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This process ensures that the HFEA has members drawn from across the UK’s population with the appropriate skills and expertise to enable the authority to fulfil its statutory role effectively. Membership consists of both lay members and people with a specific interest in what the authority regulates, including doctors involved in infertility treatment and scientists involved in human embryo research.
9.30 pm
Lord Patten: The noble Baroness referred to the fact that applications to the authority are open to lay members. Would it be possible for a Roman Catholic to be appointed as a lay member?
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: I have no hesitation in saying that it would be possible for a Roman Catholic to be appointed to the authority; absolutely. I can confirm that in writing should the noble Lord wish. It would be possible and appropriate for him or her to be appointed should he or she be deemed to have the relevant expertise.
Lord Patten: I am extremely grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way yet again; I shall not trouble her further. Has such a person ever been appointed?
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: We do not ask people their religion—
Baroness Deech: Without naming names, I definitely recall that there was at least one Catholic—possibly more—serving when I was chair. Religion simply was never an issue.
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Lord Winston: As a matter of information, is it not right that members of the HFEA must apply after public advertisement and therefore this would depend on who applies to be considered by the HFEA?
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: Advertisements appear in the national press, people apply and it is up to the Appointments Commission whether they are appointed. It is a completely open and transparent process.
Members must declare any conflict of interest with issues that the authority considers and absent themselves from such deliberations as appropriate. The 1990 Act set conditions for the make-up of the authority’s membership. That is covered in Schedule 1 and ensures that the chair or deputy-chair cannot be, or have ever been, a medical practitioner, a person who has been involved in keeping or using gametes outside the body or any person who has been directly involved in commissioning or funding research involving gametes. The 1990 Act further specifies that at least one-third of the members are of a professional background and that at least half of the members are not from any of these backgrounds and are therefore lay.
The current membership of the HFEA includes a philosopher—a professor of philosophy and public policy—who brings a lay and an ethical perspective to discussions. As the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said, it is right that all members of the authority have much to contribute in terms of discussions on ethics. That is a matter for the authority as a whole. I feel strongly that there is a need for the membership of the authority to include people who have specialist expertise in the areas that the HFEA regulates. I know that this view is shared more widely outside the House, as it was brought up as one of the reasons against replacing the HFEA by the Regulatory Authority for Tissues and Embryos. The areas for which the HFEA has oversight are complicated and, in order for it to be effective, it is important that the membership includes people who have specialist expertise and first-hand knowledge of the subject matter.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, and others asked about applications currently before the HFEA in respect of interspecies embryos. The HFEA is considering two licence applications from Newcastle and King’s College to undertake the creation of interspecies embryos for research. The applications were received late last year, and the HFEA has consulted the public on the creation of embryos of this type. The authority has decided in principle that it is appropriate for it to consider the applications and is doing so through the licensing committee.
Amendment No. 62 is the new clause of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, which would require the keeping of records that are already maintained by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and HFEA-licensed clinics. It is a condition of every licence issued by the HFEA that proper records are maintained. That was supplemented in July this year when new regulations, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Quality and Safety) Regulations 2007, came into force. They amended the 1990 Act to implement the
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The seventh edition of the HFEA’s code of practice, published to coincide with the introduction of new regulations, requires that any occurrence that is inconsistent with routine patient care is reported to the authority. This would ensure that the example cited by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, of a clinic in Newcastle, was properly reported. The HFEA would expect an incident report from a licensed clinic whenever the clinic is made aware of a case of severe ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, or other adverse reactions to the stimulatory drugs or the egg-collection procedure itself, where this results in prolonged hospitalisation. The information provided by my noble friend Lord Winston is, of course, extremely helpful. Non-identifying information about adverse reactions to treatment, notified to the HFEA, would be made available by the authority on request.
Furthermore, Section 15A of the 1990 Act requires the HFEA to investigate reports of serious adverse reactions, and events, and take appropriate regulatory action should this be required. The HFEA already has appropriate procedures in place to ensure that severe side effects of treatment are recorded locally and notified to the authority. I hope that noble Lords will consider not moving their amendments but, before I sit down, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, that I will speak to the usual channels and try to ensure the discussion on Report of a bioethics commission or Joint Committee comes at the beginning of Report, as he recommended.
Lord Alton of Liverpool: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her reply, and especially for the fair wind she and the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, have given to the principles outlined in Amendment No. 21. If some way can be found to provide the information about the balance of resources allocated to the different kinds of stem cell technologies, everyone in the House would be better informed and grateful for that. I accept the earlier point of my noble friend Lord Patel, however, that this is not just about insisting on equity. It may well be that we should be insisting that a lot more money goes into adult stem cells if the case that I have been making all afternoon comes to pass. It is not about getting an artificial figure, but about having proper data.
On the argument about the make-up of the HFEA in my Amendments Nos. 22 and 23, my noble friend Lady Deech talked about the actress appointed to the committee. I do not know the views of the actress, but I think I know the views of both the rabbi and the bishop. My noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries will recall that, when he chaired the Select Committee of your Lordships’ House that retrospectively looked at the orders we passed in 2001, 38 theologians from the reformed, Anglican, Orthodox and Catholic traditions, submitted a joint statement opposing the
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No bishop and no rabbi who has ever spoken out against the use of human embryos has, for the reasons that my noble and right reverend friend described, ever been appointed to the HFEA. His argument was that it would be incompatible because of the contrary opinion that they would put and because that might place them in an unacceptable dilemma. I do not accept the basis of that argument.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth: I do not think that I used the word “incompatible”; I just said that it would be very difficult.
Lord Alton of Liverpool: I am grateful to my noble and right reverend friend for giving that slight nuance to the point. Nevertheless, even if it was very difficult, we should not rule it as outside the scope of the membership of the HFEA in future—the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Patten. If we are looking at future appointments, it is not unreasonable to have members who do not themselves support the original premise on which an authority was established. Sometimes, by bringing informed arguments to the debate, they are able to convince people of the merits of looking again—especially at things such as repetitive use of human embryos, the very point that I enumerated as one of the key questions.
Lord Winston: The noble Lord mentions that no rabbi who is opposed to human embryo research has been appointed to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. As far as I am aware, there is no rabbi who is opposed to the use of embryos for research. Indeed, the London Beth Din, which is the authentic legal authority of the Jewish courts in this country, supported this research in quite strong terms—as I think that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, will remember—when, stem cells were discussed in the Select Committee.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I am sorry to intervene, but I have a real problem here about the issue of good faith and bad faith. It seems to me that if a body is set up by law, to seek to go on to it to undermine what it was set up to establish raises an issue of bad faith. Many years ago, I was asked as a local councillor to sit on the board of a girls’ public day school trust. I said that I was committed to education, but that they should realise that I did not believe in fee-paying schools and I thought that, in that context, there was an issue of bad faith. They said, “Thank you very much. We think that, as a result, perhaps you should not sit on our board because you are at core opposed to the objectives of the organisation”. They were honourable; I tried to be honourable; and that was that.
It seems to me a little odd to demand the right—when you have failed to win an argument in the parliamentary forum, which is the appropriate
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Lord Alton of Liverpool: I will come back to the point that the noble Baroness just made, but let me first deal with the intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Winston. I take him back to our very first debate in your Lordships' House—I instigated it on a Motion in 1998, I think. The then Chief Rabbi, Lord Jakobovits, who was a Member of your Lordships’ House, spoke strongly against the use of human embryos in cloning procedures. I will happily send a copy of his speech from that debate to the noble Lord, Lord Winston.
I do not think that one can say that every rabbi or every bishop shares the same opinion, but I believe, turning to the point made by the noble Baroness, that to exclude people who may take a contrary view is wrong. I told your Lordships that I serve on a local ethics committee connected with my university, looking at the animal procedures that take place there. I am very struck by the fact that, on that committee, there is one member who is opposed to vivisection. That does not compromise the way in which he participates in our debates. I like to hear what he has to say about repetitive use and duplication of use of animals. I am not always convinced by his arguments, but I think that those arguments are worth hearing. They are certainly not arguments of bad faith. To exclude people entirely from such committees because a parliamentary vote went one way or the other seems to me entirely wrong.
When we had the vote on human cloning in 2001, nearly a third of your Lordships voted against that proposition. The House was divided, but by a majority voted in favour of the 1990 legislation. A significant number of people have always been opposed to it. The precondition that my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries put before the House that only someone with a passion should be appointed rather than someone who is neutral would mean that everybody who is appointed to the HFEA would be on the other side of the argument.
9.45 pm
Lord Patten: This point about passion is important, but would the noble Lord not agree that on this authority or some future authority that might be considering, say, licences to do with interspecies embryos, it might be quite useful to that authority’s deliberations to have someone who is not passionate and who would say, “I recall the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, in his speech during the last group of amendments saying that a lot of very wise scientists are unable to define what one of these things is, so shouldn’t we pause for a moment or two before we decide to license it or not?”? That has nothing to do with passion or being anti-science; it is to do with the small, still voice of reason.
Lord Alton of Liverpool: I entirely agree with the point that the noble Lord, Lord Patten, has just made. People who come to these committees do not have to
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My noble friend Lady Deech said that the HFEA came out against sex selection. Indeed, the Bill prohibits it. I welcome that, but I think that she would also concur with what I said about the HFEA’s public consultation about interspecies embryo experimentation. One in eight of the 800 responses to the consultation document was opposed, but that did not influence the HFEA’s position.
Turning finally to Amendment No. 62—
Lord Elton: I think that I heard the word “finally” and I want to get in a question before the noble Lord withdraws from the field, if that is what he is going to do. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, raised an important point, and the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said that it was an obvious point that had not been overlooked and that the interests of the child were written in to the law in every possible direction. Does that go beyond Section 13(5) of the 1990 Act? She spoke as if there was a great barrage of protection there. This is important, so perhaps the Minister or the noble Baroness could direct me to where else I should look.
Lord Alton of Liverpool: The Minister will want to return to that intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Elton. People from a child welfare background have been appointed to the HFEA; I welcome that, as I said in my opening remarks. I am not saying that everyone who has ever been appointed to the HFEA has a loaded, biased view that I find totally unacceptable. I am not saying that at all; in fact, my noble friend Lady Deech did a superb job during her time as chairman and was very objective and fair, even though I sometimes disagreed with the conclusions that the HFEA reached. I am arguing that the composition of the membership of the HFEA should be more balanced and that it should be more questioning of the way in which the law is being interpreted—in particular, about the tendency to pre-empt Parliament. To have a meeting of the HFEA this very week, between the sittings of this Committee of your Lordships’ House, to determine applications on interspecies embryos will create a great deal of cynicism in the minds of the public, who wonder whether we have not allowed ourselves to become just a rubber stamp.
Baroness Deech: Before my noble friend reaches a conclusion, I shall add, on the welfare of the child, that at the moment the authority is very concerned about multiple births, with all the adverse consequences that they have for the health of the children. It went very far—some said too far—in counselling of all sorts. It keeps a register of the names of donor fathers and spent a great deal of time debating the anonymity of donors and the effect that that would have on children. I could go on and on. This all springs from the statute.
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Lord Alton of Liverpool: I am grateful for that intervention. The Committee will be relieved to know that it brings me to end of what I want to say on this group of amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Winston, also touched on the importance of collecting data on other issues as well as OHSS. He said that we should have information about what happens to children born as a consequence of these procedures after their birth. On another occasion, I heard the noble Lord asking about the data that we have on children born after the freezing of human embryos and the incidence of disability arising from that. I agree that we should have that data. We need to know a lot more about all these things.
The noble Lord, Lord Patel, was right to say that patient safety and patient care should be the issues of which we take greatest consideration. Perhaps we could collect data on people who have been treated here and developed OHSS and who then go back to overseas destinations. At least we might invite them to provide self-reporting. That might be useful data to accumulate in the future. I see some of the practical difficulties that have been raised in that context.
This has been, as have the other debates that we have had today, an illuminating debate. Great expertise has been brought to the Committee. I hope that the Government will reflect on some of the points that
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Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Schedule 1 [Amendments to Schedule 1 to the 1990 Act relating to membership of the Authority]:
[Amendments Nos. 22 and 23 not moved.]
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff: Perhaps I may briefly convey a message to the Committee from the noble Lord, Lord Brennan. He wishes the Chamber to know that he is doing fine and that after a few minor adjustments he will be back with us, but certainly not tonight.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
- House adjourned at 9.52 pm.
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