Growing clamour over embryology bill

Labour MP for Livingston Jim Devine has called on scientists, church leaders and MPs to meet face-to-face in an attempt to quell the row over a free vote on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, last week attacked the Government for endorsing "experiments of Frankenstein proportion" and demanded that the Government allow a free vote on the legislation.

The Bill is highly controversial because it allows for the creation of part-human part-animal embryos, or so-called "hybrid embryos", which are banned in most countries around the world. The Bill also compromises a child's right to a father by proposing that IVF providers no longer need to take into account a child's need for a father when considering IVF applications.

On BBC Radio 4's "Any Questions" on Friday, Health Minister Ben Bradshaw denounced Cardinal O'Brien's attack as "rather intemperate and emotive" and said that the Government was "absolutely right to try to push this through to the potential benefit of many people in this country".

"I think if it was about the things the cardinal referred to, creating babies for spare parts or raiding dead people's tissue then there would be justification for a free vote," Bradshaw told the BBC Radio 4's "Any Questions" on Friday.

"But it's not about those things. He was wrong in fact, and I think rather intemperate and emotive in the way that he criticised this legislation.

"This is about using pre-embryonic cells to do research that has the potential to ease the suffering of millions of people in this country. The Government has taken a view that this is a good thing."

Whilst the Conservatives and Lib Dems have indicated they will allow their to vote according to their conscience, the Labour Party has told its members that they will have to either vote in favour or abstain completely.

The Rt Rev Jonathan Gledhill said on Monday that the Bill was immoral and called on the Labour Party to allow its MPs a free vote.

"Laws in our country are based on values and principles and most of those are Christian ones," he said.

"Part of that is to recognise conscience in MPs and that's the reason why for important moral questions the whips are withdrawn and people are allowed to treat them as a matter of conscience and vote as individuals rather than as a party.

"It is recognised that no one party has a monopoly on morality."

Bishop Gledhill added that it was "a very important part of the Christian faith that you should have respect for human embryos" as "potential human beings".

He said, "If you stop obeying God you start to limit the rights of human beings and this is a case in point. A society has to be judged by the way that it treats its poorest and most vulnerable and weakest. And what can be weaker than an unborn child?"

Bishop Gledhill said that scientists should not be allowed to do something just because they can: "We don't have to do everything. Science must have limits."

In a separate interview for Monday's Birmingham Post, he called for a broad public debate on the issue to precede a vote in Parliament.

"We need to hear from ethics committees that have been set up, we need to hear whether it's something that the public would find acceptable, we need to see why exactly they want to carry out these experiments," he said. "I think most people are confused. It may be that if people have a horror of creating human-animal hybrids, they can reassure us."

The Bishop of St Albans, the Rt Rev Christopher Herbert, also called for a free vote.

Bishop Herbert, who was a member of the Parliamentary Joint Human Tissue and Embryos Committee which considered the Bill before it was introduced to Parliament, told the Daily Mail on Sunday: "It is a matter of conscience and I can't see why the Government should not offer a free vote."