REGULATORY QUANGOS are not the most popular of public bodies; they tend to be resented by the professionals they oversee and criticised for arbitrary decision-making and a lack of accountability.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), however, is an exception. Since it was established in 1990 to supervise fertility treatment and embryo research it has drawn the sting of an issue that has stirred ethical and political maelstroms elsewhere. Shrill debates over IVF and embryo-screening in Germany and Italy, and over stem-cell research in the United States, have largely passed Britain by. The reason? Politicians and the public have learnt to trust the robust regulatory system put in place 15 years ago.

The moral compromise achieved by Baroness Warnock, whose committee guided the 1990 legislation, was ahead of its time. The 14-day limit set for embryo research has satisfied all but hardline pro-lifers. Strict clinical rules have reined in maverick operators and prevented the notorious excesses of the unregulated American IVF industry. Patients have been protected and public opinion won over to procedures that once provoked profound moral unease. As doctors and scientists have been seen to act responsibly and within boundaries, reproductive medicine has become as widely accepted as it is anywhere.

Even Bob Edwards, one of the architects of IVF and a critic of many HFEA decisions, has been impressed. “When I go abroad the admiration of the HFEA is unbounded,” he says. “Many countries have copied it . . . We have disagreed with them . . . but the HFEA to me has been fantastic.”

The watchdog, which meets for its annual conference tomorrow, has, however, served its purpose. A body that has done great things for infertile couples has now become a hindrance to their reasonable ambitions and a lumbering bureaucratic behemoth.

IVF is the most heavily regulated field of medicine in Britain. Like all other providers, both public and private, fertility clinics are audited by the Healthcare Commission. Individual doctors must conform to the standards of the General Medical Council, and can be censured or struck off if found negligent or incompetent. Reproductive medicine, however, must submit to a third tier of supervision, in the shape of the HFEA.

This was reasonable even in 1990, 12 years after the birth of Louise Brown, when there remained widespread misgivings about “test-tube babies” and doctors “playing God”. The techniques involved were complicated, and success rates low. Special regulation for an immature and controversial technology was probably essential if it was to win public confidence.

Today, however, IVF is so commonplace as to be routine: well over a million babies have been born worldwide, and in Britain it accounts for between 1 and 2 per cent of all births. Procedures have been refined and are no longer difficult in the hands of a specialist. Some clinics now boast success rates of better than 40 per cent. Multiple births — the chief risk — have become rarer. IVF is little trickier in technical terms than a hip replacement or tonsillectomy.

Its ethical significance has also dimmed. It is now hard to find people beyond the extreme anti-abortion lobby who do not approve of IVF. Even some Catholic theologians have reached an accommodation, so long as all the embryos created are transferred or donated to other couples. It is so familiar that it no longer raises eyebrows. Most of us know someone who has conceived this way. Celebrities such as Gabby Logan can talk proudly of test-tube pregnancies. It takes exotic cases of mothers in their sixties or “designer babies” to make headlines. There is healthy debate about whether the NHS should fund treatment, and why British success rates do not match Scandinavia’s. But IVF has died as an ethical issue.

For that, the HFEA deserves much of the credit. Nevertheless, a system that was once reassuring now achieves the reverse, implying a need for special concern where none is justified. It dispenses pointless bureaucracy, for which patients foot the bill. The average fertility clinic, NHS or private, spends £100,000 a year on regulation. A body of 90 employees exists to oversee just 100 or so centres. A code of practice that filled 55 pages in 1991 now stretches to 169. All this drives up the cost of private treatment, and consumes scarce NHS resources that might otherwise fund more than the single treatment cycle that will be offered free from next month. Richard Kennedy, of the British Fertility Society, calls it “a tax on infertility”.

This anachronistic system has to change. A report into fertility law from the Commons Science and Technology Committee is expected before Easter, and ministers have pledged to review the 1990 legislation in light of its findings. They should thank the HFEA for 15 years of fine service, and strip it of its central role. A revamped authority should continue to keep watch over embryo and stem-cell research, and newer clinical applications of science, such as “designer baby” screening, but standard IVF should be removed from its remit. It is not as if no safeguards would remain: the Healthcare Commission and GMC would still be in charge. These two layers of regulation are deemed sufficient for abortion, which is more controversial, and neurosurgery, which is more technically challenging. There is no reason why routine fertility treatment should be singled out for special attention.

Mark Henderson is the Science Correspondent of The Times

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