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Remaining Government amendments agreed to.

Order for Third Reading read.

9 pm

Ms Rosie Winterton: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
 
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In Committee and today during Report, we have given the Bill very detailed consideration, and I hope that hon. Members and others who have shown keen interest in our deliberations will agree that we have been able to refine it in ways that will ensure that it is not only welcome and necessary—as I believe it is—but also workable and pragmatic. I am grateful to Members on both sides of the House, especially to the Members of the Committee, for the warmth with which they received the Bill, and for the unfailingly constructive way in which they have engaged with it.

I am particularly grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman), for the help he gave me during Committee. He made several memorable comments that will be written into the Bill's history, because he brought to our discussions his particular expertise. I also thank officials for their help and I hope that Members on both sides of the House felt that that help was extended to them, too, and that we achieved consensus on the Bill and managed to reflect the views of stakeholders and others with a keen personal interest in the measure.

The process of preparing the Bill and of bringing it through the House has involved consultation, consensus and co-operation. We have been able to discuss it—I hope openly—not only with MPs but with family groups, researchers and other key stakeholders. We have had the opportunity to listen and have been able to make improvements, which will, I hope, like the principles of the Bill, receive broad support.

In that respect, the Bill's progress has been a happy experience. But all Members will agree that what never left our minds was the appalling experience, suffered by far too many people, that led us to the awful realisation that practice in post-mortems and in tissue use had become far out of step with the public's expectations. As we said earlier, the former Secretary of State for Health, my right hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn), announced in January 2001 publication of the report of the inquiry into the Royal Liverpool children's NHS trust—the Alder Hey report—and of the report by the chief medical officer on the retention and use of tissue and organs. It is now a little over three years since that happened, and the House is ready to send to another place the Bill that has resulted from that review. Many people might say that that has taken a long time, but we have been dealing with complex, sensitive and, sometimes, very fraught issues. We have achieved a lot in drafting the Bill, and I am glad that, in the end, it has enjoyed support from hon. Members on both sides of the House.

Dr. Murrison: The Minister rightly determines that the Bill's provenance lies in the events at Alder Hey. Will she also record that, before those events, the tragic events at the Bristol royal infirmary gave rise to the revelation of what was going on at Alder Hey? It is important to record, especially for those who have been distressed by them in the south-west, that the events at the BRI gave genesis to the Bill.

Ms Winterton: Of course, and as the hon. Gentleman knows, I referred to that fact earlier in my contributions. I should like to refer not only to the Bristol inquiry report in 2000, but, of course, to the Isaacs report, which
 
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gave rise to the realisation that the uncontested retention of tissue from adult post-mortems was also a widespread practice.

What happened as a result of those terrible tragedies was not only a source of enormous distress to the families who were affected by those events, but has produced in recent years a loss of confidence and, for many, a diminution in their trust that science and medicine would respect people's interests and act only for the best. That, too, is a tragedy, as it is only with trust and confidence that we can truly progress with the important research that will support further advances in medicine. That is why it was so important in drafting the Bill that we were able to come up with proposals that will go a long way to restore that trust and confidence. I believe that they will succeed.

I have certainly met—I am sure that other hon. Members have done so—bereaved families who are still shaken by the experience that they went through, but who have been determined to play their part in helping to produce legislation that they accept will not help them but that they know will help others in the future. Their role, quite frankly, has been invaluable, and their generosity should not go unmarked today. Many in the health community have also shown remarkable commitment to and support for this reform.

In Committee, hon. Members expressed reservations about some of our proposals, but I am glad that we have been able to work with them to include some necessary safeguards, so that the research that they were concerned about can be carried on.

The Bill will provide the clarity to enable people to act and the oversight to ensure confidence. It will establish a regulatory framework with a Human Tissue Authority, so that oversight and monitoring of the new arrangements can take place. Moreover, the new authority will also be the source of advice, information and guidance that will enable people—the public and professionals—to understand fully what their rights, responsibilities and options are.

Mr. Lansley: Since we were in Committee, the Secretary of State has announced a further stage of his review of arm's-length bodies and, since the abolition of the Retained Organs Commission, the Human Tissue Authority has been included in his review. What intentions does the Secretary of State have towards the HTA under that review?

Ms Winterton: The HTA comes under the scope of the review, and that fits in with the spirit of the amendments that were proposed in Committee and that we have accepted today. We want to make sure that there is no duplication in any of the work of the arm's-length bodies, and we want to examine where it might be appropriate to put different arm's-length bodies together. However, no decisions have been made and announcements will be made shortly about that. I assure the hon. Gentleman that our vision that the authority will be independent and made up of experts and others who have an interest in the subject will be preserved.

Mr. Lansley: We observed in Committee that the structure of licensing intended for the HTA is very similar to that for the Human Fertilisation and
 
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Embryology Authority. Although the Secretary of State may not have framed it as such yet, if it is his intention to combine the work of the HFEA and the HTA, it would be certainly be advisable to say that before asking the other place to consider the matter in detail.

Ms Winterton: I will certainly pass on the hon. Gentleman's advice.

The Bill now provides the clarity to enable people to act and the oversight to ensure confidence but, most of all, it represents a move into the future. That is a future in which the relationship between patients and professionals has been redefined for the good of each and to the benefit of us all. For those reasons, I commend the Bill to the House.

9.12 pm

Mr. Lansley: I am grateful to have the opportunity to say a quick word on Third Reading. I am sure that the House will join me in thanking the Minister and the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman), for the way in which they have conducted proceedings on the Bill. It is not a routine commendation to say that the Bill has been debated in good humour; that is true not least because of the Minister's approach to these matters.

It is not easy for a Minister to navigate from the position that she and the Under-Secretary took in Committee on some of the amendments to the points that they have made on Report. She has managed to do that without the remotest sign of embarrassment, which is commendable and bodes well for her future ministerial career.

Like the Minister, I want to thank others, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison). He has done, as they would say in the trade, the heavy lifting on our side. I am acutely conscious that, whereas the Minister has no medical qualifications but has the benefit of advice, I have no medical qualifications and relied heavily on my hon. Friend's advice. The Committee also benefited from the contributions of the hon. Members for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) and for Wyre Forest (Dr. Taylor). That is an illustration of how we can bring together in the House a degree of expertise and a degree of ignorance and combine them happily.

A number of the issues that we raised on Second Reading just over six months ago have now been taken on board. I shall not repeat everything that I said when I spoke to the first group of amendments, but as I said to the Minister before Second Reading, the Bill should have been committed to a Special Standing Committee—it was a great pity that that did not happen—so that we could take evidence, even if there had not been full pre-legislative scrutiny.

It was amply illustrated in Committee that hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury and me, were putting forward well-argued points made by outside organisations such as the Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, the BioIndustry Association, the British Medical Association, organisations representing the family
 
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support groups and the National Committee Relating to Organ Retention. Those outside bodies used us as a mechanism to make points in Committee, but although we put their proposals on the table before Ministers we got limited shrift, as the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon suggested. However, our persistence seems to have paid off, so we can give thanks to those groups and the departmental officials for working together since the Committee to allow us to reach a more satisfactory conclusion today.

Several improvements have been made to the Bill as a result of that process. We debated widening the scope of education and training—I gave an example regarding cervical smears—and the Bill has been amended to reflect our concerns. The situation regarding the tacit consent involved in retaining residual tissue from living persons was mentioned as far back as Second Reading. We talked in Committee about the need to protect clinicians and researchers from risk if they obtained material without consent although they thought that that had been given, and I am glad that the Government have responded to our points. We suggested in Committee the requirement for regulatory best practice to cover the Human Tissue Authority, and the Government have accepted our point. We argued in detail in Committee about the requirement for codes of practice to deal with consent more explicitly, and although the Government resisted our suggestion at the time, they have now accepted it. We talked in Committee about the risk that commercial undertakings engaged in legitimate work connected with research could be criminalised as a consequence of the provisions in clause 29 on commercial trafficking, and the Government have now accepted our arguments. We had one success in Committee when the role of grandparents was recognised, although I suspect that the Minister could not think of an argument against our suggestion then because I dare say that she would have decided to go away to think about that, too.

We have made a lot of progress, so that should give a greater sense of security to those in the medical and research professions. We have tried to minimise the risks that they will face individually due to the creation of the criminal offences and the burdens that they will face collectively when trying to undertake successful research. Although a lot of our discussion in Committee and on Report was geared up to striking such a balance for those people, the Bill still provides the families who suffered from the unauthorised, and sometimes malign, retention of organs and tissues with an expectation that such things will not happen again.

The Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury mentioned the Redfern report on Alder Hey and the report on the Bristol royal infirmary tragedies. Those reports disclosed several specific incidents that occurred and the clandestine nature of the way in which tissues and organs were retained at Alder Hey. Many of us were disturbed that the reports exposed a culture in the NHS of retaining organs and tissues that often did not comply with the consent requirements in the Human Tissue Act 1961. Sometimes there was a patronising
 
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assertion that it would be better not to tell people and that what they did not know would not hurt them. Well, what they did not know did hurt them, and hurt them very deeply. It is absolutely right that, as the Minister said on Second Reading, that must not happen again.

We may be about to complete our consideration of the Bill, but it has to go to another place. Ministers may be tempted to assume that, given the positive reception that all the amendments considered today were given, it is the end of the story. There is one thing that I must raise in addition to the future of the Human Tissue Authority even before it is to be established.

Clause 9 relates to the position of coroners. It will not have escaped the Minister's notice that, in some instances, the tragic circumstances that gave rise to the necessity for this legislation included occasions on which post mortems had been carried out by or on behalf of the coroner. The case of my constituent, to whom I referred on Second Reading and whose circumstances were reported on in detail in the Isaacs report, resulted from a coroner's post mortem. My constituent can hardly feel the security about the future that she wishes to feel if the Bill simply says that anything done by or on behalf of the coroner will not be affected by the legislation and the issue is to be followed up by the Home Office at some future point.

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