Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, as one of many non-scientists who have taken part in the extensive debates on this issue, I assure the noble Lord, Lord Bates, that we do not need extra time to think again because we have not thought; I have to say that we spent a lot of time at a detailed Committee stage and on Report in this House discussing this very issue. Like other noble Lords, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on the very temperate way in which he introduced his amendment on an issue on which he feels very strongly. It helps the quality of debate if he is able to move amendments as he has today. However, he has not answered the query that some of us addressed to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, who is unfortunately not here today, when she raised a very similar issue at an earlier stage. I take it in the noble Lord’s amendment—and he will correct me if I have misunderstood it—that when he says, "““or in any circumstances where the purposes of the proposed research””," by ““purposes”” he means outcomes. In that case, my question remains how you know until you have done it. You will know the outcomes of this procedure only when you can compare it with a result by some other means. Unless you follow all avenues, only then do you know which is the more fruitful; what you cannot do is a series of linear experiments, because at that point you cannot know what hurdle you seek to address. This amendment presents a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument. You already have to know the outcome you would have achieved without doing it so that you therefore know you can get to the same outcome by some other way that you can take. Forgive me, but that is no way in which to conduct research, and certainly not scientific research.