Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [Lords]

I thank my hon. Friend for that observation. I think the proposed legislation allows for that in certain arenas, and for the fact that, as we said on Second Reading, many new discoveries and technologies will be developed out of human DNA understanding. The Bill must allow frameworks to be easily adapted. We do not want to have to have a debate every year for two or three days with Committees and so on; we need to make sure that we can take science on, and that when new science comes through that is useful, the legislation allows for that. I welcome the fact that we in this Chamber are debating this matter in the way that we are; that is important, because we are reflecting much of the feeling that there is among the general public, and that is how it should be. I am very keen for a Joint Committee to be established to look at ethical questions in the same way as do certain organisations and charities. There is no reason why we in this Chamber should not show ourselves in a good light by picking up on the general debates and arguments out among the public, and that is what we are doing now. What else could we do with these admixture cells? We could take nuclei from people with motor neurone disease—I see the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) has suddenly perked up at the mention of MND—and put that into the animal kernel or cytoplasm. Why do we use animal cells, in any case? Because we cannot get human eggs at this stage. The scientific community would not want to use animal cells in elements of its research if it could get human eggs. So we could look at what these MND genes do up until the 14-day stage, when such admixed embryos would have to be destroyed. We could see if the genes start working and what they do to the cells at this early stage. This is how research is done: we might not see what happens, but we can ask questions—and I suggest to the House that these questions are very much worth asking.