Britain’s fertility watchdog, the Human Fertlitsation and Embryology Authority, is to be abolished as part of a cost-cutting drive by the UK’s new coalition government. Health secretary Andrew Lansley announced last month that the HFEA and other health quangos will be merged or culled in an effort to save costs and red tape within the NHS. The HFEA will continue its work for the time being but will transfer its functions by the end of the current parliament.

The Government’s current plan is to split the HFEA’s work between a new research regulator, the Care Quality Commission, and the Health and Social Care Information Centre. The HFEA will take a long time to sink beneath the waves, but by April 2013 its functions should be absorbed by other bodies.

The HFEA, which regulates IVF and embryo research, has influential friends, so intense lobbying can be expected, although it has also has many critics who accuse it of being unduly permissive. "I'm absolutely astonished at this," Ruth Deech, an independent member of the House of Lords and former chair of the HFEA, told Nature. "I think our standing in the world will be reduced." In 2007 a cross-party parliamentary inquiry concluded that the case against merging the HFEA with another body was "overwhelming and convincing".  

The HFEA is just one of dozens of government bodies which the new government wants to do away with, including the UK Film Council, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, the Health Protection Agency, and the Advisory Committee on Historic Wreck Sites. ~ Nature, Aug 3