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.

Trade Union Bill

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

My Lords, I am tempted to my feet for my first venture from the Back Benches in the few days after liberating myself from the Dispatch Box.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

I think that it is the turn of the Cross Benches. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, will be pleased to hear that I am wearing a tie that is both blue and red, and it is in that spirit that I offer these thoughts. Nothing enrages the public more than the way in which some parts of this Chamber are constituted through party-political funding. It seems to me that, until we can revamp the way in which that funding works, it would be very dangerous and unfair to change the status quo to tilt the playing field as it currently exists. For that reason, I wholeheartedly support my noble friend Lord Burns in his amendment.

[Lord Maude of Horsham]

My Lords, I first apologise to the noble Lord for inadvertently interposing myself before him. As I said, this is my first venture from the Back Benches. I am tempted into this debate because I am a veteran of discussions on party funding. I took part in the discussions under the chairmanship of Sir Hayden Phillips, then gave evidence to the Kelly committee, then had the pleasure of long hours with the noble Lord, Lord Collins. The one thing that strikes most ice into my heart is the prospect in this amendment of further talks on public funding. If they happen, please may I be excused?

There is a hugely important distinction to be made between what goes on in trade union law and what goes on in party funding law, which is at the heart of today’s debate. These are very separate issues, although there is clearly a relationship between the two. In those first talks that we had under Sir Hayden Phillips’ guidance, the key essence that we aimed for was a cap on donations. Different numbers were bandied around, but we broadly agreed on something like £50,000. The quid pro quo would have been a significant increase in state funding for parties. One reason why we made no further progress was that the Labour Party argued at that time that trade union donations would not be caught by that cap because they are individual donations, akin to membership subscriptions to a party paid by individuals to other parties. But, of course, that is not the case. First, they are not voluntary, proactive decisions, made in the way that people subscribe to other parties—or, indeed, as ordinary members of Labour subscribe to the Labour Party. They are made by inertia, as has been discussed, and there seems to be a broad consensus that this way of proceeding is not sustainable in the longer term. Equally, they are not donations to a party. The decision to give the money to the Labour Party—or, indeed, any other party—is a decision made not by a member of a trade union but by the leadership of the trade union, so of course they would have to be caught by the cap.

Even if we had moved immediately to a system of opt-in for the political levy, with subscriptions to the political fund, that would not have done nearly enough to avoid donations by trade unions being caught by any cap. The decision to give the money to the Labour Party would still rest not with the individual member but with the leadership of the trade union. That is the important distinction between the law of party funding and the laws as they apply to trade unions, which is what we are debating here today.

It is important that we reflect a little on this system of opting in and its effects, because it is outdated. I remember that in a debate in the other place, a Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament—now a former Member of Parliament, as, sadly, so many of them are—startled the House when he told it during the Labour Party’s deputy leadership campaign in, I guess, 2007, that he had suddenly received a ballot paper for the Labour Party’s deputy leadership election because he had completely inadvertently, as a Liberal Democrat MP, become a member of the Labour Party because as a union member he had not opted out. We had the absurdity at the time of many trade unions declaring that 100% of their members were paying the political levy. Even more absurdly, some trade unions were declaring that more than 100% of their members were paying the political levy. Those of your Lordships who may argue that the role of the Certification Officer needs reform should reflect on the fact that the Certification Officer at the time was content to allow that manifest absurdity to persist.

To those who, like my noble friend Lord Cormack, argue that this is in some way proceeding at breakneck speed towards reform, I say that progress has not even been glacial. There has been discussion in your Lordships’ House about the failure of the agreement made by Len Murray way back in 1984—more than 30 years ago—that the unions would reform their systems to make the ability of members to opt out much more real and visible. We know that that has not happened. Far too many unions do not make it visible in the papers and even if members opt out, in too many unions, there is no reduction in the subscription. I give way to the noble Lord.