Orders of the Day — Unborn Children (Protection) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 2:05 pm on 15 February 1985.

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Photo of Alan Beith Alan Beith Opposition Whip (Commons), Shadow Spokesperson (Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs) 2:05, 15 February 1985

I prefer not to give way at this stage because there are some key points that I wish to make. If time permits, I shall give way later.

Even the recommendations of the Warnock committee would require law and policing. Those who criticise the law and the policing which is provided for in the Bill need to recognise that they would be engaged in exactly the same difficult test of finding procedures, laws and policing in order to implement a recommendation which limits experiments to 14 days. Hon. Members need not be as concerned about that area as they initially were.

The second and perhaps even greater worry which niggles in the minds of some hon. Members, and indeed must concern all of us, is whether the Bill would prevent essential research into diseases and handicaps such as Down's syndrome, spina bifida, congenital defects and many of the other things that we find so worrying. However, I do not go the way of one hon. Member who said in an intervention that society does not want handicapped children. He chose his words rather carelessly when he said that. Society has shown how much it can give handicapped children and that in its care of them individuals and the community are made that much greater. However, that is not the issue I want to deal with. If we are to consider whether the Bill will prevent essential research, we must use our language less loosely.

No distinction has been drawn during the debate between research and experimentation. They are not the same thing. Not all research is experimentation in the sense that it involves manipulation of or the ultimate destruction of human life in some form. Much research is observation and much observation can be carried out with no threat to the well-being of whoever is being observed. Much scientific research which is carried out on human beings, children or adults, is in the nature of the observation of procedures which are designed to benefit the human being concerned.

I say that no distinction has been drawn between research and experimentation. Equally no distinction has been drawn between experimentation and improvement of the procedures by which a doctor seeks to preserve, sustain or enhance the life of the individual whom he is treating. Again, there is a distinction there.

I do not think that it is the object of those who support the Bill to prevent the medical practitioner from doing what he has always sought to do, which is to use whatever procedures he thinks necessary to enhance, preserve or maintain the life of the individual form of human being that he is dealing with. Therefore, when we talk about what research could be limited by the Bill, we must draw our net a little narrower. However, having done so, we must then consider the value and extent of available research on the embryo. That is a disputed issue. I do not seek to contend that no valuable research could be undertaken on an embryo of less than 14 days. However, there are those who argue that. But there is a great deal of dispute about whether much of value can be obtained within that period.

Most of those involved are bound to concede that much more of research value could probably be obtained after 14 days, when the foetus has a spine, nervous system and other features upon which research can be carried out, than before then. But the entire Warnock committee rejected the idea of experimenting after 14 days, and no hon. Member today has sought to advance the cause of experimentation after 14 days. It is at least in dispute whether there is extensive research to be done in that area. There is certainly dispute about whether there is no alternative to such research and I am certainly not satisfied that there is no alternative.

I concede, as the right hon. Member for South Down did, that there might be some research to which there is no alternative that might bring value to other humans if it was carried out on an embryo of less than 14 days. The most compelling argument in favour of that was put by the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley) in his two intervations.

There is a very powerful case for research to deal with the problems of congenital defects and some of the major handicaps that children suffer from birth. If it is viewed in isolation, it is so powerful that it sweeps away almost any barrier that we might seek to erect to almost any procedure. That is the problem about it. When we consider the difficulties faced by a handicapped child or by a child whose period on this earth may be but a few years because of the extent of its congenital abnormality, all barriers are swept away, and in that moment of looking at, and crying over, the anguish of that child and his family there must be few things that most hon. Members would not contemplate doing if it would for one moment ease that child's lot.

Yet we cannot view that case in isolation, because we are always considering what barriers must be put up and what can be done to one human being in order to benefit others. Those barriers will crumble if we view the plight of those who suffer from some of those handicaps in isolation. I have already argued that the case that the only way to tackle such problems is by research on an embryo of less than 14 days is not proved. But when we consider that we might have to move further and further towards experiments on human life, it is clear that we must then set one value against another. There is no harder task for any individual, let alone the House, to carry out. But I believe that the law cannot be based on the principle that we experiment on one human in order to benefit others. That is not a principle upon which we can safely or reasonably found the law.

Would it not be better to await a Government Bill that would represent a comprehensive package of all the issues involved? I say to those who have just come into the Chamber, but who did not hear the Minister speaking earlier, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman gave neither promise nor prospect of a Government Bill within any defined time scale. There is no sign that a Government Bill will be introduced. As the Minister quite properly conceded, any such Bill would be some comprehensive package. It would embrace all the other issues raised by Warnock as well as those that have arisen since, including surrogacy, paternity, legitimacy and possibly even abortion. It would be a Bill so great—in view of the great number of differences of view on the various issues with which it would have to deal—that it would face many problems in its progress through Parliament. Hon. Members who think that they can safely put aside the matter because it will be dealt with in a Government Bill are basing their judgment on an illusion.

If we do not legislate now, we shall create a presumption in favour of widening what research is now done. That is why we cannot wait and why the Bill should receive a Second Reading.