The creation of human-animal hybrid embryos should be allowed for research, and parents should register donor conception on a child’s birth certificate, a parliamentary committee said Wednesday.

MPs and peers who scrutinised the draft Human Tissue and Embryos Bill also called on the government to scrap plans to create a new regulatory body through the merger of existing authorities dealing with human tissue and embryos.

“While the Human Tissue Authority is concerned entirely with the policing of consent, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has to deal with the much more complex moral and ethical issues surrounding the use of human embryos,” its report said.

The cost savings, efficiency and co-operation between the two bodies – claimed by the government as benefits of establishing the new regulator – could be achieved better by maintaining the existing regulators, the committee added. Scientists and fertility experts welcomed its recommendation to abandon the combined Regulatory Authority for Tissue and Embryology (Rate).

“This is the first time that the government’s plans have been subject to scrutiny and they have fallen at the first hurdle,” said Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the British Medical Association. “The reason is that it makes no sense to merge these two very distinct and sensitive areas of regulation.”

On the controversial issue of human-animal hybrid embryos, the joint committee said scientists should be allowed to create any type of interspecies hybrid for research, under licence from the HFEA. The embryos should not be allowed to develop beyond 14 days and should not be implanted into a womb.

“The committee is quite clear that it wishes to see a greater role for the regulator within a broad permissive framework set out by parliament,” said Phil Willis, the Liberal Democrat MP who chaired the scrutiny.

A difficult ethical issue raised in the draft Bill was whether children born as a result of donor conception should have the right to know they were conceived from donated sperm or eggs.

The joint committee concluded that, as the state has a direct involvement in assisted conception through its regulation of the field, it “has a moral duty not to be party to a deliberate deception about the person’s genetic history”.

The committee of nine MPs and nine peers supported the compulsory registration of donor conception on the baby’s birth certificate.