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Health and Sport Committee 07 May 2019

07 May 2019 · S5 · Health and Sport Committee

Item of business

Human Tissue (Authorisation) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2

Balfour, Jeremy Con Lothian Watch on SPTV

Thank you, convener, and good morning to the committee and the minister. I start by saying that this is a very helpful bill, which I think has all-party support. The amendments that I will put forward this morning seek to strengthen the bill and make it work better. The key amendment that I am putting forward is amendment 4, which relates to the issue of informed consent. I hope that a positive of the bill will be that it will kick-start a debate in Scotland on organ donation, so that families and individuals will be able to have better conversations, meaning that, when someone is dead, the family is better informed. The evidence from Wales has been positive. Before the bill that became the Human Transplantation (Wales) Act 2013 was introduced, public awareness in Wales was fairly low. Since then, it has greatly increased, which is very positive. I am aware that the Scottish Government has committed to putting in a lot of resource when this bill becomes an act, so that there will be advertising and suchlike, including on the television. However, the question is how we keep the conversation going over the next five to 10 years. There is a danger that there will be a high take-up initially, when people understand that it is going on, but that it becomes less well known as other issues come on to our agenda and things move on. If we are to have informed consent, it has to be genuinely informed. People who are 16 or older now will be part of the awareness campaign. However, people who are behind that group in years may not be aware of what is going on. Amendment 4 would simply commit the Scottish Government to ensuring that there is some kind of communication with people in Scotland every two years. I do not suggest that it has to be an individual letter to each person. It could work well if the communication went out with other communication, such as council tax letters or other forms, on a two-yearly basis, so that people would be aware. The advantage of that would be that it would allow the debate to continue over the next four, five or 10 years. It would also mean that those who are turning 16 would be aware of it. It will be a number of years before those who are eight, 10 or 11 years old at the moment reach that time—will they be informed about the decisions that they are being asked to make? I would be interested to know the views of the Scottish Government and the committee on the matter. A key part of the bill relates to informed consent, and we need to ensure that there is informed consent not only now but in the future. As the convener said, amendments 7 and 8 are direct alternatives, which would give either a two-year or a three-year option. The amendments relate to people who come not from the United Kingdom but from Europe or other parts of the world. At the moment, there is a period of one year before a person from a different jurisdiction enters the system. Again, my concern relates to informed consent. If someone pitches up from Australia, will the issue come on to their radar within the first 12 months of their being in Scotland? I am not convinced that it will. I accept that the Welsh have gone for a 12-month period, and I think that the legislation for England includes the same period, but we do not need to follow suit. We need to be comfortable in ourselves that there is deemed authorisation that comes from individuals giving informed consent. I suggest that a slightly longer period than one year is required for an individual to know what is going on and to be able to have the appropriate conversations with his or her relatives in other parts of the world. I move amendment 4.

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Health and Sport Committee 07 May 2019

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