Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Bill

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 1st February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I want to make it clear that I oppose firmly Amendment 1. I believe that it fatally undermines the concept of deemed consent and ignores the processes that will be put in place if and when the Bill becomes law.

In some circumstances when people die, medical practitioners have a short window of opportunity to deal with organ donation, and it is simply impossible to get permission from the people who were near and dear to the deceased. Very sadly, some people also die having no one in that category. As it is written, the amendment undermines the principle. If the intention is to write into law that, where possible, family and friends must be consulted about the wishes of the deceased and their own wishes, that would be a different matter. However, as I read it, that is not how Amendment 1 would work.

The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has been a brief but powerful advocate of the Welsh system. I want to say one or two other things about it. Because we were pioneers on this within the UK, it was very much a matter of taking a belt and braces approach—take no risks. There were years—and I mean years—of public consultation on this issue and then years were spent preparing the resources to make sure that, when it was implemented, it would be done properly. That is why it took over five years from inception to the time when the system was put into place.

The Government need to publicise and inform. I support the noble Lord’s intention in Amendment 3, and I hope the Minister can confirm that the Government would consider incorporating this provision into the Bill—perhaps not in its current wording but in its intention. There would need to be a wide and repeated publicity campaign for the reasons that the noble Lord outlined.

The process of deemed consent will not reduce the pool of donors. Look around the world for the evidence. The top 10 countries in the world for deceased donors per million of population are Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Croatia, the USA, Italy, France, the Czech Republic, Austria and Belarus. Only the USA has an opt-in system; nine out of the 10 do not—there is the evidence. In those countries, in so far as I have been able to look back historically, there has been a great increase in the number of donors following the introduction of an opt-out system. I will not repeat the statistics that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has given the House, but the history in Wales is clear. Since 2015, the numbers have increased considerably year on year. Although we in Wales had been lagging behind the rest of the UK in our donor numbers, we are now well ahead.

The rate in Wales of those who choose to opt out is currently 6%. When we held our public consultation, we believed that the rate could be as high as 19%. It is a triumph of the publicity that people have understood it, but an important thread in that publicity was the fact that people were encouraged again and again to talk to their families and make their wishes known, so that due sensitivity could be paid to the wishes of families.

The British Heart Foundation, Kidney Care UK, the BMA and dozens of other organisations deal with this situation day in and day out. They all support this Bill, and I urge noble Lords to do so as well in due course.

[Lord O’Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, I want to make a brief contribution because I was in my noble friend’s position at the Second Reading of this Bill. It is important to reflect on the theme of the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord McColl: they are about trust. He is of course absolutely right that in the course of any changes we make in the future and whatever system we create, we must maintain the trust of British citizens, patients and their families. I agree completely with him in that intention. That is why, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, has just said, I support the intention of having a good campaign, although I do not think that it is the sort of thing which ought to be put into legislation, for the obvious reasons. Indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, pointed out, it would be barmy for any Government to undertake this kind of policy change and not pursue that, because to do so would be to fatally undermine the trust that already exists. At the moment, we have a very strong system in England which we intend will only get better.

I am sure my noble friend the Minister will confirm that it has always been our intention to provide a thoroughgoing, lengthy and extensive campaign for every new generation coming through in support of the idea of deemed consent. This policy has been supported by successive Prime Ministers: Gordon Brown supported it, David Cameron had an interest in it and Theresa May has made it a personal commitment. Given the benefits that such an approach yields, as has been demonstrated in Wales and elsewhere, it is inconceivable that any Government would not put the necessary resources into it. Indeed, we have an excellent record on public health campaigns and information campaigns in this country. The intention behind Amendment 3 is right, although I do not think that it is appropriate to put it into primary legislation.