Preparation of codes
Human Tissue Bill
2:30 pm
Ms Rosie Winterton (Minister of State, Department of Health; Doncaster Central, Labour)
I shall start by giving a little background. The Bill empowers the Human Tissue Authority to prepare and publish codes of practice, and sets down the matters with which it must deal through the codes. In bringing all those issues together under the Human Tissue Authority and ensuring that common principles are applied, our aim is to ensure a consistent approach to all matters relating to the keeping and use of human tissue that fall within the broad remit of the authority.
Many of the codes are to be subject to approval by the Secretary of State and are to be laid before Parliament so that the process can be observed and overseen at the appropriate level. As the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire set out and as the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Dr. Taylor) remarked, amendment No. 14 envisages the authority receiving and approving codes that have been prepared elsewhere. However, it would be inappropriate for the codes to be approved by the authority and then approved again by the Secretary of State.
The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire referred to the Royal College of Pathologists guidance on the conduct of post mortems. It would be perfectly acceptable for the royal college to have particular guidance available that it was appropriate to issue to its members. The Human Tissue Authority might use that as a basis for its own code of practice. However, it is not necessarily true that all the objectives would be identical. We would not expect the authority to take on board and approve a document as it stands without a period of consultation, consideration and reflection. However, we would expect it to look at such codes
from a slightly wider perspective. That would not stop the Royal College of Pathologists and other professional bodies considering whether they wish to give additional advice to their members.
The authority should take a common-sense approach. If guidance were available that could form a basis for the codes of practice, the authority would take that into consideration. We want the theme of its work to be consultation with others who are involved. It would be inappropriate for the authority almost to rubber-stamping something that had been put together by perhaps only one group without considering some of the wider implications. At the beginning of the process, we would want the authority to engage in wider consultation. A common-sense approach would obviously be adopted, and where good guidance was available, we would certainly expect it to be taken into consideration.
Amendment No. 85 would make it mandatory for the authority to prepare at least one code of practice, but we do not think that that is necessary. I draw the attention of the Committee to the structure of clause 23. The authority is empowered to prepare codes under subsection (1) and it is required to cover in those codes the matters set out in subsection (2). The authority would be unable to fulfil the statutory requirement in subsection (2) if it were not to prepare codes under subsection (1).
There is an important point to that. If we were to say in subsection (1) that the authority must prepare codes and to specify in subsection (2) what those codes should cover, one might suppose that subsection (2) represented an exhaustive list. Obviously, that is not our intention. We intend that the authority should cover the matters listed in subsection (2) but that it should be able to prepare codes on other matters within its remit as it sees fit. As time moves on—this relates to the discussion that we had this morning—the authority may need to give guidance in circumstances that we cannot anticipate today. In addition, a single code might cover both the storage and use of tissue from living patients, while another free-standing code might cover the conduct of anatomical examinations. As I said, all those matters are covered in subsection (2). Furthermore, to return again to this morning's discussion, the authority might have to give guidance on some aspect of public display or on arrangements for live transplant. Those are just some examples of how things might move on and of how we will need flexibility to deal with such developments.
I understand the intention behind the amendments, but the powers in subsection (1) and the specific requirements in subsection (2) set out the right understanding of what we should expect from the authority. They also send a clear signal that the authority can extend its guidance to cover all the activities that fall within its remit if it considers that appropriate. With that explanation, I hope that the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire will withdraw the amendment.