legislation.
Thirdly, the disclosures which will be covered by the new Act are only those which cause harm that is serious enough to merit a criminal sanction. The prosecution will have to satisfy a jury that any relevant harm was done. The effect of prescription for an individual is that, in such circumstances, it will be for the defence to prove that he did not know that harm was likely to arise from his disclosure.
I would not wish to detain the House with a detailed account of the schedules to the draft order. I hope that what I have said has been sufficient to explain to your Lordships the purposes of the order. In each case the principle has already been established. If the draft order is approved, as I hope it will be, my right honourable friend proposes to bring the Act into force on 1st March. I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 18th December 1989 be approved [5th Report from the Joint Committee]. —(Earl Ferrers.)
Lord Prys-Davies: My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the order and for his brief explanation of its main purpose. I am sure almost everyone will agree that openness in government is the standard we must aim for. The flow of information is essential in a democracy if there is to be informed criticism of government policies and actions and the use of public resources. That point must be continually stressed. I am sure the Minister is aware that many people are critical of this Government for not doing as much as they should to achieve the aim of open government.
I take the point that the combined effect of this order and the Official Secrets Act 1989 is to reduce the number of people who are treated as though they were civil servants for the purpose of official secrets legislation from half a million to 27,000. Welcome though that announcement is, the figure of 27,000 is still too high. It includes, for example, the health ombudsman. I should be interested to learn what sensitive papers of the state find their way to his desk which need to be protected by this legislation.
The Comptroller and Auditor General and the staff of the National Audit Office and their counterparts in Northern Ireland are included in Schedule 2. That situation was the subject of considerable adverse criticism by the Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments. There is not only a suspicion but a conviction that the reports of those officers will be more restricted in future than hitherto because of their inclusion in this order. Can the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, give a categoric assurance that there is no basis whatsoever for that anxiety? Such anxiety would be the cause of considerable alarm.
I should like to turn to an item in Schedule 3. Having read the explanatory note —which is far from crystal clear—I have come to the conclusion that the Civil Aviation Authority will be empowered by this instrument to dispose of documents. Presumably it would be authorised to destroy documents. I should be interested to learn in what circumstances and conditions that power would be exercised by the Civil Aviation Authority—assuming that I have correctly understood Schedule 3.
I have no other questions to put to the Minister. I have a very strong conviction that we have not come to the end of the road in regard to this order.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, the noble Earl has rightly pointed out that the number of persons who are subject to the Official Secrets Act has been drastically reduced. It is not simply a question of
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numbers; it is also a question of what will be suppressed and why. It will now be the responsibility of those who are accused to show that any revelations which they have made are not against the national interest.
The old Official Secrets Act was bad enough, but under that Act Clive Ponting was acquitted. The first question that I should like to ask the noble Earl is whether, if this order in conjunction with the Official Secrets Act is approved, Clive iPonting would ever have been brought to trial. Would there have been no jury and would the revelations that he made have automatically led to his conviction? If that is the situation, we are potentially suppressing information which is in the national interest and not against the national interest.
Secondly, what effect will this order have, if any, upon the present Wallace case? Will it prevent civil servants who knew of this dirty tricks operation —Clockwork Orange, as it is called —from giving evidence? Will it prevent them from being brought before a Select Committee of another place in order to reveal what went on in what is now seen as likely to have been a set of operations which if not illegal were certainly underhand and against the national interest and against the interests of Parliament and parliamentarians?
The third question that I should like to ask the Minister follows the remark made by my noble friend concerning the Comptroller and Auditor General. Why is he included under this order? How will that situation affect the kind of work that he has been doing with great distinction —work which we hope he will continue to do? What will be the situation in regard to the alleged bribery (I use that word advisedly) in the sale of Rover? It will be the job of the Auditor General to look into that kind of evidence which concerns the use of public money. Will that situation be inhibited by the approval of this order?
As the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, stated, in this age we are seeking more open government and more public information. I am sure that the noble Earl has been in the United States, where a great deal more public information is available. It is often shown to the public on television. The democratic process rests on an informed public.
Although the number of people concerned is reduced by the Official Secrets Act and by this order, there is a great danger that the amount of important and vital information about which the public and Members of Parliament have a right to know may be decreased.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the noble Lords, Lord Prys-Davies and Lord Hatch of Lusby, were concerned that there was not enough openness of government. I think that there has been an astonishing openness of government. It may not have gone as far as some people would like. However, when one thinks of what the earlier Official Secrets Act covered and the number of people it covered, most people were surprised when the present Government came along with the Official Secrets Act 1989 and loosened the bonds of the 1911 Act to

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the extent they did. We are simply concerned here with saying that there are certain secrets which any government must have. That is separate from freedom of information, which I think is the point to which both noble Lords referred. We say that there are certain secrets that any government must have. Therefore, those who are endowed with those secrets must bear that responsibility. This order says that there are other people who work in those spheres, or similar spheres, who should be treated, for the purposes of the Act, as Crown servants.
I shall resist the temptation to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, into going back in history and trying to speculate what would, or would not, have been the case over Ponting had the present Act been on the statute book. I think that there is no virtue in that. Nor will I be drawn into the possibility of discussing what might happen over the Wallace affair. The position certainly over Ponting is that he was a Crown servant. We are dealing with people who are not Crown servants but who are occupied in certain businesses which may put them in a position of having sensitive information, and therefore for the purposes of the Act are to be treated as Crown servants.
If that is so —and perhaps I may remind both noble Lords of this —they will be covered by the new Act, and only disclosures which are likely to cause harm will be serious enough to merit a criminal sanction. Then it is up to the defence to prove that they did not know that harm was likely to arise from their disclosure. That gives the defence a considerable benefit.
The noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, said that he thought that the figure of 27,000 was too high. That may be his view, but I think that he will understand that a drop of the magnitude that the Government have seen to be prudent to allow is a considerable drop, and there have to be certain people bound by the categories of secrets.
The noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, asked me whether I could give an assurance that no one listed in the schedules will be worse off as a result of the prescription. I can give him that categorical assurance. Everyone who is listed in the order is already subject to the Official Secrets Act 1911. The effect of the order therefore is simply to apply not the same controls as they were subjected to under the 1911 Act, but lighter controls.
Both noble Lords referred to the National Audit Office headed by the Comptroller and Auditor General. It has the responsibility of certifying the accounts of government departments and certain other bodies, checking that the money voted by Parliament is spent for the purposes that Parliament intends and in accordance with the rules of government accounting. It also carries out examinations of the economy, the efficiency and the effectiveness with which departments have used their resources. For both these purposes the National Audit Office has extensive access to government departments' papers.
As my right honourable friend the Minister of State explained in another place, prescription will
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not affect in any way the Comptroller and Auditor General's existing powers of access to information in departments, or his existing ability to report to Parliament, or pass information to the Public Accounts Committee.
The noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, also referred to the Health Service Commissioner. Of course the blanket protection for information held by the commissioners will be removed with the coming into force of the Official Secrets Act 1989. It is necessary though that those handling protected information, disclosed or generated in the performance of the functions of the parliamentary commissioners, should be subject to the Official Secrets Act. I think that that is right.
The noble Lord also referred to the Civil Aviation Authority. It must observe the rules of natural justice, which include notifying applicants and objectors of all relevant factors which may influence the authority's decision, and give them an opportunity to comment on them. Prescription under Schedule 3 means that the Civil Aviation Authority can, for example, authorise the disclosure of protected information if need be.
Although the noble Lords are as concerned about the disclosure of information, as they were on the passage of the Official Secrets Bill when it was going through Parliament, I hope that they will accept that governments have the right, and indeed the duty, to have secrets, and in the public interest to protect those secrets. We have sought to limit that protection so far as we can to those most importantly connected with that secret information. I hope that your Lordships will agree that this draft order seeks to do that.
7.15 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, perhaps I may press the noble Earl on what he has just said. Am I not right that he is saying that governments, and governments alone, will determine what is in the national interest and what is against it, and that these cases will no longer go before a judge to determine? If that is the case, or whether or not it is the case, why have the Government apparently been retrogressive on even the old Act by putting the onus of proof on the defence?
If the Government are so sure of their probity in their interpretation of the national interest, why do they not take reponsibility for proving that the national interest has been breached? Surely it is the normal practice in British judicial tradition that it is for the prosecution to prove and not for the defence. This seems to be a total reversal of the whole history of our juridical practices.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I do not want to go over the whole business of what we discussed during the passage of the Official Secrets Bill. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, found difficulty in accepting the position. But when he says that it is the Government who have to determine what a secret is, the answer is that it is, because the Government have their secrets, and they have correctly to determine what those secrets are.

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If somebody divulges secrets, he can be caught if he has divulged secrets that cause harm which is serious enough to merit a criminal sanction. If that situation comes about, he can be prosecuted and the prosecution would have to show that it would be a cause of harm. The defence in that case can say that he did not know, when he divulged that information, that it would cause harm. That is a defence, and a very powerful line of defence too for anyone accused of divulging a secret: that is, if he can show that he did not know that harm would arise by that disclosure. I think those are both important considerations, which any person who is accused of divulging secrets could take into account.
Lord Prys-Davies: My Lords, can the Minister help the House just a little further? I understand that the Government come to the view that a matter is of national interest, but in fact is that assessment open to challenge in the courts? That is the first question. The second question arises really from my few comments on the order. Am I right that it is the Civil Aviation Authority that has the power to destroy documents? I asked the Minister in what circumstances, and under what conditions, it would destroy documents. Is the noble Earl able to help the House on that second issue?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I have momentarily forgotten the first point raised by the noble Lord. But perhaps he will be kind enough to repeat it.
Lord Prys-Davies: My Lords, we accept that the Government form the view that a matter is in the national interest. Is that self-assessment open to challenge in the courts?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for repeating his question. I was thinking temporarily of his second question. The Government consider what constitutes a secret. If a person divulges that secret and it gets into the newspapers, it is up to the prosecution to prove to a jury that that person had done relevant harm under the Act. The Act states what the harm is when a disclosure is made and the prosecution would have to say that, by divulging that information this person has caused a criminal offence by divulging harm which is relevant under the Act. It is then up to the defence to use, as a method of defence, the fact that he did not even know that, when he divulged the information he would create harm. As I have tried to explain, that is a significant form of defence.
The noble Lord referred to the Civil Aviation Authority. The authority may produce sensitive information and, in determining air transport licensing cases, the authority's tribunal subject to the supervision of the Council on Tribunals must observe the rules of natural justice which include notifying applicants and objectors of all relevant factors which may influence the authority's decision, and give them an opportunity to comment on them. Prescription under Schedule 3 means that the Civil Aviation Authority may authorise the disclosure of information. It may authorise the disclosure, but that is not the same as saying that it can destroy
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documents. The point is that the Civil Aviation Authority is a body which can authorise the disclosure.
Lord Prys-Davies: My Lords, I am sorry to come back to the point, but I shall not detain the House for long. In that case, of the three authorities named in Schedule 3, which one is empowered to direct the disposal of documents? I had assumed that the disposal of documents meant the destruction of documents.
Earl Ferrers: The three bodies are prescribed under Article 4 which enables them for the purposes of the Act to authorise or restrict disclosure and to direct the return or disposal of documents in one case. I believe that I am right in saying that that case involves the Civil Aviation Authority, but if I am mistaken I shall let the noble Lord know.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Viscount Long: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn during pleasure until 8 p.m.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
[The Sitting was suspended from 7.23 to 8 p.m..]

Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [H.L.]
House again in Committee on Schedule 2.
[Amendments Nos. 63 and 64 not moved.]
Lord Carter Lord Carter moved Amendment No. 65:
Page 26, line 30, at end insert ("which are life-threatening or severely disabling").
The noble Lord said: This is an amendment which deals with a subject that I raised at Second Reading. I do not think that it has been discussed at all in the context of the Bill. It refers to the need for criteria that the proposed licensing authority should use to decide which research into congenital diseases it will license. Paragraph 13.6 of the Warnock Report specifically stated:
"We do not see it as our function to specify in detail the criteria for granting a licence but there are certain controls which we believe should be imposed".
In the consultation paper published in December 1986, after the report, the Government said nothing at all about the criteria for research. The White Paper, published in November 1987, echoes Warnock in paragraph 22 which states:
"The Government does not intend to specify in legislation the detailed criteria which should be applied in granting licences".
The noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, was interviewed for television in April 1985. I have her permission to quote from the transcript of that interview. She deals with the point that I am now raising. In response to the question:
"Do you not think there are dangers in that really what one is doing is genetically engineering?"
she replied:
"Well, I think there are dangers and I think that it requires enormous thought to say which of the full list of conditions will, as it were, merit this kind of treatment … I think we need to have an agreed list, by society as a whole, of which of the conditions that are so disabling lead to such a short life on the part of a child who suffers from them that medicine and common humanity must work together to eliminate these if possible".
Later in the interview she said:
"I think this is why I feel so very strongly that when these kinds of developments become possible, we've got to have an agreed list of conditions which are agreed by everybody to be so disabling and so tragic for the person and the family within which they care that it is worth bringing them [the diseases] to an end".
I should make clear that this is a probing amendment. Certainly I do not intend to divide the Committee on it. However, I believe that we should spend a few moments considering this very difficult question of criteria. Although I have not received any advice on this point from outside bodies —and the amendment reflects my own wording —I was gratified to note that the Medical Research Council has circulated a note which, in respect of the amendment, states:
"It seems to be an attempt to prioritise research by bringing it towards increasing knowledge of serious and congenital disease and away from less important areas, and as such would be acceptable to the MRC".
I am grateful for the support of the Medical Research Council, except for the use of the dreadful word "prioritise". The form of words used in my amendment indicates the kind of criteria that the licensing authority might use but I willingly admit the text is not perfect.
Let me take an example. We heard earlier in the debate that colour blindness is an inherited disease or defect. If it were possible to detect it in the embryo, would we really suggest that scarce research resources should be devoted to detecting that defect? The difficult area for the licensing authority may lie in those disabilities which can be detected in the embryo and which are disabling, but perhaps not seriously so early in life yet get progressively worse. That indeed may apply to some eye conditions which do not cause total blindness until quite late in life.
The difficulty of a definition perhaps indicates why the Government have avoided the attempt to define. If that is the case, we should recognise the great responsibility that we are placing on the licensing authority; and the Committee should consider whether that is what it wishes to bring about. I beg to move.
Baroness Hooper: I fully recognise the noble Lord's concern in this matter and the apparent desirability of having some kind of agreed list of conditions. I note with interest the MRC's support for the idea of having some list of priorities. However, in the light of the arguments that have been advanced in the course of our discussions on the Bill so far, we all recognise that there are very rapid advances in techniques and increasing knowledge in this area, so that any attempt to define priorities at a particular stage in itself would impose particular difficulties.
That is why the Government feel that this kind of amendment would not be welcome. In practice, it
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would be extremely difficult to decide which diseases came into any particular category, whether it was phrased in the actual wording proposed in this amendment or indeed any other similar wording. We believe that if research were to be licensed, the decision on which research projects to license would be best left to the authority, which will be able to consider each application in detail through the proposed structure of licensing committees. In that context, obviously we have been and are concerned that the composition of those committees should be correct so that they are able to make these decisions which we recognise are important.
In raising this amendment, the noble Lord has underlined the reasonable role that the authority will have in this matter. On that basis I hope that he will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Carter: I am extremely grateful to the Minister for her reply. She is absolutely correct. I was anxious to underline the severe and very real responsibilties that we are placing on the members of the licensing authority in deciding on the lines of research that they will license. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Earl of Halsbury The Earl of Halsbury moved Amendment No. 66:
Page 26, line 32, leave out paragraph (d).
The noble Earl said: This is a probing amendment and it should not occupy the Committee for very long. I gave noble Lords notice during Second Reading that I would raise this point because research into contraceptives using an embryo was outwith the recommendations of the Warnock Committee. I confirmed that with the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock. In fact it was never considered by her committee.
Therefore this is the first new item which has appeared in the context of embryology and embryo research. I think it worth asking why it has been put into the Bill since research at present is yielding very good results. I understand that the strategy behind it is to produce something like auto-immune antagonism to the ovum or sperm, as the case may be. I also understand that it is only likely to give immunity for a couple of years, or something like that. It is not a permanent immobilisation of a woman's fertility capacity. The dose would have to be renewed by a prick in the arm every two years or so. If it is a medicine it brings in the status of the Safety of Medicines Act. Perhaps the noble Baroness or the noble and learned Lord would like to comment on that question.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: The noble Earl surely knows that if his amendment were carried it would throw the International Planned Parenthood Federation into confusion. The whole world is waiting for a better contraceptive.
The Earl of Halsbury: If the noble Lord will give way, I shall not carry this through to a Division. There is no question of the amendment being accepted. I said that it was a probing amendment to find out the current state of play.
The Earl of Lauderdale: Perhaps I may ask my noble friend on what basis the measure goes beyond the Warnock Report and the White Paper.
Lord Ennals: I was arguing the case on an earlier amendment for having some flexibility. If we set up a statutory body in which we have confidence, with people whom we trust, but hedge it around with limitations on what it can do —and we are here setting out what it may or may not do —it is important that it should have some flexibility. I suppose that we could have added a rounded term such as "such other activity as might be in the public good" or what have you. It is perfectly clear, as my noble friend Lord Houghton said, that it is important to have an improved contraceptive, and this seems to me to be the right body to approve research in this field. I should therefore be very happy if the matter were to be withdrawn.
It does not flow from the Warnock Committee. It may well be that certain activities may be undertaken which were not anticipated when the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, produced her report. However, it is within the same field and I believe that it is the natural body to do such research, of course under licence. I hope that the provision will remain in the Bill.
The Earl of Lauderdale: We have been told not once but half a dozen times in Committee earlier this week, and several times today, that the argument for such and such is that it was either in the Warnock Report or in the White Paper. I am asking the Government on what basis they are adding extras that were not in either of those documents. I am only asking for the information.
Viscount Craigavon: Perhaps I may help the noble Earls, Lord Halsbury and Lord Lauderdale. I refer to the guidelines in the latest report of the interim licensing authority.
The Earl of Lauderdale: That is not the White Paper or the Warnock Report.
Viscount Craigavon: They have been in use for some considerable time.
The Earl of Lauderdale: They may have been in use for some considerable time, under the interim licensing authority. We are referring to a statutory body. We have been told over and over again, on Tuesday and more than once today, that a measure in the Bill is justified because there was reference in the Warnock Report or the White Paper. There may have been guidelines by the Interim Licensing Authority, but the issue was not in the White Paper or the Warnock Report.
Viscount Hanworth: If it is a sensible thing to do, I cannot understand why we should raise these various objections. We all know perfectly well that the over-population of this planet is likely to become a major problem. I know of course what the Catholics think about it. However, for the remainder of us I
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should have thought that there was no question whatsoever that this matter should be included.
The Earl of Lauderdale: We had arguments earlier about the slippery slope. We have had arguments about this or that matter being authorised now and the authority then going a little further. We have here an issue that was in neither the White Paper nor the Warnock Report. I hope that we shall be given an answer as to why it has been added.
8.15 p.m.
Lord Walton of Detchant: I believe that scientific progress has developed even since the Warnock Report was published. The amendment is concerned not so much with the development of new drugs for contraception but more with the possibility of developing a vaccine for male contraception in which this test —the embryo research, but also the issue of the hamster test —is very much involved. It is a technique that brings considerable hope of developing new and effective male contraception methods which may have world-wide application. For that reason I believe that it is an important issue to be retained in the Bill.
The Earl of Lauderdale: What one wants to know is that the activities arising from this authority will not expand by a degree here and there and end up in activities that are only marginally implicit in our legislation and may not even be authorised by it.
Viscount Hanworth: That has been my problem in voting on the Bill. There are several things that could be done illegally at the moment in the Bill —such as cloning —which would be highly unfortunate, but I should have thought that it was a quite clear issue and that nothing has been said which should deter us from putting it in the Bill.
Baroness Hooper: I should start by saying to my noble friend Lord Lauderdale that everything that is contained in the Bill is not totally dependent upon being mentioned in the Warnock Report because the report came out some years ago and, as we have already established, a number of changes in techniques and practices have developed in the intervening period. Any measure is not totally dependent on what is in the White Paper. Nevertheless, if my noble friend looks at Annex B of the White Paper he will see that paragraph 48(c) refers to suggested benefits of research which include developing more effective forms of contraception. It is therefore in this case mentioned in the White Paper.
I should also like to establish in the context of the amendment that has been proposed by the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, that we are also speaking to Amendments Nos. 67 and 68, which I understand were grouped with Amendment No. 66.
On the question of contraception, and in relation to the amendment, I should also preface my remarks by saying that the Government are neutral on this question and in the event of a Division would leave it to Members of the Committee to decide according to their own consciences on whether a licence should

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be authorised for research for the purpose of developing more effective techniques of contraception. However, I acknowledge that the noble Earl said in moving the amendment that he intends it as a probing amendment. I would therefore merely say that those who support embryo research for the purpose of developing more effective techniques of contraception argue that embryo research beyond the two-cell stage is important for testing some contraception methods based on vaccines to ensure not only that failure rates are minimal but also that they have no adverse effects if pregnancy nevertheless occurs.
On the other hand —attempting to be even-handed and presenting the other side of the argument —those who are opposed to embryo research being used for this purpose argue that while they accept research involving human embryos in principle for moral reasons, they would not wish that research to be carried out for this purpose. The Government remain neutral on the question and therefore I must leave your Lordships to decide the matter in due course on the basis of the arguments put for and against.
Viscount Craigavon: The noble Baroness said that Amendments Nos. 67 and 68 have been grouped with this amendment. However, she does not appear to have replied to Amendment No. 68 to which I was hoping to speak. I was also hoping to hear comments from the noble Duke. Can the matter be clarified? Are we now talking to Amendments Nos. 67 and 68? It may be better if they dealt with them separately after first dealing with the amendment tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury.
Lord Robertson of Oakridge: I have been entrusted with moving Amendment No. 67 and it may be to the advantage of the Committee if I spoke to it now. The noble and learned Lord said that we could table amendments to Schedule 1 in order to discuss individual areas of research. This is such an amendment. It would exclude the development of methods for detecting the presence of gene or chromosome abnormalities in embryos before implantation. What will be done with the information once it is available?
Research can lead to treatment of the genetic disorders or chromosome abnormalities. However, I have gained the impression from the debates that, as yet, there is no claim that the information will lead to treatment. Therefore, its purpose would be to identify defective embryos so that they could be "weeded out".
I believe that if we go down that road we shall give an unfortunate impression to the public because, in effect, we should be saying that all seriously handicapped people are a burden to society and should not have been born. I question whether that is wise and I shall be interested to hear Member's comments.
The Lord Chancellor: I understand that paragraph (e) of Schedule 3(2) is designed to deal with one of
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the examples given by the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, in the course of his earlier speech. One knows that there are married couples who have been advised that there is a serious risk that a child born of their union will have a congenital disease which may be due to a gene or chromosome deficiency. Very often that risk can be expressed as a percentage. The provision would enable research to be carried out into the development of methods for detecting whether that is so in relation to a particular embryo.
In the normal case, if such couples are willing to accept the risk, they can go forward by the normal method in which case the risk might or might not occur. One has heard of and known couples who have been advised and counselled about the risks but have decided to take it. The woman has conceived in the natural way and sometimes a handicapped child has been born. If that happens once, the question becomes even more serious in respect of a second child and so on. I am sure that many Members of the Committee will know families in which until now every male child has suffered from a distressing congenital problem.
If techniques were developed as a result of successful research, the provision would enable medical advisers to be in a position to offer such couples the option of IVF. They would apply to the embryos produced for that purpose the test developed under this research. They would take the view of the parent regarding what they wish to happen. By using the technique of IVF they may be able to eliminate the risk of the congenital disease in the child born to those parents.
It is a matter entirely for the parents. There is no question of the technique eliminating a particular type of congenital disease if it could be detected in that way. The matter would be entirely for the parents. Some couples would be prepared to take the risk as it now exists without going down this road. However, others may feel that the distress of having a handicapped child, particularly if they have had the experience of having such a child already, is too great.
It is fair to say that a woman bearing a child is naturally concerned that the child is normal. One of the most anxious inquiries made by a mother on the birth of her child is whether it is all right. Anxious examination is usually made at the first opportunity that she has of seeing the child. It is one of the deepest maternal instincts. However, that does not mean that if the mother finds that her child is handicapped the love for the child is any the less. But it is a natural concern that the child is "normal", if I may use that expression without any offence to the handicapped or people who suffer from congenital disease. Accordingly, it is a natural concern for parents to have, and if they are advised that there is a risk, that they should seek to have a normal child if a reasonable method is available.
The method is a reasonable possibility. The Government are neutral on the whole question of research and on all its aspects. Therefore, I do not put forward that view as being concluded, but I thought it right to put those points before the Committee for consideration. No doubt the noble

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Lord will have them in mind when deciding what to do about his amendment.
Viscount Craigavon: That was an extremely reasoned and reasonable reply to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson. The question was debated and the answer was given by the noble Lord, Lord Walton, earlier this afternoon.
I shall not talk about contraception but about genetic and chromosomal diseases which are mentioned in Amendment No. 68. I wish to refer to statistics and I apologise for raising them at this hour of the night. If I confuse Members of the Committee, the statistics will be in Hansard and can be read in the morning at leisure. They are not statistics that I have produced, but those already referred to by the noble Duke. They were produced as a result of a Gallup poll and he first mentioned them on Tuesday. The poll was commissioned by the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children on behalf of LIFE.
I wish to quote further extracts from the poll which are not favourable to the noble Duke's cause in the way that he might have hoped. I shall first read carefully the question asked in the poll so that I do not slant it in any way. The question asks:
"Scientists can create human embryos in a laboratory by fertilising ova with sperm. Do you think this should not be allowed for the following types of experiments?"
Category (c) reads:
"For research into genetics and chromosomal diseases".
The percentage who said that that should not be allowed was 32 per cent. and the percentage that said it should be allowed was 58 per cent. That is the public speaking. Those are not my statistics. As I have said, this poll was commissioned by the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. I hope that those statistics will be available and will be widely disseminated with the other SPUC propaganda for the benefit of the other place.
I take up another point raised by the noble Duke this afternoon. In his major speech on Clause 11 he said that his views represented the majority. I shall give the Committee the statistics and Members of the Committee can decide whether he is speaking for the majority. The poll, having asked other questions about whether we want embryo research to develop new techniques for abortion or for research on testing drugs, neither of which are actually contemplated, the final question was whether or not embryo research should be allowed at all. In fact, there was 1 per cent. difference between the two answers, with a huge number of "don't knows". Therefore, the majority which the noble Duke represents polled 37 per cent. of the votes whereas those who said that research should be allowed polled 36 per cent. and the "don't knows" polled 27 per cent. Therefore, the majority which the noble Duke says he represents is only 37 per cent. I hope that in future the noble Duke will not use those statistics to claim that he is representing the majority on this subject. I apologise if all this is rather confusing but the statistics can be read in my speech in Hansard tomorrow.
I deal with one final question from the poll. It is rather convoluted but I believe that the answer at
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which it arrives is probably not what the noble Duke wanted. The question was as follows:
"If the principal aim of the research into genetic diseases was not to find a cure or treatment but was to try and identify an afflicted embryo so that it could be discarded do you think human embryos should or should not be used for these types of experiments?"
The number of people who said that they should not be used was 29 per cent., and the number of people who said that should be allowed was 55 per cent. According to the statistics, a considerable majority are in favour of the research dealt with in this amendment. I hope that the Committee will accept the arguments of the noble and learned Lord.
8.30 p.m.
The Duke of Norfolk: Since I have been quoted as almost misleading the Committee, I immediately say that the noble Viscount was quoting from the same Gallup poll which I was using. The poll builds up question by question so that one answer did not lead into the next. The critical question was on the last page and 49 per cent. on the consolidated list were in our favour.
Viscount Craigavon: I cannot see how the noble Duke arrives at that figure. However, if he will disseminate those figures publicly, it would be very useful to see the results.
The Duke of Norfolk: We held a press conference and the Gallup poll figures were given to the press. I shall make quite certain that a copy is placed in the Library, if it is not already there. Some people were against the research and some were not, but the final figure of 49 per cent. was on our side. I assure the Committee that that is the situation.
Lord Ennals: We are all grateful to the noble Duke for saying that he will place a copy of this in the Library. I have not seen those figures and therefore took at face value the summary given by the noble Duke. I wish to ask him to place all the figures, including those quoted by the noble Viscount, in the Library.
The Duke of Norfolk: The poll is very complicated, but the final figure was 49 per cent. I am sorry if the Committee feels that it has been misled. I was totally confused, but the press reported the figures. Members of the Committee can see the statistics for themselves.
Lord Bridge of Harwich: To return to the subject matter of Amendment No. 67, the principle of embryo research has been accepted by the Committee. If there is a possibility of research developing a technique which can give to a mother or a would-be mother the option of bearing an unhandicapped as opposed to a handicapped child, surely there is no conceivable rational ground for saying that research for that technique should not be an appropriate objective.
Lord Walton of Detchant: I simply wish to add that if Amendments Nos. 67 and 68 as tabled were accepted by this Committee, it would have the effect of frustrating at least two of the major objectives of the research upon the embryo, which is the matter upon which the Committee divided earlier this evening. For that reason, in my view it would be quite unacceptable to overturn that earlier decision by accepting these two amendments.
Lord Robertson of Oakridge: I did not realise quite what I had started when I moved the amendment. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, and the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor.
The Earl of Halsbury: One of my anxieties was that when the matter appeared in the Bill it had not been discussed publicly at all. We have now had a public discussion and the authoritative voice of the noble Lord, Lord Walton, is now on the record. That leaves me content. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 67 to 70 not moved.]
[Amendment No. 71 had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.]
Schedule 2 agreed to.
Clause 12 agreed to.
Schedule 3 [Consents to use of gametes or embryos]:
[Amendments Nos. 72 to 74 not moved.]
Lord Meston Lord Meston moved Amendment No. 75:
Page 27, line 44, at end insert —
("( ) A consent under this Schedule must provide that in the event of the death of the person or one of the persons who has given such consent or in the event of disagreement between persons who have given such consent as to the future use or storage of any embryo to which such consent relates such consent shall forthwith cease to be effective and all rights of control over the embryo shall pass to the person licensed to keep, use or store the embryo who shall forthwith destroy that embryo.")
The noble Lord said: In speaking to Amendment No. 75, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 77. These two amendments are intended to provide for it to be an invariable term of any consent to the storage or use of embryos that in the event of the death of one of the parties giving consent, or in the event of a disagreement between them, they should forfeit control over the embryo or embryos concerned.
Rightly or wrongly, these amendments relate only to embryos, whereas Schedule 3 governs the consents in relation to the use and storage of gametes as well as embryos. That may or may not be a technical defect in the amendment which perhaps can be corrected later if necessary.
These amendments are designed to give effect, although not precise effect, to the recommendations in chapter 10 of the Warnock Report. They are also the recommendations of the Family Law Bar
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Association as submitted to the Government at the time of the consultation process. My proposals are consistent also, as I understand it, with the terms which are generally speaking written into consent forms as they are presently drafted by or for the clinics involved in these matters.
Perhaps I may briefly read to the Committee paragraph 10.12 of the Warnock Report. It states:
"We consider that the position that may arise in the event of the death of one or both of a couple who have stored an embryo should be clarified. We therefore recommend that when one of the couple dies the right to use or dispose of any embryo stored by that couple should pass to the survivor. We make this recommendation notwithstanding our reservations about the possibility of posthumous pregnancies".
Pausing there, I should say that earlier in the report the recommendation had been that post-mortem implantation should be actively discouraged. Paragraph 10.12 continues:
"We recommend that if both die that right should pass to the storage authority".
With regard to disagreement, paragraph 10.13 of the Warnock Report reads as follows:
"Problems might also arise when, whether in cases of marital breakdown or not, the couple fail to agree how the shared embryo should be used. We recommend that where there is no agreement between the couple the right to determine the use or disposal of an embryo should pass to the storage authority as though the ten-year period has expired. This recommendation and those in the previous paragraph will require legislation".
In the White Paper, particularly paragraphs 51, 58 and 59, the Government in effect decided not to accept the recommendations of the Warnock Report in this regard, preferring to place emphasis on the wishes of the donors. I submit that that in some ways creates a vacuum. Death and disagreement create different problems, but both sets of problems are areas in which the law should if possible provide certainty. I suggest that this Bill does not do that; indeed, it stores up problems for the future. Implantation of an embryo after the death of one of the parties may cause profound psychological problems for the mother and for the child. That was the view of the Warnock Committee at chapter 4.4.
There may also be legal problems if it is thought to be the position that there is, or may be, a right to dispose of an embryo by will. The problems after estrangement or divorce are similar and, I suggest, arguably worse. The Warnock Committee, at the end of paragraph 10.11, stated:
"We hope the couple will recognise that they have a responsibility to make a firm decision as to the disposal and use of the embryo".
The Warnock Committee, however, went on to grapple with the problems which may arise if the couple are incapable of making a firm decision, or disagree. I speak in this context as a matrimonial lawyer who is paid daily to argue about matrimonial disputes involving houses, furniture, money and children. I have recently argued about engagement rings, toastracks and pet dogs. Those are disputes which, as anyone who knows that work will realise, can be vehement and thoroughly depressing.
That depression increased last year when I read of a case —I suspect many Members of the Committee also read of it —in, I think, Tennessee when an estranged couple argued whether an embryo

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should be implanted in the mother as she wanted or not implanted as the father wished. As I recall, the mother succeeded, but it being America I should think there will be several trips to the appeal court before the matter is finally resolved. All family lawyers in this country no doubt shuddered at that case and the prospect it opened up for this country. It reinforced our hope that legislation would prevent that sort of litigation in this country.
Earlier this afternoon the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York said the lawyers only think in terms of things and of persons. Of course he was right, for the good reason that hitherto we have only had to deal with things and persons and not with the problems of embryos. If an embryo is to be treated by the law as a thing, it could obviously be owned. The Warnock Report dealt with that firmly in paragraph 10.11 as follows:
"We recommend that legislation be enacted to ensure there is no right of ownership in a human embryo".
If, however, an embryo is treated as a person, it cannot be owned. If it is to be treated as a person, how are such disputes to be resolved? Presumably they will have to be resolved, if not by ownership, by analogy to child custody cases and by what is in the best interests of the embryo. I do not envy the court which has to decide what is or may be in the best interests of an embryo, particularly if the choice is between being implanted or not being implanted or if to be implanted will mean that it will be brought up by perhaps a thoroughly undesirable mother living in thoroughly undesirable circumstances who almost certainly will not have the support and may indeed have the active opposition of the father, the father having no commitment to the upbringing of that child.
The further question which occurs to me is whether the court in such circumstances would have authority, as in the wardship jurisdiction in this country, to make a decision which is contrary to the wishes of either the mother or the father; for example, saying to the parties, "We will not decide whether the embryo should be implanted now but will delay the decision in the hope that perhaps the mother's position may improve by remarriage or in some other way".
A further problem which occurs to me is whether the father who unsuccessfully opposes implantation should be expected to maintain the child which is brought into the world against his will. The common law does not allow a natural father to contract out of his obligation to maintain.
One simply states those problems to try to avoid them in the future and in the hope that the Government will grasp the nettle which Warnock grasped and perhaps adopt a less laissez faire attitude than is adopted in the Bill. We hope they will deal with the problems which will undoubtedly arise in the future where either one or other of the parties whose consent is required dies or there is a disagreement between them. It is, in my submission, an area which needs certainty rather than uncertainty. I beg to move.
8.45 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor: The noble Lord, Lord Meston, is referring to ground which to some extent we covered in relation to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, in which he sought to classify an embryo either as a person or as a chattel. In spite of what was said earlier today it was not the lawyers who sought that classification; I think on that occasion it was the noble Lord, Lord Kennet. Some of the lawyers who spoke, including my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham, suggested that the lawyers had not developed classifications into which an embryo would properly fit, and therefore he declined to do so. In this particular respect, I followed his good example.
Regarding the amendments, and my understanding of Amendment No. 75, the proposal is that if one of the persons who has given a consent dies, the consent shall no longer be effective. That is one way of dealing with the matter. It does not give much choice to the person who has died while the embryo is still in existence. We have tried to create certainty but in a slightly different way. Death is one point and the second is disagreement. We have sought to deal with both of these. In the first set of circumstances, where the person or one of the persons who had given consent to the future use or storage of the embryo dies, the Government believe not that the embryo should be destroyed, but that the embryo should be used or stored in accordance with the consent of the person who has died.
The noble Lord is saying that one might not contemplate that; and, what would have been said if it had been contemplated? We have tried to deal with that situation. Paragraph 2(2) of Schedule 3 requires a consent to the storage of any gametes or embryo to state what is to be done with the gametes or embryo if the person who gave the consent dies or is unable, because of incapacity, to vary the terms of consent or to revoke it. In other words, the person giving this consent is required to deal in the consent with what he or she wishes to happen in these two events; namely, death or incapacity.
Where there is agreement between the person who has given consent to the future use or storage of the embryo and who has died and the other person who has given such consent, the embryo will be used or stored in accordance with that consent. The whole of this paragraph of Schedule 3 is based on the view that no use or storage of an embryo can be done except with an effective consent. Therefore, I believe it deals effectively with the questions raised by the report of the noble Baroness and also with the question raised by the Family Law Bar Association, but not quite in the same way.
As regards the second set of circumstances where there is disagreement between the persons who had given consent for the future use or storage of any embryo, the Government believe that the consent which the amendment would require Schedule 3 to provide is in effect already provided for in that schedule. Paragraph 6(3) of Schedule 3 prevents any embryo which has been created in vitro being used for any purpose unless there is effective consent to that use by each person whose gametes were used to

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bring about the creation of the embryo. Again, the general principle is that there should be no use unless there is an effective consent.
Paragraph 8(2) prevents any embryo which has been created in vitro being kept in storage unless there is an effective consent to that storage by each person whose gametes were used to bring about the creation of the embryo. The effect of these paragraphs together is that no embryo which has been created in vitro can be used for any purpose or stored without the effective consent of each person whose gametes were used to bring about the creation of the embryo. If one takes the matter without any variation, the original consents must cover the use, and agree to the use. If there is a disagreement, then there is no effective consent from both parties and the embryo must be allowed, as we say, to perish —or to use the phrase used by the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, to degenerate naturally.
That is the ordinary position where the original consent applies or does not, according to the situation. If one or both of the partners change the wishes set out in the original consent, then the revised wishes will be taken into account under the terms of the Bill as it stands. A person who has given a consent is always allowed to vary it. Let us assume that A and B have agreed a particular use of the embryo. If A and B fall out and A decides that he or she does not wish the embryo to be used in that way, A can withdraw the original consent. Thereafter, there is no effective consent to the use of the embryo and it must be allowed to degenerate naturally —or as we say to perish.
I believe I can reasonably claim that we have dealt with all the points in these amendments, not exactly as the noble Lord, Lord Meston, has suggested, but perhaps in a more flexible way which enables the parties to operate to some extent beyond their deaths whereas the noble Lord would restrict their choices to their lifetime.
Lord Meston: I believe that is the difference between the noble and learned Lord and myself. What he describes as greater flexibility could create greater uncertainty. I have studied the Government's position in the White Paper. I wish to consider the matter further. At this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 76 to 79 not moved.]
Lord Meston Lord Meston moved Amendment No. 80:
Page 28, leave out lines 39 and 40.
The noble Lord said: The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor pointed out at an earlier stage
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of this Bill that it was legislation that had to be understood by ordinary people. A moment ago he referred to Schedule 3, paragraph 6(3). That consists of a sentence with 72 words without punctuation before the full stop at the end. I feel rather like the pot calling the kettle black because I have just moved an amendment which contains one sentence of 90 words containing one comma. However, two wrongs do not make a right.
I have tried to understand what the last two lines of sub-paragraph (3) mean. At first I thought that the last two lines were a printing error, but I believe I am wrong about that. I ask what meaning they add to the paragraph. If they add anything, apart from length, it is confusion. I beg to move.
Baroness Hooper: I was labouring under the delusion that this amendment was grouped with Amendments Nos. 75 and 77 which we previously discussed. I believe that the consequences of the noble Lord's amendment are as stated in paragraph 6(3) of Schedule 3. I consider that there is no advantage in the amendment moved by the noble Lord.
Lord Swinfen: If the gametes are given by a married couple or two single people, does that have any effect on the question of consents?
Baroness Hooper: No. As I understand it, the consents are given by the two people involved whether they are married or not.
Lord Meston: I am very sorry to take the noble Baroness by surprise. The grouping was not of my choice. I very pointedly did not speak to this amendment when speaking to the other two. At this stage I shall do no more than ask the Government to look at the matter again. The wording could be improved. Indeed, I venture to suggest that it can only be improved. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdrawn the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Schedule 3 agreed to.
Baroness Blatch: I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.
House adjourned at nine o'clock.