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Mr. Pound: I support the grouped clauses moved by the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris).
It does not need to be put on the record but I shall do so anyway, superfluous though it may be, and say that the majority of the Bill is excellent. It is a first-class piece of legislation that does long overdue work and is entirely worthy of support on both sides of the House. Were it not for the area covered by the grouped clauses moved by the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon, it would be well nigh the most perfect piece of legislation I have seen. The fact that it even approaches that state of perfection is very much to the credit of my hon. Friend the Minister. However, she may have erred by not allowing a conscience vote on this occasion.
I understand that there are financial implications, but this is a cross-party issue that so affects all parts of the Hose, as evidenced by the list of supporters of the new clauses. It is very seldom that we see the name of the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) in the same company as the name of the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon and, on a humbler and far lower stratum, my own name.
Mr. Dalyell: One does not wish to shoot one's own troops or one's friends, but my hon. Friend says there are financial implications. Some of us think that the proposed scheme would save money in the medium and long term, rather than cost money.
Mr. Pound: The Father of the House, as ever, makes an excellent point. It is to his credit that he first raised the issue 33 years ago. I do not think that the measure before us will be weighed in the bankers' scales. I simply understand that there are implications with regard to the infrastructure and that the Government must, rightly and responsibly, pay heed to that matter.
In a gesture that I shall never repeat, I once offered to advise anyone who wished to nominate a Bill to be put before the House of Commons. That was on the "Today" programme last year, after I had been inveigled by the producer, Mr. Kevin Marsh. If the
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House is the echo chamber of the nation, the "Today" programme approaches that to a certain extent, though I do not in any way mean to compare you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to the producer of the "Today" programme.
By far the most popular topic suggested from across the country was for a Bill precisely along the lines proposed by the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon. It was not until that rather unfortunate Christmas eve when we were hijacked by gun nuts from various survivalist magazines ranging from Auckland to Alabama that we lost out. I learned a good deal during that time. Principal among the things I learned was never, ever to do it again. The second thing I learned was what strength and depth of feeling mean.
The Minister referred earlier, as did the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley), who leads for the Opposition, to the good humour with which business had been conducted today. There was good humour in Committee, as there is on the Floor of the House. I cherish, admire and enjoy that good humour, but for many of our constituents what good humour there is is that of endurance—the bravery that they manage to summon up when they are looking at a very dark future. I mentioned my experience on the "Today" programme. I can also mention Mrs. Foley, a 33-year-old teacher and mother of a seven-year-old child, and a constituent of mine, who has cystic fibrosis and—she will not mind my saying this; she has given me permission to do so—may not live for many more years. She has good humour and immense courage and bravery, but I cannot simply look her and others in the eye and say that in this place, at this time and on this day, I did not do every single thing that I could to try to increase the number of donated organs and consequently the number of transplants, which would make such an enormous difference to people.
5.30 pm
I cannot even begin to bring to the table the depth of knowledge and expertise of the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Dr. Taylor) and various other Members who have spoken, but I spent 10 years working in University College hospital and Middlesex hospital in London. I was the ancillary worker who had to take the relatives into the interview room after their boy had been killed on the A40 or had died in a car crash on Marylebone lane, and who had to stand by, get the tea and be present if the relatives felt faint. I sat in on scores of the very sort of conversations that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. On one or two occasions, yes, the doctor was insulted and called a ghoulish bloodsucker or a Frankenstein, but in the vast majority of cases the reaction was, "We hadn't thought of that; he would really have liked that. He may be gone, but someone else will live." I heard that said over and over again.
One of the arguments against what is proposed—I am not saying that the Government are suggesting this—is that gung-ho consultants in accident and emergency departments may be a little too anxious to record brain stem death. Consultants in A and E departments seem the most unlikely group of people to want frivolously to go through the enormous amount of paperwork that such a transplant would involve unless it was the most serious possible case and death had been confirmed. My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) spoke about nightmare cases such as the kidney shuffle
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across east London, which we remember, but I cannot envisage any case in which an A and E consultant, a registrar or anyone in accident and emergency would act prematurely or in breach of their primary Hippocratic oath because of the prospect of gaining an organ for transplant. I simply do not see that happening.
The Government have said—and I support them—that one solution is to increase the number of people carrying donor cards. I agree, and I had a great deal of sympathy with my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) when he called for a Green Paper. The difficulty is that for every France that the Minister raises, I can match it with a Spain and trump it with a Belgium. We can go right around Europe and talk about different cases, interpretations and levels of statistical analysis, but at the end of the day, perhaps, we have to convince the non-experts—the people such as my constituent, my neighbours and, frankly, myself. I simply cannot understand how my constituent would have a better chance of living if she were Belgian rather than British, how we in this country cannot manage what our fellow Europeans can manage so well, and how, as was said earlier, a vitally needed organ can be buried or burned while someone else is dying for it. This seems the most simple and elementary matter of demand and supply. We are simply not maximising the supply, whereas the demand is increasing exponentially.
If we were to place cards in GPs surgeries, as has been suggested, I wonder how high the take-up would be. Nowadays, GPs—there are many in the House, and they can doubtless speak with far more authority than I can—tend to have about eight to 10 minutes to see a patient. Can anyone imagine a GP talking to a patient and saying at the end of the consultation, "Yes, everything is fine; no trouble at all. By the way, have you thought about carrying a donor card?" The patient may wonder about the secret, subliminal message that lies behind that statement. If my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Dr. Stoate) were involved, the message would not be subliminal, because he would probably force the patient to take a donor card.
I am a strong proponent of compulsory national identity cards, as are most people who care about the safety and integrity of our nation. We face the prospect of issuing such cards, and that offers the perfect opportunity to link what the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon refers to as "illiberal legislation" with this liberal legislation. Including an opt-out on ID cards is a remarkably sensible idea.
My hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, North (Joan Ryan) has displayed an extraordinary degree of scientific understanding and great sensitivity in the long conversations in which other people and I have expressed our concerns. I am extremely grateful for her understanding and sensitivity, and I respect and admire her and the Minister for spending so much time on the matter. However, the problem is that the Government are squeamish.
Some hon. Members are simply not prepared to argue the case for a national system of donations, and some are terrified that the tabloid press will come up with stories about Frankenstein, Dracula and Burke and
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Hare—I genuinely believe that that concern informs much of the language in the explanatory notes. By arguing the case for a national system of donations—I accept that I am moving into uncharted waters—we ask people to recognise that each of us is a member of the same national community, and that we have the opportunity to give as well as to receive. I recognise that the area is difficult, but we must examine it because it lies at the core of the issue.
Mr. Tony McWalter (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab/Co-op): My hon. Friend mentions the prospect of the press taking up the cudgels on the misuse of the new rule in the new clause, but they might also take an interest in other cases. An 18-year-old friend of mine died at Christmas in Papworth hospital, while waiting for someone with a donor card to die, when we all knew that many other people, whose organs would have saved that boy's life, were dying.
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