Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill

My Lords I have said previously in this your lordship's house that the severance of law from morality and religion has gone too far.

Religion, Morality and Law were once intermingled. This intermingling helped to shape both the common law and the Statutes of this land and greatly influenced the way in which the judges interpreted the law. But now the law is regarded purely as an instrument for regulating our personal affairs – completely severed from morality and religion.  There are provisions in this Bill which demonstrate just how far the severance has gone, and the unintended consequences of such severance.

The Government's proposal to remove the 'need for a father' provision from section 13(5) of the 1990 Act creates a false dichotomy at the heart of this Bill which seeks to place "the welfare and needs of the child" against a child's need for a father. My Lords I am bound to ask since when did these become competing requirements? Is it not self-evident that "the welfare and needs of a child" are enhanced and met when there is a father present as against there being no father at all?

Such a view is surely not controversial and would be shared by many who find themselves, through bereavement or through relationship breakdown, as the single parents of children.

But my Lords there is all the difference in the world between a child who finds themselves in a single parent family through bereavement or breakdown of parental relationship, and those who find themselves in this situation by design. And this is precisely what the Government proposes in this bill: the removal, by design, of the father of the child.

My Lords we know already that there are men who have been moved by particular legal circumstances to form the "Fathers for Justice" group. 

When one removes from their campaign their pranks and their purported attempts to kidnap Leo Blair, one discovers that the founder of the movement was forced into campaigning because overnight he was denied access to a child whom he dearly loved and who he believed loved and needed him.  It took a long time before access was restored.  Hence the campaign.

And now we have a Bill in which the Government is set to remove – as a statement of public policy – the requirement for the need of a

father? How much stronger then might become the campaign of Justice for Fathers?

There does in fact seem to be some confusion in the minds of the Government over the importance of fathers.

Firstly, in 2004, the Government provided regulations to encourage parental responsibility and visibility by removing donor anonymity and allowing donor conceived children to access the identity of donors involved in their conception.

Secondly, the Government has rightly emphasised in their policies, the need for male role models in terms of social cohesion, in order to reduce under achievement, to avoid increasing violent crime and gang culture.

We are now faced with a Bill which is seeking to formalise the situation where the need for the ultimate male role model – that of the father – is removed in entirety. And we have the bizarre proposal as set out at paragraph 54 of the Government's response to the Joint Committee's Report – in which a child's need for a father is replaced by a delegated system of substitutes, based on HFEA licence holders' assessment of whether prospective mothers may know anyone who may be a good role model! Such is the value placed on a father by this legislation, that it is reduced to a role where any substitute will do.

The Government posits its argument on the response by the Science and Technology Committee's report in 2005 that the need for a father is "unjustifiably offensive". Unjustifiably offensive to whom my Lords? To the child who will be dependent upon the love and care of the father? Is the Government really saying that it is basing its response on this issue on whether it gives offence?

The same report concluded that we can't expect consensus on this issue because on the one hand we are a multi-faith society, and on the other we are largely secular.  The last population census in fact indicated that 85% of the population described themselves as people of faith.  But statistics aside, it is far from clear to me that my brothers and sisters of Faith and indeed of no faith, feel less keenly than I about the importance of a father's role in the life of a growing child. 

The Joint Committee called for an ethical framework to be established at the heart of this Bill so that decisions are taken not on the potential offence rendered but on the highest ethical standards in conjunction with the welfare of the child.

Such a framework is sadly missing from the present Bill, and on the contrary it appears to send a signal that everyone has a right to a child and this 'right' over-rules consideration of that child's welfare.

The rationale given in the White Paper for removing "the need of a child for a father" was so as not to appear to discriminate against same sex couples (or single mothers) who want to have a child using IVF.

My Lords the Government's response is not based on the welfare of the child but rather upon the desires of those who feel they should have a child as of right, without the need for a father.

The right of a prospective parent to a child by any means necessary must not triumph over the welfare of children who are brought into the world as a result of the treatment as authorised under the current legislation.

The Government is bowing to the argument that as single people and gay and lesbian couples can legally adopt, so the same permission must therefore be given if they wish to 'commission' a child using IVF.

This is a non sequitur because the situations are markedly different. In adoption, the hospitality of a home is being offered to an already existing child who has had the misfortune through circumstance or necessity to lose or be removed from contact with its parents. Bringing the care of an adoptive home to a needy child is a wholly different circumstance to deciding in advance to use IVF technology to bring into the world a child who will, 'by design', never have a father.

If discrimination is indeed the issue here, then surely the greater discrimination is in ensuring that a child will never have any chance of knowing its natural father.

Whilst I have sympathy with the evidence given by the chair of the infertility network for those who feel they are denied access to childbirth under these treatments through the lack of the father, if we are to be serious about the paramount place of child welfare in this Bill, then this means such welfare taking precedence over the desires of those who would want a child as of right

My Lords, I consider that the child's right not to be deliberately deprived of having a father is greater than any right to "commission" a child by IVF.

As the Government has previously acknowledged, "the welfare of children cannot always be adequately protected by concern for the interests of the adults involved". ('Human reproductive Technologies and the Law', CM 6641, August 2005 paragraph 37).

My Lords, this Government has often championed the slogan of "rights and responsibilities" of the need to recognise the duty and responsibility that goes alongside any talk of rights. How does such talk fit with the proposals before us? What responsibility are we encouraging for the sperm donor or egg donor? Whilst there is a recognition of the need to treat embryos with due responsibility elsewhere in this legislation, do we absolve those who created the embryo of all responsibility for their child?

There is an unhealthy seam of rampant individualism at the heart of this Bill, rooted in a consumerist mentality where the science that allows something to happen is transformed into the right to have it. The "cogito ergo sum" of Descartes – I think therefore I am – becomes the consumerist mantra - I shop therefore I am: "Tesco ergo sum".

The competing individualist arias of "I, I, I" and "me, me, me" provide the mood music for an individualism that posits the right of a wannabe parent over the welfare of a child.

This virus of individualistic consumerism which informs a rights based mentality is alien to those of us who have learnt the African concept of obuntu bulamu: "I am because we are: I belong therefore I am".

My Lords, the laws that are passed in this your Lordship's house are more than mere regulation. The law is a statement of public policy. This is not about messages which are sent about what is or isn't acceptable in terms of family arrangements, but more fundamentally about the roles of parents, and in particular the need for a father wherever possible.

My Lords, in Clause 14 of this Bill the Government runs the risk of fundamentally altering the paramount importance of the welfare of the child, as set out in legislative terms almost 20 years ago in the Children's Act of 1989, and to place the interests of adults, in the form of prospective parents, above those of the child.  I would urge the Government to drop Clause 14 of this Bill.  My Lords, may we all be the not content.

For the first session of the debate, please visit
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldhansrd/text/71119-0002.htm#0711193000002 and for the resumation of the debate including the Archbishop of York's speech please visit http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldhansrd/text/71119-0008.htm#0711199000001