Clause 2 - ''Appropriate consent'': children
Human Tissue Bill
10:45 am
Ms Rosie Winterton (Minister of State, Department of Health; Doncaster Central, Labour)
The difficulty is that, for screening purposes, those in the approaching team would have to say that they knew, for example, that the person had been on the organ donor register and carried an organ donor card. The team would have to confirm what the person had wished to do and ask the relatives to give recent social and medical history, so that those matters could be clear for screening purposes. It is difficult to do that without saying what the reason is. It logically follows from that that the relative knows. If that causes great distress to the relative there and then, either they say, ''I'm not going to tell you because I don't want that to happen'' or they tell the team and
only later realise what has happened. If a person feels very strongly, the situation is difficult for those in the medical team. We must understand that.