Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Bill

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Peter Heaton-Jones

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 26th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)]

The reason that I take a particular interest in this Bill has already been alluded to by many Members on both sides of the House, but I make no apology for rising once again to refer to the story involving my constituent.

Before doing so, may I join others across the House in wishing the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) all the best in his recovery? In many ways, we would not be this far in the process were it not for him, and I pay tribute to the way he has led the Bill through the House. It has been my pleasure to speak at each stage of the Bill’s passage and to serve on the Bill Committee. I also thank the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) for his kind words, which I will pass on to my constituents.

It is to them that I turn now and the story that has been alluded to but is worth retelling. If there is anything about this Bill that we need to keep in mind, it is that it is about people—it is about individuals, it is about saving lives and it is about the double-edged sword of a life being saved, but for that to happen, a life has to tragically be cut short. It is one such life that I wish to retell the story of.

On a Sunday morning last year on 30 July, there was a road traffic collision on the A361, otherwise known as the north Devon link road. It happened only about five minutes from my constituency home. Tragically, we had four fatalities on that short stretch of road in the space of a week. To go off slightly left-field, I am delighted to say that since then, because of persistent campaigning by many people, the Government have granted £83 million for major improvements on the road, mainly because of the safety concerns and the poor accident rate on that particular stretch.

Last summer, an accident took place involving two vehicles. Occupants of both were seriously injured. Before going any further, it is worth recognising that those who survived this accident are still living with its aftermath, and my thoughts remain with them nearly 18 months on. One of the cars involved in the accident was carrying members of the Ball family from Barnstaple. There was Keira Ball, her younger brother Brad and their mum Loanna. The paramedics, the emergency services and the NHS staff at the four different hospitals that the victims of this accident were taken to all did their best work, but sadly, young Keira Ball passed away two days later on the Tuesday afternoon. She was just nine years old.

Keira’s mother and brother were very seriously injured in the accident, and they were in hospital. They were not able to make decisions at this time, so the agonising decision came down solely to Keira’s father, Joe. He took the decision—and what a brave and courageous decision it was in these circumstances—that, in the midst of this tragedy, he wanted the life that had just been so cruelly taken away from his young daughter Keira to be given to somebody else, so he took the decision that Keira’s organs should be donated.

Following that brave decision, four people are alive today who otherwise almost certainly would not be. This is the power and the strength of organ donation, and this is why it is incredibly important that we get this Bill on to the statute book today: it is about these people. Keira donated her kidneys, her heart, her liver and her pancreas. One of her kidneys was given to a man in his 30s who had been on the waiting list for a transplant for two and a half years. The other kidney was given to a woman in her 50s, and she had been on the waiting list for nine and a half years. A young boy received Keira’s pancreas and liver.

Then we come on to Keira’s heart. It was given to a very brave and very sick 10-year-old boy, who has since very much become the figurehead of this campaign. I refer of course to Max Johnson. Max has been mentioned, quite rightly, so many times in this House and so many times during the passage of this Bill through Parliament. The media are calling it, quite rightly, Max’s law. I have a slight preference for it to be Max’s and Keira’s law, but it is actually the law for everyone who has found themselves in this situation—every parent, every relative or loved one, who has had to make the sort of agonising decision that Keira’s father made on that day—and for everyone who has benefited from the donation of an organ from a deceased person, as Max Johnson did.

It is Keira’s story; it is Max’s story; and it is a story of how a very brave and, I am sure, a very difficult decision to allow Keira’s organs to be donated has given life to other people who would otherwise almost certainly not be here today. Surely, of all of the arguments for supporting this Bill and for securing its swift passage on to the statute book, that is the strongest one—that this Bill is about saving lives. It is about giving people the gift of life just at the point when it might be taken away from them, and just at the point when it has been cruelly taken away from somebody else.

More organs are going to be available for donation as a result of this Bill, and that is crucial. We have heard some of the statistics from other Members, so I will not rehearse all of them, but I want to mention a couple of figures that I think are important. According to the latest NHS statistics, only 1% of people who die each year do so in what the NHS describes as “suitable circumstances” to allow their organs to be donated. I think we can probably guess, without going into too much detail, what lies behind that careful use of language. It means that only a very tiny proportion of people who die each year are not only suitable to have their organs donated, but have signed up voluntarily to the organ donation register.

If we cast our minds back to O-level or GCSE maths— depending on our ages—and the world of Venn diagrams, we can see that we need to have a lot of people in the middle bit where the circles intersect to ensure that enough organs will be donated to save lives. Because of the current way in which the law operates, that bit in the middle is not big enough: it does not have enough people in it. Bluntly, we do not currently have a system that allows for enough organs to be available to save enough lives. This Bill changes that, and that is why it is welcome.

[Neil O’Brien]

My hon. Friend is talking about the circles in a Venn diagram. I just make the point that many people would actually like to give their organs so that other people could live, but their relatives simply do not know that at present. This Bill is one way of solving that terrible problem.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

My hon. Friend makes a perfect point. That is indeed the case, and another reason why the Bill is incredibly important.