My Lords, I rise because I gave an assurance to the noble Lord, Lord Willis, that I would speak on this amendment as I have form, as they say, in this area.
Ten or so years ago, when one person accused me of being rather like Vlad the Impaler and we were slaughtering, as well as merging, a number of quangos, two of the candidates for merger were the Human Tissue Authority and the HFEA. Much of the argument for doing that was very similar to the argument that the noble Lord, Lord Patel, has advanced, although I did not know as much then as I know now about the number of bodies that we had compared with other countries regulating in this area. However, I assure the Committee that we had a lot more in 2003-04. Therefore, there is a case for this merger, and it has been made.
By backing away from this merger in the face of the arguments that were put forward, I ceased to be Vlad the Impaler and became Warner the Wimp. To their credit, this Government decided to have another go, but they seemed to get themselves in roughly the same position as Warner the Wimp and withdrew. Really, they withdrew because at the end of the day the savings were—certainly so far as I was concerned—not significant compared with some of the other savings that could be made. However, we have grown to appreciate more the importance of health research and the role of the life sciences in our economy, and I think that there is still a case for going the extra mile, when you can, to streamline the regulatory system in this area.
I hope that the Government will look sympathetically on this amendment, even if they do not want to accept it in its present form. I hope that some of us speaking
out on this in the review will give the Government some courage to be a bit braver than they were, and than I was, in the past. Therefore, I support the spirit and the ideas behind this amendment.