Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [Lords]

I was not going to speak in this debate, but the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) and those of the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Burrowes) require a brief response. First, we have amendment No. 49, which is in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Southport. It would add the words ““via cytoplasm”” to the provisions of clause 3, and it touches on the issue raised by the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh). The hon. Gentleman is correct: there is no longer an absolute ban in primary legislation on some of the things that the Government clearly intend to ban, because it requires the secondary legislation to be written, as I am sure that it would be, in such a way as to allow only those forms of treatment of mitochondrial disease that are caused by cytoplasmic factors, and only in such a way that there is no breach of the provisions and policies enunciated by the Government, namely that there will be no human reproductive cloning, or germ-line nuclear genetic amendment. I have already said in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Southport that it would be better for the primary legislation to state what it intends in purest terms. It is unfortunate that the Government have not found a way to do that. I believe that the Government said in Committee that they had tried to draft the legislation so that such practice would be restricted in such a way. I do not see why a phrase such as ““via cytoplasm”” or something similar would not be acceptable, at least to narrow the issue. I do not accept for a moment that the current wording opens the door to those things feared by my hon. Friend, but given the battle we have had to get to this stage, in which we have had to overcome people whipping up fear about what might happen—we have heard some rather dismal examples today—it would be better if the legislation were clear. It is unfortunate that it is not, and for that reason, I would support amendment No. 49. The second issue relates to new clause 24, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Southport and others, which would ban the placing of human gametes into an animal. This was dealt with in Committee, thanks to my hon. Friend, and the Minister wrote a letter to him explaining why it is not considered necessary or appropriate to include such a provision. I agree with what the Minister said in that letter—I will not go into it because she may be planning to do that. In 1990, it was not considered necessary to include measures in legislation to ban the practice of inserting sperm into animals. That procedure is not part of science, and it is not appropriate for it to be dealt with in the Bill. Moreover, valuable science is being done, as the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust and the Association of Medical Research Charities have said, involving the use of early germ line cells in animal models to explore how they develop in a in-vivo system—in a living system. We cannot do that in humans for all sorts of ethical reasons, but we permit the practice, under tight regulation, in animals. We do so to explore what causes infertility and, for example, what the impact of certain types of chemotherapy might be on infertility. The Bill's drafting means, for good reasons, that ““gametes”” includes germ line cells at any stage of their development, including immature germ-line cells found in the ovary and the testes, which are subject to such experiments. One could list—but I will not do so—papers that have been published in peer review journals using such work, and I have no doubt that such work is being done in this country. My hon. Friend's new clause would prevent that work, and he accepted in Committee, on the record, that that would be an unintended consequences of what I describe as an unnecessary step. I hope that the House is reassured that the amendment is unnecessary, but if that does not make the argument, the speech that we heard from the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries) put the fact that it would be inappropriate beyond any doubt. The third point is about the interesting issue that the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate raises in amendment No. 47. We must accept—I hope that the Government will accept this—that it has not been possible to produce an exhaustive list of admixed embryo types. I do not believe that it is possible to do so; indeed, the Academy of Medical Sciences accepts in its paper that it is probably not possible. The Government have made the best attempt that they can and it is only right that we should accept that the list is not guaranteed to be exhaustive. The hon. Gentleman's amendment is a good example of some of the debates that we could have, but that is why we have the HFEA. It is there to ensure that scientists understand that there is a need to fall within the regulations where at all possible. I cannot imagine any scientist in this country seeking to identify types that would not come before the HFEA, so that they could argue in a court of law, ““Well, it's not human enough at the point at which we were seeking to implant it to be covered by the HFEA.”” That is not how science works.