Question
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Earl Howe on 15 June (WA 100), what steps the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has taken to monitor the number of embryos used in research, as recommended by one of the HFEA's peer reviewers in 2006; how the HFEA has maintained a record of the data requested by that peer reviewer regarding how many embryos were utilised in each research project; and what was the HFEA's response to that peer reviewer's assessment that "the number of embryos used for ES cell derivation seems to be very high" at the Newcastle Fertility Centre.
Answer
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has advised that it issued general directions requiring research centres to maintain a record, in any format, of the total number of embryos created, used or disposed of during that project of research. Compliance with this direction is monitored during renewal inspections. The number of embryos used in each inspection is recorded in the report of inspection visits to research centres. The authority's Research Licence Committee considered the peer reviewer's assessment when deciding whether to renew the research licence R0145 at Newcastle’s fertility Centre for Life at its meeting on 20 November 2006. Members of the committee noted that the HFEA has never specified an expected success rate in the derivation of stem cell lines and that the number of completed lines did not deviate significantly from the reviewer's expectations when taking into account the large margin of error entailed by the small numbers involved. The licence committee was satisfied that the proposed use of human embryos were necessary for the purpose of the research.