Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Debate between Lord Winston and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Committee stage
Monday 12th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

I never thought I would be a member of the Green Party, but I clearly am this evening. I must agree with the noble Baroness, because we have to understand that gene editing is a new technique and has been on the books for only about eight or 10 years, which seems a long time but is not at all—in science, that is a very short time.

It was 40 years ago that we genetically modified organisms for the first time. The noble Lord is proposing that we speed this process up when we do not fully understand what is happening with procedures such as CRISPR-Cas9 and other methods. We need much more data before we can be sure about the progeny of these animals. That is one of the problems, and it will not be simple.

Of course, I appreciate that it takes quite a long time to breed an animal. As a human, I understand that quite well—I have dealt with a few humans myself, and no doubt the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, has also had children—but we have to accept that it takes time before you can really work out the status of an animal. It is a complex process.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, in one of the earlier debates the Minister sought to categorise some of us as people who are fundamentally opposed to the Bill and trying to find any way we can to derail it. I assure him that I am not in that camp, and I hope that the amendment I will speak to will give some illustration of that.

I will speak to Amendment 88 in my name, which is a very particular amendment about the status of GMOs; this seems a very odd group of amendments that have been put together. It follows on slightly from the comments just made by my noble friend Lord Winston because it recognises that it has been many years since the regulations relating to GMOs have been reviewed. As a result, we appear to be legislating in silos rather than looking at the impact of genetic technology as a whole. We already have the GMO legislation on the statute and now we are looking at GE, but how do those two bits of legislation interrelate?

When the Government announced their plans to roll out gene editing, they also committed to a review of the wider GMO rules, but so far there does not seem to be any sign that the review is taking place—unless I have missed it. Amendment 88 probes whether the impact of Clause 41, which amends the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to exclude precision-bred organisms and differentiates them from GMOs, is likely to require further review.

This is all about the interrelation between genetic engineering and GMOs. Where is that review taking place? Is the wording of the legislation as it stands in Clause 41 how we want it to be? When and how will that wider review of GMOs take place? How will the Minister synchronise any result of that with the provisions of the Bill? It seems rather odd that scientific institutions could be potentially following two different routes for technology that in many ways is very similar.