When a woman of 67 can become a mother, it must be time for stricter rules

I CAME face to face with a high priest last week. As befits the head of a flourishing religion, Ian Craft is urbane, determined and persuasive. As we waited to debate the issue of elderly mums on Woman’s Hour, he regaled me with anecdotes about staying at Chatsworth for three days - he’s an old friend of the Duchess of Devonshire’s - and the challenge of restoring a “huge wreck of a house” he owns in the country. But it is not just his polished patter that wins him disciples. Professor Craft offers them hope, solace, and - in many cases - a life-changing experience: their own baby.

Professor Craft is one of the pioneers of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). The 45,000 British couples who seek fertility treatment each year, the more than 30,000 British women who are infertile and the dozens of (high-profile) parents of children stricken with a disease whose only hope lies in a designer baby with matching tissue types have turned IVF into a process that is as much part of our culture as adoption.

Unlike adoption, however, the IVF industry is regulated by only the loosest of guidelines. Yesterday a 66-year-old Romanian gave birth to a triplet (the others having died) after nine years of fertility treatment to become the world’s oldest mother. In this country, a 59-year-old woman last week gave birth to her second baby through IVF. While would-be adoptive parents are subjected to an age limit and huge bureaucratic obstacles, a couple or, indeed, a single woman showing up at some IVF clinics simply fork out the £2,000 that buys each cycle of treatment, no questions asked.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority Act 1990 stipulates that any fertility centre in the UK offering treatment must take into account the welfare of any child born. Questions of age, economic status and criminal record must be raised with would-be parents. These recommendations have been taken on board by the NHS - which has set an age limit for putative parents (though it varies by locality) and takes into account criminal records and family circumstances, such as the length of their relationship or whether they have children already.

But their observance has proved difficult to enforce in the hundreds of private fertility clinics that operate in Britain. The authority, which is supposed to regulate these clinics, has been embarrassed now into calling for a consultation on changing the industry’s guidelines. This is encouraging. It is sensible that a man who has been convicted of, say, grievous bodily harm should be subjected to particular scrutiny when it comes to becoming a parent. Equally, a woman who is 67 when she conceives is more likely to be a burden than a guardian to her child: in her 80s, her health and energy level will fall short of meeting the demands of a teenager.

Basic screening for IVF couples, then, seems perfectly legitimate. Not so to the procreation profiteers. Already, the medical establishment, and in particular IVF gurus, are up in arms about the proposed “intrusion” into their customers’ lives. They point to Italy, where stricter regulation has promoted an exodus by would-be parents to neighbouring Croatia: if you can afford to go private, no one can stop you trying for a baby. The medics also argue that stricter regulations put would-be parents at a disadvantage in comparison with natural ones: if you don’t need a criminal check to get pregnant naturally, you shouldn’t be forced to have one when you are a candidate for IVF.

This is to ignore the interests of society. When a parent is criminal or aged, the rest of us have to deal with a child traumatised by a father’s violence or a mother’s senility. From the burden placed on our already overstretched social services to the disruption a dysfunctional child causes in the classroom, we end up paying for people’s itch to conceive their very own baby. We are not able to screen natural parents and this has lumbered us with children scarred by their unsuitable parents; we should not add to their number by refusing to check on those who rely on IVF.

If the authority introduces stricter guidelines we will have won an important victory over a greedy industry that has enjoyed complete independence in its pursuit of making babies. But even when better regulation is in place, the ethos of the IVF industry - and this includes all other forms of assisted reproduction - remains questionable.

Children are neither a right nor a commodity, and the IVF industry treats them as both. “Baby hunger”, the label we apply to people’s longing to reproduce, suggests that without a child you will starve and whither away. But that is not true. However adorable and adored a baby is, life will not stop if you cannot conceive. Which is why it is right that many oppose making IVF available on the NHS: a cash-strapped health service must perforce prioritise its interventions, and an assisted birth comes well below cancer treatment and somewhere above a nose job.

Equally, IVF clinics encourage us to see a child as a product: the yearned-for result of an expensive gamble. If you pay your £2,000 per cycle, and most women need three to four cycles to conceive, you can walk off with a healthy foetus (or two, or three) in your womb. But when a child is a purchase, what kind of emotional legacy will he or she inherit? To know that your parents long dreamt of having you is wonderful, but to know that your parents could realise their dream only because they had a combination of cash and luck is to make you feel like a piece of particularly sought-after real estate - no different from a penthouse in Notting Hill or a villa in St Tropez.

Babies, once a blessing, are now big business. We are all the poorer as a result.