Embryonic Beginnings ....?

Gordon Brown has come up with a clever political compromise on the embryology bill that at least means we won't lose another Secretary of State for Wales (which would of course be simply careless). However, there is something about allowing a free vote on the basis of 'conscience' on the three most controversial areas of the bill, including the the hybrid embryo clause, that is making me uneasy. Its not that I am a committed campaigner for embryology research - although I can see the great potential it offers for curing diseases that ravage peoples lives the animal/human embryo element does give me what ethicists sometimes call the 'yuck' factor - an uncomfortable gut feeling.

But I am more uncomfortable about this whole issue of 'conscience'. Someone opposing the bill yesterday said that he was happy that MPs would not be 'forced' to vote for it. This is nonsense - no MP has to vote for the bill, the whip is not literal and all are free to vote in whatever way they choose, understanding of course what the consequences may be for their political careers. Do issues of conscience only apply to areas like embryo research, abortion or euthanasia or do they extend, as other commentators have suggested, to going to war or even to the introduction of tuition fees or privitisation of the health service?

I'm also a bit disturbed by the role of organised religion in all of this and I say this as a communicant member of a church. Undoubtedly a very effective campaign has been conducted by the Roman Catholic church and the timing of Easter has enabled this to have maximum impact. Of course religion is built into the UK parliament through the Church of England (and a number of senior Anglicans have supported the Roman Catholic position) and I would support the disestablishment of the Church in order to fully secularise parliament -something of course which we did in Wales a long time ago. Again, I'm not sure why religious issues of conscience should have greater weight than anything else. Nor do I want to see the sort of politics that the so-called 'moral majority' have created in the United States.

It just all feels a little bit like the thin end of the wedge ...