Organ Transplantation

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, it is a well established principle of law that there is no property in a corpse. This means that, as a general rule, the law does not regard a corpse as property protected by rights. In other words, there can be no ownership of a dead body. However, the law does prescribe what may lawfully be done with the body of a deceased person. For example, a person can say while they are alive what they would like to happen to their body after death, such as donation of organs. My noble friend raises an extremely important point about A&E. The number of donors from A&E units is improving but it is generally recognised that it had to because performance was not good. Since 2007-08 there has been a 388 per cent increase in donations from emergency medicine, which is good news, but there is much more that could be done. The transitional steering group that we have set up under the chairmanship of Chris Rudge is looking at that area as a priority.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, it is widely recognised that the Government and the previous Government have made huge strides in this area but from a fairly low position. Many countries in Europe—particularly Spain—do much better than we do. What are we doing to ensure that we are learning from others and making the improvement even faster? Every day is someone else’s life.