Commons approves embryology Bill

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The staunchly Catholic former minister Ruth Kelly, who quit the Government earlier this month, was one of 16 Labour MPs who voted against the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

But the third reading of the Bill was overshadowed by rows over "shabby" Government tactics which prevented a debate on abortion law reform.

Pro-choice MPs were furious that no time was made available to debate their calls for the law to be liberalised to allow terminations to be conducted with the approval of one doctor rather than two and for abortion to be legalised in Northern Ireland.

And pro-life campaigners were disappointed that there was no signal of Government support for their call for a special committee of MPs and peers to investigate the issue and recommend changes to abortion law.

Health minister Dawn Primarolo said the Government had "no plans" to introduce a Bill on abortion, adding that the question of a special committee was a matter for the House, not ministers.

The Bill, which now goes to the House of Lords, has attracted controversy over its key measures, which include allowing scientists to carry out research on human-animal hybrids, relaxing guidance to make it easier for lesbians and single women to have IVF treatment and letting parents choose "saviour siblings" for seriously ill children.

Conservative MP Nadine Dorries warned that loopholes in the legislation would allow scientists to attempt to create a "humanzee" - a hybrid between a human and a chimpanzee.

Recalling Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's 1920s efforts to create "the ultimate soldier" by cross-breeding men and apes, she warned: "Of all the experimental possibilities debated in the course of this Bill, surely none is quite so utterly repulsive as the possibility of seeking to inseminate animals with human sperm."