Engineering Biology (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Baroness Freeman of Steventon Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, I join others in congratulating the committee on tackling this important and scientifically very exciting topic. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, pointed out, it is a topic that still stands under the shadow of the GM debates of around 25 years ago, debates held up in the world of science communication as a model to avoid.

There has been a lot of research on what went wrong then as well as on public opinions on genetic engineering, and the research all points in a similar direction. People generally see the potential benefits of most forms of genetic engineering, and they want to encourage it, but there are key concerns, and if these are not listened to and, more importantly, taken into account and acted on people rightly feel aggrieved. That is what happened 25 years ago, and we must avoid those mistakes being made again.

Underlying everything is the issue of trust and trustworthiness. People are sensitive to the possible motivations of others. If they feel that someone is trying to persuade them, they quite sensibly do not trust them to be even-handed with the evidence or to be acting in the public’s interest, rather than, say, industry’s. This is where I fear that the language used in general around engineering biology, including by this Government, tends to sound weighted in favour of emphasising benefits without enough emphasis on how people’s concerns about different risks are being considered and acted on.

I will briefly go through the top concerns that have emerged from 25 years’ worth of work in this subject area, and give the Minister the opportunity to make it clear how the Government are mitigating each. One concern is the risk to human health. Most people trust the FSA or the healthcare regulators on that, at least on the short-term risks. That wrongly became the main focus of the GM debates in the past, without enough attention paid to the other concerns, such as—and perhaps the Minister can discuss this—a lack of transparency about who is driving the area forward and how decisions will be made and by whom, with a particular concern about the test for public benefit.

There is a perception that financial gain will speak louder than public benefit and that scientists are not always best placed to put brakes on their own research. They might get carried away with the excitement of what is possible over what is really necessary or desirable. Who will apply a public benefit test to potential applications and how? How will that be made transparent?

In a related way, in the previous GM debates, a lot of the sentiment translated as against the technology or its use was actually concerned about the motivations and priorities of multinational businesses, the risk of inequity of benefits and the industrialisation of farming. How are the Government planning to mitigate against the same problem again by being upfront about identifying possible winners and losers?

I turn to the lack of information given to the public and consumers about the techniques and technologies involved, and the labelling of products. Labelling is absolutely crucial and comes up in every survey and study. People feel that they need to be empowered to choose. How do the Government propose to achieve this level of public knowledge and choice?

Concerns are always expressed about environmental consequences, and not just the potential effects on human health. There are huge possible outcomes here, if things such as gene drives are introduced into wild populations. Which bodies will be carrying out environmental risk assessments for engineering biology applications and how will an acceptable level of risk be determined? The Government’s current response to this report seems to focus only on the food and farming applications of the technologies.

Finally, there is the concern over the ethical and moral boundaries to synthetic or engineering biology. We must never forget that these are living things that we are bringing into existence to fulfil a function for our benefit. There is a lot of work on ethics in synthetic biology, and even work on public perceptions of the issues. The question is: how will this work be incorporated into the planning and regulation of engineering biology? Here I disagree slightly with the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, in that I believe that, sometimes, morals and ethics should stop progress in a particular direction.

There is an overall concern that the benefits might be felt before some of these risks manifest and that, by then, it will be too late to do much about them. Having a well-developed structure in place early to consider and deal with these issues is vital. “Pro-innovation regulation” is not a reassuring phrase on that front.

To conclude, all the fairly extensive research suggests that each application of engineering biology—medical, farming, fuel and so on—needs to be considered independently. However, most applications have public support, provided—importantly—that it is tightly regulated, that all the aspects that I have mentioned are considered and assessed, and the outcomes are monitored. Can the Minister put on record how each of these concerns is being dealt with, remembering that no one wants to be persuaded? They want to hear the truth and be reassured that the Government will listen to and act on their concerns.