Surrogacy

Lord Mackay of Clashfern Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, it was not my intention to speak in this debate but since the noble Lord, Lord Winston, has not been able to come, I thought that I might take up just a little bit of the spare time. As the noble Viscount, Lord Craigavon, has said, it was my responsibility to introduce the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act in the 1990s. It was immensely helped by the work that Mary Warnock had done before that. There was still quite a lot of debate, as those who were here will remember, about various matters, including the very contentious matter of embryo research. This particular matter was dealt with in the law in the way that it was, mainly because, at that time, the general impression was that the arrangements for transfer of sperm material should be confidential. Therefore, unless there was some clear indication, it was not clear who the child belonged to in the real sense, except that there could be certainty that the child was born of a particular person. So that was what was done at that time. In 2008, there was a relaxation of a number of these issues, but I think that it is quite clear that this kind of difficulty ought to be dealt with now or as soon as possible.

Mary Warnock’s report was, as I said, a tremendous help in getting the legislation through, and a proper investigation by the Law Commission would be extremely helpful now in getting legislation through. I agree that the Law Commission can take some time—it was my responsibility at the time that I was Lord Chancellor to be Minister for the Law Commission and we were able to get a lot of the legislation through—but the time that it would take is really a matter for the commission. I think that a fairly thorough investigation would be needed, but I do not see that a thorough investigation needs to be very long. I hope therefore that if the Law Commission is empowered to take this on by a programme which includes it, then things could proceed quite quickly. It would involve a good deal of consultation but, as my noble and learned friend Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood said, the Law Commission really invented the system of pre-legislative consultation. Lord Scarman, the first chairman of the Law Commission, developed that in a way that Governments have taken up. So the Law Commission knows all about dealing with complicated issues such as this. I hope that it might be able to do it quickly, and I sincerely hope that the Government will think it right to refer the issue to it.