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Minister's threat as cardinal joins embryos row
The government is facing a resignation from the cabinet if Gordon Brown refuses to allow Labour ministers to vote against contentious proposals to allow medical research on human-****** embryos.
The Welsh secretary, Paul Murphy, is one of several Catholic senior government figures pressing the prime minister to allow all MPs a free vote on the human embryology and fertilisation bill later this spring. Des Browne, the defence secretary, and Ruth Kelly, the transport secretary, have indicated privately that they want to vote against the proposals and will at the very least abstain.
The cabinet revolt comes as one of Britain's most senior Catholics accuses Brown of plotting a "monstrous" ****** on human life by pressing ahead with the bill. Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the leader of the Scottish Catholic church, says the legislation would allow "grotesque" and "hideous" procedures to create hybrid embryos for experimentation - measures other European countries had outlawed. In his Easter homily in Edinburgh tomorrow, O'Brien will claim that the human fertilisation and embryology bill attacks human rights, human dignity and human life.
Minister's threat as cardinal joins embryos row
The government is facing a resignation from the cabinet if Gordon Brown refuses to allow Labour ministers to vote against contentious proposals to allow medical research on human-****** embryos.
The Welsh secretary, Paul Murphy, is one of several Catholic senior government figures pressing the prime minister to allow all MPs a free vote on the human embryology and fertilisation bill later this spring. Des Browne, the defence secretary, and Ruth Kelly, the transport secretary, have indicated privately that they want to vote against the proposals and will at the very least abstain.
The cabinet revolt comes as one of Britain's most senior Catholics accuses Brown of plotting a "monstrous" ****** on human life by pressing ahead with the bill. Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the leader of the Scottish Catholic church, says the legislation would allow "grotesque" and "hideous" procedures to create hybrid embryos for experimentation - measures other European countries had outlawed. In his Easter homily in Edinburgh tomorrow, O'Brien will claim that the human fertilisation and embryology bill attacks human rights, human dignity and human life.
