Surrogacy

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to contribute to the timely debate of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker. Not being a lawyer, I want to focus on the particular aspect of public perception of surrogacy and the law surrounding donation.

My parents had a great friend who was a doctor. He was a huge inspiration to me as a child and young man. Patrick Trevor-Roper, brother of the historian, Hugh, was an eye surgeon who helped to pioneer cornea grafting. He went round Africa restoring sight to thousands by removing cataracts. When I expressed my interest in what he did, he immediately invited me to watch him operating at the Westminster Hospital. I realise that it is not a prospect that might appeal to many noble Lords, but I was mesmerised. As he worked, I realised that we were listening to my father’s guitar sonatina, played by Julian Bream.

Pat was a maverick—bohemian, unorthodox. One patient arrived in his consulting room in Regent’s Park to find him peeing in the sink. These eccentricities seemed only, by and large, to endear him to his patients. He infuriated the art world with his extraordinary book, The World Through Blunted Sight, by suggesting that El Greco’s willowy figures were the result of astigmatism. In 1955, long before it was fashionable or wise to do so, he became one of the first gay rights activists, giving evidence to the Wolfenden committee.

The relevance of all that to the important debate introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, is that Pat taught me that, if one human being can make another whole by the gift of donation—of surrogacy—that was a completely normal and utterly joyous thing to do. He felt, 40 years ago, that too much taboo and squeamishness surrounded these most natural acts of procreation, acts which might assist intending parents who were often going through agonies of frustration as they attempted to have children.

As Surrogacy UK urges in its 2015 report we must guard the principle of altruistic surrogacy in the UK, surrogacy, as we have already heard, as a relationship not a transaction. We must learn to be less suspicious. Just as we need corneas, kidneys and hearts, so too do we need gifts from the living—sperm, for example. Here I would like to make a suggestion to the Minister to take back to her department. The law, as it currently stands, is careful to say that sperm donors are protected from pursuit by, for example, the Child Support Agency, only if they go through a licensed clinic. Clearly, you cannot have a loophole that would allow fathers to avoid their fiscal responsibilities—I completely accept that. But there are scenarios in which friends of the family, for instance, are keen to help, and where altruism reigns. I have seen this in heterosexual and gay communities, and it is profoundly touching. Furthermore, the law is discriminatory in that it favours better-off women who can afford to use expensive clinics but denies many poor ones access to donation. Wealth apart, should there not anyway be a provision for altruistic donation, one that could attract legal security and therefore attract more men to donate? It should surely be possible for a donor and a recipient to enter into a legally binding agreement without the use of an expensive clinic.

I have seen the misery and heartbreak of childlessness. When I did, I vowed to do anything I could to help—and I can tell noble Lords that there are few things in this world as rewarding as seeing, whether through surrogacy or donation, the successful outcome of this generosity from one human being to another. Are there risks? Yes, of course there are, as in everything else that we do, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Faulks—including having children in the usual way. The imperative to procreate, next to birth and death, is one of the great evolutionary acts of being human—it should belong to all of us.