View From The House - 30th November 2000

Reprinted From The Lichfield Mercury

Every so often, a Member of Parliament is asked to sit in quasi judicial rôle and hear evidence from barristers for and against a Bill before Parliament. I have been doing this morning and afternoon for the last 5 weeks with three other MPs: two Conservative and two Labour in all.

It's a joy that these meetings have nothing to do with Party politics and all to do with justice. The MPs are chosen for their impartiality on the Bill under consideration. This was an interesting one. It was sponsored by the Kent Constabulary and Kent's Trading Standards Department. The Bill seeks to regulate the sale of second hand goods in Kent to stop 'fences' from selling stolen articles. The police told the Committee that these range from CDs stolen from cars to power tools taken from construction sites to works of art. The Bill would require all dealers who regularly sell second hand goods to register and to make it an obligation to record the names and addresses from whom they are buying the goods. In certain circumstances they must also record the names of those to whom they sell the goods too in order to create a paper trail. Registered dealers might include participants in car boot sales, junk shops, and antique dealers.

The greatest concern of the Committee considering the Bills was that being local legislation, crime may be displaced into other counties. It was the view of the Committee that this should be national law. As the sponsoring department of such legislation would be the Home Office, I have written to members the Home Affairs Committee (of which I am also a member) suggesting we hold an inquiry into whether there should be national legislation. In the meantime, I would be interested to hear the comments of any Mercury readers about this. I know that this will affect several shops in the area if it becomes national law.

Most MPs have been contacted over the last few weeks on the question of stem cell research. Should it be permitted or not? Stem cells are undifferentiated human cells. They are not muscle, nor spinal, organ, blood nor any other tissue. However, when they are a group of cells in a human embryo, they eventually trigger themselves to differentiate into the different parts of the body and create a living human being.

As many readers know, diabetes has many dangerous side effects and cannot be cured. Yet. All that can be done is to inject insulin and hope it is the right amount. The cells in the pancreas that produce insulin naturally have died in a diabetic. But what if, by taking a cell from the body, you could trigger it to create the insulin producing cells? These could be injected back into the pancreas and because it was from the same person there would be no tissue rejection. This is not science fiction; it is close to reality. Similarly, what if healthy brain cells could replace those riddled with Alzheimer's disease? Or the cells replaced which produce dopamine in the brain to cure someone with Parkinson's disease? And by learning how stem cells are triggered into making healthy tissue that performs all these functions, we will also learn what triggers a normal cell to divide and become cancerous.

But this needs experimental research. Many readers feel, and I can understand this, that after a human egg is fertilised, the small clump of 4 or 8 undifferentiated stem cells that occur is already a human being. Experimentation kills the human being. This is a difficult moral question for a Member of Parliament. For myself, I believe that there is also a powerful moral imperative to cure suffering. I wonder whether a human being exists until at least the cells are differentiated. From all this there arises huge dilemmas not only involving stem cell research, but abortion too.