The Government will face fresh pressure to rethink its reform of Britain’s 17-year-old fertility laws next week, when a report from MPs and peers objects to two of its central proposals.

A parliamentary committee set up to scrutinise the draft legislation is to urge ministers to drop a plan to merge the fertility treatment and human tissue watchdogs, The Times understands.

The joint Commons and Lords panel is also expected to criticise the way that the Department of Health wants to regulate research using embryos that are part human and part animal.

Its findings, which were sent to ministers last week and will be published on Tuesday, will add to widespread criticism of the draft Human Tissues and Embryos Bill from doctors and scientists.

The plan to replace the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) and the Human Tissue Authority (HTA) with a combined super-regulator has been particularly controversial, inspiring the opposition of almost every significant professional group that will be affected.

Organisations such as the British Medical Association and the Royal Society have complained that the new Regulatory Authority for Tissues and Embryos (Rate) will lack the expertise that it needs to do its job, putting patient safety and medical research at risk. The joint committee will endorse these objections, suggesting that the Government should abandon the merger. A source who has seen the final document told The Times: “Essentially it says the case for Rate has not been made.”

The report is also understood to be sympathetic to scientists’ concerns that a proposed ban on the creation of certain kinds of human-animal embryo is excessive.

The Government has already drawn back from its original intention of blocking all such research, which can be useful for making stem-cell models for studying human diseases. The draft Bill now permits some interspecies embryos, but still prohibits “true hybrids”, created by fertilising animal eggs with human sperm or vice versa.

Although no research groups in Britain are proposing such work, many argue that it would be wrong to ban it through primary legislation, as valuable uses could emerge unexpectedly.

The committee is expected to recommend leaving such decisions for a regulator if and when scientists apply for licences to experiment with true hybrids. Members are worried that the existing plans will require Parliament to reconsider the law too often as scientific advances take place.

The joint committee, which is chaired by the Liberal Democrat MP Phil Willis, was established by the Department of Health when it published the draft Bill in May. Its remit was to advise ministers on flaws in the legislation before a final version is included in the Queen’s Speech this autumn.

Critics of the draft Bill have been encouraged by recent changes in government personnel, which they believe will make the department more receptive to their objections.

Both Caroline Flint, the Health Minister who was piloting the legislation, and Patricia Hewitt, the former Heath Secretary, were replaced in the recent Cabinet reshuffle. Their respective successors, Dawn Primarolo and Alan Johnson, are not thought to feel as wedded to the present provisions.

Among other reforms proposed by the draft Bill are removing the requirement that doctors consider children’s need for a father before offering IVF, a ban on social sex selection, and a list of criteria for which embryo screening is permitted.

—The Government will have to reexamine how it classifies the severity of animal experiments after the High Court declared its procedures inadequate (Mark Henderson writes).

A judge ruled that the Home Office acted unlawfully in licensing brain experiments on marmosets at the University of Cambridge on the understanding that they would cause only moderate suffering, after a judicial review brought by an animal rights group. Mr Justice Mitting said the licences had been granted after the levels of “pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm” had been understated.

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