Clause 15 - Duty of the designated individual
Human Tissue Bill
11:15 am
Dr Andrew Murrison (Westbury, Conservative)
Amendment No. 84 is barking up the same tree as that of the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon, but it is a little stronger in its probing, because it would delete part of the Bill. Hospitals and many organisations involved in medical research will experience difficulty with supervision and the burdens that will be placed on supervisors. In practice, many such people will be remote from the individual who holds the licence, and it will be exceptionally difficult to achieve the kind of supervision that the Under-Secretary envisages.
The definition of suitable practices and persons is not given. I suspect that the Under-Secretary will say that that will be explored in the codes of practice, but that would leave it open for the word ''suitable'' to be interpreted in an undesirable way. If we are to put an onus on individuals who supervise, we need to give
them a clear steer—I suggest that we do so in the Bill—about what we mean by the suitability of persons who may operate as subordinates to the licensee, and the suitability of practices. Paragraphs (a) and (b) are unhelpful in that they fail adequately to define, even for the casual reader, what is intended. For that reason alone, they must be candidates for deletion.