Labour was against presumed consent for organ donation before it was for it

Mulling over the organ donations row, and the fascinating posts by Coffee Housers, I went back to the last time the Commons debated the issue properly – which was on an amendment to the Human Tissue Bill in June 2004 calling for “presumed consent”. I recommend the debate to anyone interested in the forthcoming controversy over Gordon Brown’s proposals.

The amendment four years ago was put forward by Dr Evan Harris, the Lib Dem MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, although Tam Dalyell recalled that he had championed similar measures decades before. This was Harris’s summary of the case for change:

First, it creates a default position that life should be saved rather than a default position that life could be lost. Secondly, as the evidence shows, it saves lives that are currently needlessly being lost; and thirdly, it encourages informed decision making by potential donors during life as opposed to what is inevitably subjective second-guessing by grieving relatives after death.