Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the remarks by Lord Wallace of Saltaire on 11 February (HL Deb, col 1243), what consideration both they and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority have given to the patent applications by Scott Webster Ballinger, Danny R. Welch, Robert Allen Kesterson and Larry W. Johnson (US20090328241, US 13/360,344) and by Shoukhrat M. Mitalipov (US20120036591, US 13/265,326); and what is their estimation of the potential impact of such patent applications on the promotion of economic growth by licensing the first clinical applications in the United Kingdom of (1) pronuclear transfer, and (2) spindle-chromosomal complex transfer.

Neither the Government nor the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has made any such assessment.