4. 3. Statement: Deemed Consent for Organ Donation — the First Six Months

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:09 pm on 14 June 2016.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 3:09, 14 June 2016

Thank you for the comments from the UKIP health spokesperson and welcome to your own role. I’m pleased to hear your very clear support for the legislation and the outcomes that we wish to achieve. A part of what we’re doing today, and we’ll be doing throughout the rest of this year and the rest of the time we have a communication campaign, is to encourage people to make choices—whether that choice is to opt out or to opt in or to agree to do nothing and to potentially allow their consent to be deemed. I’ve dealt with a range of the points that I think you’ve raised about what we’re doing to try and promote a different range of people to have a conversation with their loved ones to make sure that their choices are known to the people they leave behind in particular. And in response to Angela Burns and Rhun ap Iorwerth, I’ve mentioned a number of things that we are already looking to do.

On the two particular points I think I should probably respond on, one is about the emergency contact for a family or loved one. Because of the particular circumstances in which people are able to be organ donors, it’s likely that a family member or loved one will be there with them. Where that isn’t the case, they still need to check that organ donation is possible, because you need to know enough about their medical history to understand whether their organs could in fact be made available for donation. So, there are practical points about that.

Just on your point about faith communities in particular, which I mentioned earlier, just to confirm, we employed a specialist consultancy called Cognition, which have experience of dealing with a range of different communities, and they’ve actually brought together people of different faith backgrounds to understand the concerns they had and how they’ve been able to get over those. So, I think people are more informed now, and that’s been part of the success of the legislation to date. I actually attended a workshop with a range of different people—not because of my particular role in Government, but also significantly because of my own constituency and the diversity that exists—with different faith groups to understand what their concerns were, where they’d moved to an understanding of the system that we have available and the choices that they can make. Because, actually, a range of people who are leaders in faith communities have the potential to influence people, to look at what we’re doing and to make their choice—whether it’s to opt in, opt out or do nothing.

So, I’m pleased with where we are now, six months in of the legislation going active, and I look forward to giving further updates to Members on where we have got to and where we still want to get to in the years and months to come.