Gordon Brown is facing a revolt by cabinet ministers who are demanding a free vote over the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, claiming that the ethical issues it raises are matters of conscience.Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly and Welsh Secretary Paul Murphy are leading the calls for MPs to be allowed a free vote on whether to permit the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos and to allow children to be born by IVF without a father's involvement.
Both are fierce critics and want to avoid having to choose between deeply held personal beliefs and backing the government.
Kelly recently met Geoff Hoon, Labour's chief whip, to ask for voting restrictions to be removed from much, if not all, of the bill. At the moment MPs will only be allowed a free vote on any amendments that are tabled on abortion.Defence Secretary Des Browne is also understood to have concerns. All three ministers are prominent Catholics.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, leader of Britain's four million Catholics, has condemned the bill as 'profoundly wrong' because it 'radically undermines the place of the father in a child's life'.
Paul Goggins, a Northern Ireland Office minister, is another to have raised the matter with Hoon. Labour sources say three whips - Tommy McAvoy, Frank Roy and Tony Cunningham - also have serious ethical problems with at least some of the bill. All four are Catholics.
Their concerns, which are shared by several dozen other Labour MPs, present the Prime Minister with a headache. It is a government bill, and votes on it in the Lords were whipped in order to secure its passage. As such, any MPs who voted against, or even abstained, could face disciplinary action.
Hoon told Kelly that, unusually, MPs and even ministers with strong objections to the bill could be away from Westminster on days when contentious proposals were voted on, without suffering any consequences. 'He told her that MPs who had difficulties with their conscience should just not be around when the voting took place - that is, be allowed to be absent,' said one MP who is close to Kelly. But critics have rejected that potential compromise and are pressing for a free vote on the entire bill.
A delegation of Labour MPs linked to the All-Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group is due to meet Brown soon to express their concerns. Murphy was due to attend, but his return to the cabinet in last week's mini-reshuffle means that he cannot now do so. Friends say that he had planned to vote against the vast majority of the bill.
MPs are also angry about proposals to remove the existing responsibility on IVF clinics to consider 'the need for a father'. That change would mean they were no longer able to deny treatment to lesbians and single women, with a child's birth mother and her female partner being regarded as legal parents.
The bill is due to finish its Lords stages this week and enter the Commons after Easter.
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