Clause 2 - ''Appropriate consent'': children
Human Tissue Bill
9:10 am
Mr Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire, Conservative)
Good morning, Mr. Hurst. It is a pleasure to welcome you to the Chair. We made good progress on Tuesday and explored some of the issues of importance to the Bill, but I regard no issue as more important than the one that lies at the heart of this group of amendments. It would perhaps be helpful to explain what the group is intended to achieve.
The group has a particular purpose and a general structure fits around it. The purpose is expressed in amendment No. 3, which provides that the standards laid down by the Human Tissue Authority on the giving and obtaining of consent should specify where organs are to be retained and should not subsume such consent within a general or generic consent. We have used various terms. Consent is not defined in the Bill; there is simply consent. The purpose would be that, whenever consent for the use of organs was taken, it
would be separately specified. I shall come back to why that is desirable.