Clause
42Woman
in civil partnership at time of
treatment Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
Mark
Simmonds: I have a couple of examples that the Minister
might like to consider overnight so that she can include them in her
correspondence tomorrow. However, my first question does not relate to
that matter. It is not clear what happens if a civil partner
does not consent. Am I to assume that the same applies in civil
partnership as with marriage—that, as we discussed earlier,
consent is assumed?
I shall give
examples of two complexities. First, what happens in a civil
partnership in which both partners consent—by implication or
otherwise—and the civil partnership is legally separated
post-implantation of the embryo and one member of the original same-sex
couple marries a man during the gestation period? Is that man the
father? Does common law apply in that situation? Is that man therefore
the parent?
The second
example has the same initial set of circumstances. If there is a legal
separation of a civil partnership, but a new and different civil
partnership is then put in place, who is the parent? Is it the initial
civil partner, when consent was assumed for the implantation to take
place, or is it the new civil partner with whom the pregnant woman has
entered into a civil partnership? Alternatively, is it up to the
pregnant woman to make a choice between the
two?
Dr.
Pugh: It is probably my lack of attention to detail that
prompts me to ask this question. The explanatory notes give the idea
that there could be two sorts of arrangements: one in which civil
partners happily consent to the arrangement, and the other in which
only one partner does so. Similar provisions seem to apply to married
couples, so the arrangements are equivalent. I understand that, and I
know where everyone is coming from on that question. However, that
might create problems further down the line for couples and civil
partners.
If a child
enters into the marriage or civil partnership but is not wanted, one
would suppose that duties in relation to the child—whether
imposed by the Home Office or others—were shared
collectively.
Dawn
Primarolo: It is not a question of whether a child is
wanted; it is about who is mentioned on the birth
certificate—that is all. The route that the hon. Gentleman is
going down is about a child not being wanted. If there is a separation
in a relationship and there are existing children, the question of how
the family unit bonds is a matter for the couple. The Bill does not
enter into that in any shape or form. Indeed, no legislation enters
into the situation when there are
stepchildren.
Dr.
Pugh: I am grateful to the Minister for that
clarification. What I think she is saying—I shall tell the
Committee and she can say whether I have the gist of it—is that
the clause does not alter any other piece of domestic legislation,
family law or otherwise, but that it simply relates to the very
technical, specific and precise matter of whether someone wants to go
on the
certificate. Mr.
Gary Streeter (South-West Devon) (Con): The clause is the
first in a series of measures giving legal effect to same-sex
couples—in this case lesbian couples—having IVF, in some
cases on the NHS. I hope that the Committee will forgive me if I make a
few comments to suggest why the clause should not stand part of the
Bill. In doing so, I am speaking for myself—not for my party or
as a Front-Bench spokesperson.
The clause
should not be allowed to pass without making some comment to reflect a
considerable amount of opinion in the country. As we legislate on
behalf of the whole country, it is important that certain opinions are
voiced, and I hope to do so in a reasonable
manner. I
wish to express concern about the clause and subsequent clauses. Some
people argue that because gay adoption is legal, it is only natural
that same-sex couples should have the right to equal access to IVF
treatment. The clause deals particularly with the birth certificate
arrangements in that instance. I certainly understand the argument in
terms of equality, but I believe that permitting IVF for lesbian
couples is wholly different from lesbian adoption. I say that because
when a child is conceived who is later adopted by a lesbian couple,
they at least had the chance of having a father and might well have had
a father for a certain period of time. That child already exists. We
are talking about the state facilitating the process of a child being
created who will have no chance whatsoever of ever having a father
during the duration of his or her childhood, and the Bill has precisely
that effect. Do you want to slap me down, Mr.
Hood?
Mr.
Streeter: I am
grateful. I
do not intend to repeat this speech during our proceedings on the
remaining clauses in the cluster. That is why I hope that I can have my
say on this clause, which leads us into the other
clauses. In
clause 45, we have the chilling
words “no
man is to be treated as the father of the child.”
I suggest that those
words raise huge questions about child rights that have so far been
given no attention in our deliberations. We are talking about two women
creating a child who will never have a father. What is wrong with that?
All my instincts are against that notion as it flies in the face of
common sense and nature. I also believe that many of our constituents
do not know that this is taking place through the single-woman route,
or that it will be going on once the Bill becomes law. I think that
many of our constituents would be puzzled by same-sex couples having
IVF on the NHS, given the pressure that the NHS is under.
None of that
may be enough to persuade the Committee that the clause should not
stand part of the Bill, so let us consider some research on why the
matter is so important. Of course, it is our responsibility as
legislators to look at evidence and not to rely simply on our own
instincts. Surely we must not do anything today that would prejudice
the paramount interests of the child in light of the current balance of
research. What, therefore, does the research say about how we should
approach the subject? An extensive research base unequivocally
demonstrates that fathers are important and bring something distinctive
to the parenting process that is different from what mothers bring. The
Minister might remember that after a few refusals, she allowed me to
intervene on Second Reading to ask whether the Government thought there
was any difference in the process of a loving same-sex
couple—two mothers bringing up a child—and a loving
mother and father bringing up a child? Is there no advantage at all in
having a father? The Minister was good enough to say that that was not
the Government’s position. She must therefore accept that having
a father can be important in the circumstances that I have just
described— [Interruption.]The
Chairman: Order. Hon. Members must give the hon. Gentleman
the right to have a
hearing.
Mr.
Streeter: Thank you, Mr.
Hood. Fathers
bring something distinctive to the party. One can only handle research
in relation to children responsibly by concluding that we must assume
that the best interests of the child are, on average—although we
know of wonderful examples that buck the trend—less likely to be
met in the absence of a father. In the light of the very extensive body
of research, we have to conclude that it would be wrong of the state to
facilitate the deliberate creation of children with the intention that
they should be denied the chance of ever having a father for the
duration of their childhood, yet that is what the clause does. The body
of research is so extensive that I cannot refer to all of it, but I
want to cite a few texts. They have not come to me from lobby groups,
so I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury will be happy
for me to mention
them. 6.15
pm The
first document is called “Theorizing the Father-Child
Relationship” and it was published in 2004. It
states: “Recent
work suggests that fathers play a much larger role than mothers in the
socialization of children’s emotions, especially in anger
regulation.” Another
report called “Toward Disentangling Fathering and
Mothering”—I am not sure who comes up with these snappy
titles—states:
“there is
support here for the relative importance of fathers’ (as
compared to mothers’) support of both sons and daughters. Youth
who report feeling supported by their fathers are better able to engage
prosocially outside the home...Lastly, positive fathering tends to
be linked to lower levels of later depression for early adolescent
girls, whereas positive mothering tends to be linked to lower levels of
later depression for early adolescent
boys.” In
other words, mothers and fathers bring different things to
children. I
have similar quotes, but I will give just one
more: “Our
longitudinal findings for traditional families seem to point to a
unique contribution of the father to the child’s emotional
security”. That
is from a report called “The Uniqueness of the Child-Father
Attachment
Relationship”. A
smaller body of research focuses narrowly on studying same-sex
parenting, about which we heard quite a lot on Second Reading. I think
that the BMA sent all hon. Members a briefing on the subject, which
refers to some findings. The BMA report
states: “A
substantial amount of research has been carried out on the parenting
skills of lesbian couples. In the early days, research focused upon
women who had started a family in a heterosexual relationship but
continued to raise their children in a lesbian relationship. More
recently, research has concentrated upon lesbian couples who seek to
have a child through donor insemination at a licensed fertility
clinic”— as
would be permitted by clause 42. It continues:
“Social
research on children born to these families has given similar findings
to those children born to solo mothers. Their emotional and
psychological development is comparable to children born of donor
insemination to two heterosexual parents. In fact, the second female
parent often has greater parent-child interaction than do the fathers
in the heterosexual
couples.” That
seems to be very supportive of the parenting skills of two mums, as
opposed to a mother and a father. On the basis of that briefing, one
might have presumed a supporting reference to a selection of key texts
to define that “substantial amount of research”. In
reality, however, the statement in question is backed by just one
footnote, which cites just one 11-year-old journal
article—hardly an extensive research
base. Jeremy
Wright (Rugby and Kenilworth) (Con): My hon. Friend will
tell me straight away if he intends to come on to this issue in his
speech. Does he share my concern that as the child of such a practice
grows up, he or she will instinctively understand that it cannot be
right that both of his or her mothers were the only people involved in
his or her conception? Is he therefore concerned about the effect on
the child of that realisation and where it may
lead?
Mr.
Streeter: I did not intend to come on to that point in
this speech; I made it on Second Reading. However, my hon. Friend is
right. I think that I said on Second Reading that that realisation
could only add to the turbulence of the teenage years—the
self-discovery, the identity crisis that many hon. Members in this Room
have clearly gone through and possibly one or two still are. That
realisation certainly cannot help, and I am concerned about
that. There
is other research on the subject, most of which is linked to somebody
called Professor Susan Golombok, whom we heard quite a lot about on
Second Reading. She has written extensively and almost
exclusively—hardly anyone else seems to write on the subject
with the same authority as her. A paper that she co-authored called
“Children with Lesbian Parents”, published in the journal
Developmental Psychology in 2003, stated
that “it
may be the involvement of a second parent rather than the involvement
of a male parent that makes the
difference.” Notice
the use of the words “it may”. That is hardly conclusive.
It could equally be argued that it may
not. In
another journal, Golombok et al go on to say that the loss of a parent
through relationship
breakdown— Dr.
Brian Iddon (Bolton, South-East) (Lab): On a point of
order, Mr. Hood. My understanding was that the House had
been given a chance to debate the need for a father, admittedly not on
this clause. As Chairman of the Committee, are you now allowing a
debate on the need for a father, which the hon. Gentleman appears to be
reopening? I would welcome your
ruling.
The
Chairman: The hon. Gentleman knows that specific clauses
were given permission to be decided on the Floor of the House. The
clause that we are discussing now is the business of the Committee. The
hon. Member for South-West Devon is perfectly in order when speaking to
a stand part debate.
Mr.
Streeter: Thank you, Mr. Hood. I have nearly
finished. I apologise for detaining the Committee for so long, but I
think that the voice needs to be
heard. I
am talking about the further research of Professor Golombok, who says
that perhaps it is just the loss of a parent through relationship
breakdown, whether heterosexual or homosexual, that is the real engine
for prejudicing the best interests of the child. That is interesting
and makes sense, but fails to take account of the fact that the only
study of relationship stability within the context of civil partnership
arrangements was done in Sweden, where such relationships have been
legal since the early 1990s. That study showed that male gay couples
are 50 per cent. more likely to break up than married heterosexual
couples and that the rate of partnership break-up for lesbian couples
is about double that for gay couples. It does not help the argument to
postulate that the problem is discordant relationships, because that is
much more likely to face the children who, sadly, might be coming into
existence as a result of clause
42.
Dawn
Primarolo: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that what counts
in every circumstance is the quality of the parenting? For instance,
where children are sent away to boarding school at an early age, they
are removed from their parents, but the quality of their relationship
continues, even though they are separated for long periods. The
constant presence of a particular family mix is not the guiding point
in the development of children, but rather the fact they are loved and
valued and the quality of their relationships, regardless of the
structure of the
family.
The
Chairman: Order. The Minister is taking a wee bit long
over her
intervention.
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