Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Mitochondrial Donation) Regulations 2015 — House of Lords, 2015-02-24
Topic: Other
John Gummer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, if ever anyone questions the value of this House, this evening proves it. It has been a really valuable debate and I hope that all noble Lords who have taken part in it and those who have listened will recognise that we have all learnt and valued what we have heard, even from those who have spoken from a different point of view There was a phrase used during the debate that particularly annoyed me—an attack on playing God. I do not believe that that is a proper way to discuss these issues, not least because it is of the nature of the Christian understanding of creation that we share with God in His creative power. It is the great gift of the Almighty to us. Therefore, the idea that we should not do any of these things because for some reason or other they are reserved to God seems to me to be fundamentally theologically unsound as well as philosophic nonsense. I hope no one has suggested that those who take the view that I take do so from some arcane understanding of the Almighty Nor do I think anyone will now suggest that we were trying to push this whole debate into the long grass—and in case anyone should be worried, I do not intend to take up the time of the House for very much longer. The long grass was certainly not my intention. As the Minister knows, I have unbounded admiration for him and he again showed why we should return to the position of Ministers in this House being Cabinet Ministers as well. However, in describing his side he still left me with three very fundamental reasons for saying that we need to have certain things in place before we vote First, on the two issues, he is perfectly right to say that it is reasonable to bring them before the House. The objection is that they are brought before the House without it being able to make a decision on each of them separately because they each present separate issues. I do not think he has answered that. I know why he said that. It is because the Government know perfectly well that if you divide the two it would become clear that there is an ethical distinction between them. We did not discuss that today because we knew we could not discuss that ethical distinction because only one of them held it and the other did not. So my objection to the Government’s position—not of course to my noble friend’s position—is that they could have given us that choice and they decided not to It is the choice that I object to, not the fact that one might use the two techniques if both were approved. I suspect that both would have been approved, but we would have been able to explain why we hoped that the work done on the maternal spindle transfer and the third mechanism, which is coming along, would be prioritised and done in an ethically acceptable way. That is the first reason why I believe it would be better to allow a committee to look at this very rapidly and to insist that it be a decision in which we have a choice The second reason is that there is clearly a legal disagreement. I bow to nobody in my support for my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern. I know that it is normal in this House to accept that what he says is infallible. If it were not for his denomination, I would use that word, but I think that it would probably embarrass him considerably if I were to use it in conjunction with his name. However, I point out that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, spoke for a number of people, including the Attorney-General, whose statement made it clear that he felt that this was unsound for legal reasons. Incidentally, I want to say that it is perhaps surprising that the Lord Chancellor is not a lawyer. I think that the Lord Chancellor should always be a lawyer. I also think that he should not be a career politician but ought to sit in this House. I make that point while I have the chance to say it, as until now I have not had a chance to make that provocative comment. However, the fact is that there are very clear legal disagreements. I perfectly agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, with whom I am normally ad idem: we have marched together on most of the subjects when I have rebelled against the Government and I have taken much pleasure in our arguments. However, I say to him that there is a distinction here. It is very dangerous for this House to leave it to someone else to decide whether something is legal. I think that this House should make that decision itself, and then, if it makes the wrong decision or a questionable decision, the matter will come before the courts. I understand that distinction but I agree with the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, on that front. However, I am worried about entering into legal issues because I have always prided myself on being the only member of the Cambridge mafia who did not read law That leads me to the third point, which is safety. It is no good—we cannot kid ourselves about this. The terms under which we were originally told that we were going to have this debate have not been met. The experiments which we were told would be done have not been completed. The most important of those is the primate experiment to make sure that such procedures do not result in sterility. People have said that even suggesting that is an attempt to frighten people. I am not doing that at all. It is simply the case that that was what we wanted to do but there has not been enough time to do it, although it would not take very long. Therefore, I again come to the question of why this measure is being pressed at this moment when we could very rapidly have the answers to all the questions that we have raised. I want to end on that but I shall say why I think that that is important—much more important even than the issue itself I believe that we are moving into a society in which the search for consensus and agreement is becoming increasingly much less urgent and much less important to people. I believe that we could have gained very considerable support for this measure. The noble Earl caused a certain amount of laughter when he referred to the ComRes poll. It was intended to ask people, in the words that they had read in the newspapers, what their reaction was. That is why the poll was held. Therefore, passing the matter to the Wellcome Trust and others to look at it as though it were a scientific statement was entirely contrary. I was pleased to find out that we had so failed to communicate with the public that 90% did not want us to go ahead with these regulations, and that was the case when using words which had meaning for the public. The Government’s consultation was in fact very limited. That is not the burden of this whole debate, but I just want to say to the House that we are beginning not to try to take everyone on board. There was a real opportunity to do so here and I would still like to recapture that. That is why I would like to test the opinion of the House.