Consent provisions that would have banned stem-cell research on childhood genetic disease are to be dropped from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, The Times has learnt.

Ministers have agreed to revise the legislation after scientists said that it would block investigations of conditions that can kill children in the first years of life. In its present form, the legislation would make it illegal to make cloned stem-cell models with tissue taken from sick children.

Explicit consent would be required before a patient's cells could be used in such experiments, and the Bill would not currently allow children's parents to give such consent on their behalf. Medical researchers explained in The Times in January that this would effectively ban cloning research into diseases such as spinal muscular atrophy, which generally kill children before they are old enough to give consent.

The Government will now table its own amendment in the Commons to change this. Parents of severely ill children, and carers of mentally incapacitated adults, will have the power to consent on their behalf.

Dawn Primarolo, the Health Minister responsible for the Bill, told The Times: “It will have to be possible only with parental consent, or with the consent of the person's carer.” The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority will also have to rule that research would be impossible using cells derived from

a patient capable of giving consent.

A second government amendment will enable scientists to use cells that were donated anonymously for medical research in the past, but without explicit consent for use in cloning.

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