Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-02-04
Topic: Civil Rights
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, in moving Amendment 265 I will also speak to Amendment 282. I am glad to have the support of the noble Lords, Lord Ribeiro and Lord Alton, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Finlay and Lady Northover, for our endeavours Article 3(2) of the Universal Declaration on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting states: "The killing of vulnerable prisoners for the purpose of harvesting and selling their organs for transplant is an egregious and intolerable violation of the fundamental right to life." My two amendments seek to prevent UK citizens’ complicity in forced organ harvesting by amending the Human Tissue Act to ensure that UK citizens cannot travel to countries such as China for organ transplantation and to put a stop to the dreadful travelling circus of body exhibitions that sources deceased bodies from China As noble Lords know, I come from Birmingham, where in 2018 an exhibition called Real Bodies by Imagine Exhibitions visited the National Exhibition Centre. It consisted of real corpses and body parts that had gone through a process of plastination, whereby silicone plastic is injected into the body tissue to create real-life mannequins or plastinated bodies. The exhibit advertised it as using "real human specimens that have been respectfully preserved to explore the complex inner workings of the human form in a refreshing and thought-provoking style." But those deceased human bodies and body parts are unclaimed bodies with no identity documents or consent, sourced from Dalian Hoffen Bio-Technique in Dalian, China. Notably, Dalian labour lamp from 1999 to 2013 was notorious for its severe torturing of Falun Gong practitioners, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has reminded the House on many occasions The commercial exploitation of body parts in all its forms is surely unethical and unsavoury, but when it is combined with mass killings by an authoritarian state, we cannot stand by and do nothing. In 2019, the China Tribunal, led by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, stated: "The Tribunal’s members are certain—unanimously, and sure beyond reasonable doubt—that in China forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practiced for a substantial period of time involving a very substantial number of victims." Most recently, further evidence was heard during the course of the Uyghur Tribunal, including from Sayragul Sauytbay, who testified during the June hearings that she discovered medical files detailing Uighur detainees’ blood types and results of liver tests while she was working at a Uighur camp. In June this year, 12 UN special procedure experts raised the issue of forced organ harvesting with the Chinese Government in response, as they said, to "credible information" that "Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians" are being killed for their organs in China The recent findings of the Uyghur Tribunal, again chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice, were profoundly disturbing. We discussed some of this in our debate on genocide only a few days ago, but I think it bears repeating. The tribunal concluded: "Hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs—with some estimates well in excess of a million—have been detained by Chinese "authorities without any, or any remotely sufficient reason, and subjected to acts of unconscionable cruelty, depravity and inhumanity … Many of those detained have been tortured for no reason, by such methods as: pulling off fingernails; beating with sticks; detaining in ‘tiger chairs’ where feet and hands were locked in position for hours or days without a break; confined in containers up to the neck in cold water; and detained in cages so small that standing or lying was impossible … Detained women—and men—have been raped and subjected to extreme sexual violence … Detainees were fed with food barely sufficient to sustain life and frequently insufficient to sustain health, food that could be withheld at whim to punish or humiliate." This is the context in which we debate these amendments. I feel a sense of, shall I say, sadness, at least, that this is the opening day of the China Winter Olympics Currently, human tissue legislation in this country covers organ transplantation within the UK itself, but it does not cover British citizens travelling abroad for transplants, and British taxpayers’ money has to pay for anti-rejection medication for those people who then come back to the UK and go to the National Health Service, regardless of where the organ was sourced. According to the excellent NHS Blood and Transplant, between 2010 and 2020, there were 29 cases on the UK transplant registry of patients being followed up in the UK after receiving a transplant in China. This is a billion-pound business in China, using the bodies of executed prisoners—mainly prisoners of conscience The Human Tissue Act 2004 has strict consent and documentation requirements for human tissues sourced in the UK, but it does not restrict human tissues from abroad in this way; it is merely advisory. My amendments seek to amend the Human Tissue Act in the following ways First, they would prohibit a UK citizen from travelling outside the UK and receiving any controlled material for the purpose of organ transplantation when the organ donor or the organ donor’s next of kin had not provided free, informed and specific consent. Secondly, they would prohibit a UK citizen from travelling outside the UK and receiving any controlled material for the purpose of organ transplantation when a living donor or third party receives a financial gain or comparable advantage; or, if from a deceased donor, a third party receives financial gain or comparable advantage. Thirdly, it would provide for the offence in Section 32 of the Human Tissue Act 2004 to be prohibited even if the offence did not take place in the UK, if the person had a close connection to our country. Fourthly, it would provide for regulations for patient-identifiable records and an annual report on instances of UK citizens receiving transplant procedures outside the UK by NHS Blood and Transplant. Finally, it would provide for imported bodies on display to have the same consent requirements as those sourced from the UK Article 4 of the Universal Declaration on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting says: "All governments shall combat and prevent forced organ harvesting by providing for the criminalisation of certain acts and facilitate the criminal prosecution of forced organ harvesting both at the national and international levels." I believe we must take action internationally and in the UK to do all we can to prevent this abhorrent practice. I know from the success we had in the medicines Bill that a change in the law of this country has a much wider impact; it gives great encouragement to those brave people fighting these practices in China and globally. I very much hope the House will support this. I beg to move.