IN SATURDAY’S Times Lord Harries of Pentregarth gave an interview in which, as interim chairman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, he argued that women in their fifties and sixties should not be banned from having IVF because of their age.

Lord Harries was addressing the ethics of IVF treatment and the notion of age and sex discrimination. It is wrong, he said, that the over-50s are denied a procedure available to younger women. After all, “men can conceive at a vast age”.

The former Bishop of Oxford might have thought he was dealing with the issue of IVF. In reality he was delivering a rapier thrust against the NHS itself.

According to its “core principles”: “The NHS will provide a universal service for all based on clinical need, not ability to pay; the NHS will provide a comprehensive range of services.” In other words: you will be able to get everything you need on the NHS.

And yet. The NHS does not even implement the guidelines on IVF by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which say that three cycles of treatment should be available, but only to women under 40. In 2004 the Health Secretary, John Reid, said that only one cycle would be paid for.

Lord Harries believes that it should be left to doctors to decide who should and should not have IVF treatment, with no upper age limit: “I don’t think it should be mandatory, I don’t think it should be legal. I think it should be a clinical judgment.” That is a perfectly reasonable position. But it cuts to the heart of the problem of NICE, of tax funding of healthcare, and of the NHS itself. Because doctors don’t decide. Gordon Brown has decided who should have IVF treatment, just as he has decided who should get Alzheimers drugs.

Not because he isn’t spending enough of our money on health. As every passing day shows, he is spending unimaginably huge sums on the NHS. No; it’s because he is spending our money on a tax-funded system with the State, through NICE, deciding who gets what. It shouldn’t be called NICE, but NASTY: Not Available, So Treat Yourself.

Lord Harries’s remarks point to the fallacy of the NHS as a supposedly full healthcare provider. IVF is like any other treatment: not available to everyone who needs it, let alone who wants it.