We must modernise our archaic fertility laws
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4 min read
What’s the worst Christmas present you have ever received?
Perhaps you can recall a particularly ugly woolly jumper, or a voucher bought last-minute from Amazon that you have no intention of redeeming.
Hundreds of families were presented with something far worse last Christmas: an email sent at 4.05pm on 20 December telling them that the company they had entrusted to provide them with fertility treatment had collapsed. Apricity Fertility had run into “financial difficulties”, the email said, and so from 1 January the company was ceasing all operations.
The danger is that welcome innovation in the industry also incentivises ethically dubious risk-taking
For those accessing fertility treatment, the emotional and financial stakes are incredibly high. At one of the busiest and most stressful times of the year, families scrambled to find out what the status of their treatment was, and whether they could continue with their cycles. Many were told that they could do so only at the cost of thousands of pounds.
Time was of the essence for them, because even the slightest delay in treatment can lead to a failed cycle. One woman waiting for her embryos to be transferred the same month said: “I was waiting to get a call from my consultant to tell me what the next stage of my treatment would be… Instead, I received the email saying the whole clinic was closing.”
Apricity acted as a hub connecting patients to fertility services. It was a wholly online service, acting as a digital ‘concierge’ linking women with partner clinics and offering advice and support by an app.
It seemed beyond the realms of possibility to discover that, just because the company did not conduct treatment or run physical clinics itself, it fell out of the regulator's scope.
In fact, the 30-year-old law that regulates fertility services, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, does not even reference the increasing number of activities being marketed as ‘fertility treatments’ that are taking place online, and which are therefore outside the regulated scheme.
In other words, the company that had been the interface through which people had paid for treatment, and that had offered online consultation and support, was completely unregulated. It was a classic case of regulation not keeping pace with modern life, but which made a mockery of the principles of patient trust and safety that we hold so dear in this country.
I am concerned that the closure of Apricity will not, in all likelihood, be a one-off. One in six couples in Britain is affected by infertility problems, and due to changing social attitudes and improving technology the number of people accessing fertility treatment is rising.
Over 52,000 people accessed fertility treatment in 2023 – the most recent year for which statistics are available – up from 6,000 in 1991. In the past 25 years, the proportion of children being born via IVF has doubled, prompting the regulator for the fertility industry, the HFEA, to report that there are now enough children being born by IVF for there to be one in every classroom.
The danger is that welcome innovation in the industry – the same innovation that meant Apricity was able to boast a higher-than-average cycle success rate – also incentivises ethically dubious risk-taking. IVF is not the process of producing the latest high-tech gizmo; it is about animating real human body tissue.
That’s why I am leaving nothing to chance, and introducing legislation to modernise our archaic fertility laws. My Ten Minute Rule Bill, being presented to Parliament today, has the sole aim of regulating online providers of fertility services by the regulator.
I hope the government will support its sound principle of restoring confidence in our world-class patient safety regime for families, so that we do not have to see them left high and dry by another Apricity ever again.
Caroline Dinenage is the Conservative MP for Gosport
