I support this amendment wholeheartedly. If my noble friend Lord Hunt decides to divide the House, I shall join him in the Lobby. I disagree with him on a fundamental point, which I shall discuss in a second, but the basis behind his amendment is absolutely correct.
One issue is that London in particular and the United Kingdom in general is increasingly becoming a centre for the healthcare market, which is burgeoning—and, increasingly, there are risks that various practices are being adopted that are not ideal for patients and in some cases are clearly not safe and not validated. If there is an issue about a regulatory authority considering the commercial value and income for the United Kingdom, that would be a very serious issue indeed.
On the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, I was not going to get to my feet until I heard my noble friend move his amendment, but I disagree with him fundamentally about that body. It is not a good body but one that we have been left with, and I think that it badly needs reform. It is nothing to do with mitochondrial transfer, which we will discuss in a couple of weeks—I think that it will regulate that perfectly well. But at present there are large areas that that body is not regulating well. My noble friend says that it is the envy of the world, but I say with deference to him that the fact is that there is not a single sovereignty anywhere in the globe that has adopted that model. No one has adopted that model because it is not widely respected outside the United Kingdom. That is a problem. None the less, we have it.
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One of the issues that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has not been capable of dealing with is the burgeoning private care market in London. To give a typical example, last week a friend of mine—a lady approaching her 40s, who does not have a partner and is worried that she might run out of fertility time —went to a private clinic in London asking for donor insemination. I do not want to go into the gruesome details of donor insemination, but essentially it is simply placing donor sperm inside the body of the woman so that she can conceive. It is not exactly a high-tech treatment—but it is regulated by the HFEA.
The Minister might be surprised to hear that the clinic my friend went to, which is not by any means the most expensive in London, was going to charge her £11,000 for three months of treatment. That kind of exploitation is widespread across the market. I have recently seen patients who have written to me in distress because they have mortgaged their houses and spent £60,000 or £70,000 on three cycles of in vitro fertilisation.
When we have complained to the HFEA, it has again and again said that it is not there to regulate prices and there is nothing it can do. I think that the HFEA is anxious about the situation, but cannot do anything about it. If we do not agree to this amendment—if not now, at Third Reading—there is a real risk that we will encourage what is already a disgraceful market in this important area.
The House should not forget that infertile people are deeply vulnerable. They are very distressed. They are often seemingly deranged—although of course they
are not: they are sensible people like the rest of us. Noble Lords who have infertile relatives who have had these treatments will know well what it means to those individuals. This is a very serious issue. That combination of avarice and desperation is a serious worry. So when it comes to any kind of impetus to understand and to try to look at the commercial value of this activity—even though it is undoubtedly capable of producing an income to London and other parts of the country—we should be very aware that, as with the whole of healthcare, which my noble friend has covered in his amendment, we need to give it very serious consideration.