Crossbench Peer, Baroness Ruth Deech forwarded a debate on Fertility Treatment Regulation in the House of Lords.
The debate began with Baroness Deech outling proposals from the HFEA for reform of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act.
As a former chair of the UK's fertility regulator – the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), she was well placed to do this.
She called for the Governmet to set up a Select Committee to examine the HFEA's proposals to for the expansion of its regulatory powers, to simplify consent rules, and to create a flexible framework for future scientific developments.
Among others contributing to the debate was Baroness Caroline Pidgeon (a Liberal Democrat Peer). Importantly, she discussed the work of PET citing data from the PET NHS Fertility Funding Tracker which show that only two integrated care boards (ICBs) comply with the recently updated Fertility Guideline published by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). She also highlighted the fact that many ICBs are offering only a partial IVF cycle, rather than a full cycle as defined by NICE.
You can read more about this debate and one that immediately followed it in BioNews. The second debate asked the Government 'what assessment they have made of the UK's declining birthrates in an ageing population' and was forwarded by Baroness Geeta Nargund.