£4m to prevent IVF blunders

Britain's fertility clinics must foot a £4m bill for tougher inspections in the wake of the scandal involving black twins born by IVF to white parents.

The Human Fertility and Embryology Authority, which oversees Britain's fertility industry, has warned the country's 70 IVF clinics that the cost of their annual £500 licence fees will soar by 30 times and that other routine charges will rise by a quarter.

The country's leading infertility experts and the IVF industry have reacted furiously to the leap in costs, which will push the annual fees for clinics to £15,000 a year, claiming they are unfair.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the British Fertility Society said it would mean that NHS units could afford the increased fees only by cutting the number of free IVF treatments they offer.

The identity of the couple in last week's scandal is protected by a strict injunction granted by Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, president of the Family Court Division.

A preliminary hearing of the case to decide the babies' legal status is expected on Wednesday, but the full hearing is not expected before November. Experts believe the court will rule that, as the law stands, the white couple are the twins' legal parents.

The industry will come under further scrutiny later this year at the trials of two men employed at the private Hampshire Clinic, who have been prosecuted over allegations that embryos went missing.

Although the twins' mix-up emerged last week, the HFEA knew about the affair before it told fertility clinics two weeks ago about the plans to raise their fees, which have been unchanged since 1991.

It insists it has to increase its £1.2m budget to £4m to meet the greatly increased costs of regulating an industry that has doubled in size since 1991. The Treasury has stated it must raise that money from the fees it charges.

An HFEA spokeswoman said the proposals had not been provoked by the mix-up, but that they would help to prevent such mistakes in future. "You can't give categorical assurances that mistakes will never happen, but if we can work more closely with clinics, it will minimise the risks," she said.