Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Bill

Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and Crispin Blunt

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 23rd February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robinson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. It was his Bill that sparked my personal interest, and I pay great tribute to the work he did in preparing that Bill, which we have adopted almost in its entirety. He will be pleased to know that we are hopeful that his Bill—from the beginning, as it were—will now find its way alongside my own on to the statute book; I know that will give him great pleasure. What he says about that individual case is certainly true. The positive news from a cautious assessment from the NHS is that, provided the opt-out system—the quintessential starting point for all these forward projections—is introduced and backed up with the necessary limited revenue and capital spending, up to 500 lives a year could be saved by deemed consent.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I am delighted to appear as one of the supporters of the hon. Gentleman’s Bill, and am very pleased to have my name on it. I hope he will be able to look at just one thing in Committee: the issue of deemed consent involving people who lose capacity towards the end of their lives. I hope there will be more clarity in Committee to enable people who have made the decision that they want to make their organs available to do so, when just their brain is no longer of much use to anybody else and they do not have the capacity. I hope the Bill will be clear about such circumstances when people lose capacity towards the end of their lives but when the rest of the body can still be of use to others.

[Mr Robinson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and the fact that he agreed to be a supporter of the Bill—his name appears on the face of the Bill, he will be pleased to note. He raises an area of great concern, but it is something we will have to deal with in Committee; I am sure he will agree that it is not for Second Reading, so I will not go further into it now.