Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [Lords]

As sufficient brickbats have been handed out so far, may I put on record that this emotive Bill was dealt with courteously and considerately in Committee? The big debate is about whether it is right to extend the range of experiments involving the human embryo that may be carried out. The alleged goal is the extension of scientific and medical knowledge that could alleviate human suffering, especially, but not exclusively, that of a generic origin. For some hon. Members, no possible reduction in suffering, improvement in maternity or growth of knowledge can justify what they regard as the violation of human life and the interference with normal human development. Their position is unqualified. For many hon. Members in the Chamber, however, this is a case of balancing hope and fear. On the one hand, there is the hope that some day, terrible inheritable and cellular diseases will be conquered, and on the other hand, there is the fear that an increasingly casual approach to human life will denature our society and create possibilities that we would not wish. That balance is being played out in nearly every Member's head. I suspect that we cannot know with any confidence whether those hopes or fears—or both—will be realised many years hence, so we all act on a kind of faith. Our position depends on whether we believe that the grounds for hope outweigh the grounds for fear, or vice versa. On Second Reading, that point was made most eloquently by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), who is not in the Chamber; he said that he was more fearful than hopeful. That is the heart of the debate. Whatever one's judgment on the main issue, my amendments Nos. 49 and 50 and new clause 24 do not affect it, because regardless of one's take on the Bill—for or against—we know that it was never intended that the Bill would authorise human genetic engineering or reproductive cloning, even through it repeals the Human Reproductive Cloning Act 2001. Nor was it intended that the Bill would allow scope for genetic engineering or reproductive cloning. The humane intention behind the Bill is to allow women whose eggs are encased in cytoplasm with disease-carrying mitochondria to transfer those eggs into healthy cytoplasm and avoid inheritable disease. I am sure that we all wish to avoid the transmission of inheritable disease. The key point is that the Bill says that an egg or embryo for which mitochondrial disease is addressed is a ““permitted”” egg or embryo. It is an unquestionable, but ignored, fact that some mitochondrial diseases result from deficiencies in the nucleus, rather than arising from the cytoplasm or the mitochondria. The manipulation of the nucleus is thus—subject to regulation, of course—unintentionally permitted. Several amendments in the group, including Nos. 49 and 41, would address that by simply closing the door, or drawing the line, and restricting the law to what was originally intended.