Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Bill

Debate between Jackie Doyle-Price and Cheryl Gillan

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 12th September 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Dame Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

Mr Wilson, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I rise to support the amendments in the names of the hon. Member for Coventry North West and the Minister.

I rise only briefly to say that I am a convert. Originally, when I was Secretary of State for Wales, I was not convinced that an opt-out system would be beneficial. I have changed my mind; when the facts change, one should, as a politician, change one’s mind. One of the things that has changed my mind is personal contact with a family where an organ will be needed to save a young man’s life. There is nothing more powerful than having that presented to one as a politician. That means that all of us must have an open mind about so many things.

The way the trend has been going, particularly in Europe, is interesting. I think now more than 24 countries in Europe have some form of opt-out system. Although we have not yet really seen the benefits in Wales of the legislation that came in in December 2015, I frankly think that we need to improve the mathematical odds. We will do so only by creating a culture in which organ donation is spoken about, not in hushed tones or with accompanying difficulty, so that it becomes part of the common parlance.

The testimonies given by other Members in Committee show that the fact that a loved one may go, but parts of that loved one can contribute to saving or enhancing the lives of others, has to be a good thing. I support the amendments and hope the Bill gets a very fair wind so that it becomes law.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jackie Doyle-Price)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wilson, and with colleagues across the Committee. Without exception, everyone in the room has been a passionate advocate for organ donation. I am grateful for all the efforts made to promote this important procedure and movement.

With your indulgence, Mr Wilson, I would like to reflect on some of the comments made by members of the Committee before I address the amendments in detail. The Government fully support the Bill and are grateful to the hon. Member for Coventry North West for promoting it. The amendments are a tidying-up exercise and I put my name to them.

Autism Diagnosis

Debate between Jackie Doyle-Price and Cheryl Gillan

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I was just coming on to that. I have to say that I was very concerned by the issues that the hon. Lady raised. It occurs to me that there is a real risk that what they are suggesting could be seen as discriminatory. Certainly what she suggested should not be undertaken without real consultation with the local community and illumination of the issues concerned. She mentioned that she was going to write to me about that, so I look forward to considering it with a bit more reflection and then coming back with a response.

[Mrs Gillan]

While the Minister is discussing correspondence, she may not have the answer to what, for me, is a crucial question—the detail of the self-assessment framework that is sent to the top-tier councils. She will remember me mentioning that we know that one local authority has a 125-week waiting time. I appreciate that she will not have the detail here, but will she undertake to write to me in the next week and let me know when she will publish that detail, so that we can all access the information?

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

There is a good argument for being very open about this generally. The self-assessment framework obviously requires local authorities to mark their own homework, and even then we are not seeing the increase in performance that we would like to see. One of my main messages is that we can all learn from good practice elsewhere, and bad practice can also be a learning experience. The more sunlight we can bring to what is happening, the better. I am happy to write to my right hon. Friend on that.

That brings me to the results of the most recent self-assessment exercise, which show that only 22% of local authorities are meeting the recommendation of a maximum three months between referral and first appointment for an assessment. That is obviously not good enough. On the plus side, a further 23% said that they anticipated meeting recommended waiting times by March this year and that they would be able to sustain that, but that is still only half. Although the direction of travel is positive, there is a lot more work to do.