Debate on Organ Donation - 24th January 2008

Debate on Organ Donation - 24th January 2008

Jamie Hepburn (Central Scotland) (SNP): I thank the Presiding Officer for accepting the motion without notice to extend the debate so that more members could participate in the debate. I am sure that I am not alone in being grateful for that.

Like others, I congratulate George Foulkes on tonight's motion. There is much on which George Foulkes and I will disagree, but on this issue we find ourselves agreeing. I feel strongly about this issue. I have a friend who suffers from cystic fibrosis. He is presently in pretty good health and in pretty good shape, but it is quite conceivable that, some day, he will need a lung transplant. At my friend's prompting, I was happy to host an event in Parliament last year on behalf of the live life then give life campaign. Many members attended that event, and some of them are here tonight. Just as we have heard moving testimony from members in this debate, people at the event were able to hear moving testimony from a young woman whose life has been absolutely transformed by a lung transplant. Perhaps even more moving was what we heard from a young woman who was desperately ill and needed a lung transplant. No one at the event could have failed to have the need for change to our organ donation system impressed upon them. I hope that we are all agreed on at least that much.

I appreciate that this is an emotive subject. In the debate, and in the run-up to it, I heard the views of those opposed to a system of presumed consent, including members of my party. As sincerely held as those views are, none sway my opinion that the time is right to move to a system of presumed consent. Mary Scanlon and Mike Rumbles suggested that we cannot presume consent. I understand where they are coming from and I accept that, in the short term, presumed consent offers some problems, primarily in the confusion that would arise in the move from the present system to the new one. However, in the long term, a system of presumed consent will be accepted and readily understood.

Christine Grahame and Malcolm Chisholm suggested that a system should be adopted that allows for people to opt in and opt out. That is an interesting idea, but I am not sure that it would work. Members of a certain vintage, including George Foulkes, will recall the 1979 devolution referendum, in which those who did not vote effectively voted no. The statistics show that even though the vast majority of people are happy to donate their organs, they never add their name to the register. In an opt-in and opt-out system, those who do neither effectively opt out. That would be little or no improvement on the current situation.

In the run-up to the debate, I heard concerns expressed that doctors would allow certain patients to die in order to use their organs for a patient waiting for transplant. I cannot conceive of a situation in which a doctor would do that; it runs counter to the Hippocratic oath. Why would a doctor, concerned to save the life of one patient, not be concerned to save the life of another?

I understand Roseanna Cunningham's point about the incentive to publicise the opt-out. However, it is not beyond our collective wit, as legislators, to devise a system that necessitates such publicity. Indeed, it is the only way in which presumed consent will work with legitimacy. Equally, it is not beyond us to design a system sensitively, taking the interests of the donor family into account. When it is all thrown up in the air, I do not see the strength of the argument against presumed consent. All I see are hundreds of patients slowly dying on the transplant waiting list. We have it in our hands to help save their lives. I hope that when the time comes we will move towards a system of presumed consent and help those people.