The Welsh Government’s plans to introduce presumed consent for organ donation could turn “volunteers into conscripts”, the Archbishop of Wales warned today.
Dr Barry Morgan said that people’s organs should be donated as a free gift to others and not be treated as an asset of the State. Presumed consent, he said, compromised individual rights and he questioned whether it was a legitimate power for any State. He also warned that the policy would undermine people’s trust in doctors and nurses by making them almost “servants of the State”.
He called instead for more effort to be made to raise the profile of organ donation and to explore ways of ensuring people made the choice about whether they wanted to donate or not.
The Archbishop’s comments came in his Presidential Address to members of the Governing Body of the Church in Wales, at the start of its two-day meeting at the University of Wales, Trinity St David, Lampeter today. During the address, he also raised concerns about the future of S4C and the use of the Welsh language in national life and he praised the contribution of Church schools to education.
Dr Morgan said, “There is, in presumed consent, a subtle or perhaps not so subtle change of emphasis in the relationship between the individual and the State. That is, that unless we have opted out, our organs belong to the State and the State has the right to do with them as it wills. The implication, by default, is that the State can decide on our behalf. I think that compromises individual rights and freedoms and poses the moral question as to whether the State can make such decisions. Is this a legitimate power, in other words, for any State? True, the State will argue that such power will only be taken after consultation with relatives but there is a presumption in favour of the State and almost the belief that our bodies are State assets and therefore at the State’s disposal.
“Organ donation surely ought to be a matter of gift and not of duty. If one takes organs without consent, on the assumption that by not opting out, a person is tacitly assenting, then this is no longer a free gift to others. An organ donation ought to be precisely that, a gift, an act of love and generosity. Giving organs is the most generous act of self giving imaginable but it has to be a choice that is freely embraced, not something that the State assumes. Put more crudely, it can turn volunteers into conscripts.”
The Archbishop raised concerns about the future of the Welsh language broadcaster, S4C, saying it was a “national institution which needs to remain independent and financially viable”.
Criticising the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport’s failure to consult over cuts to S4C’s budget he said, “Last week, the Government said it had formalised an agreement with the BBC regarding S4C which would allow the BBC to determine the funding levels of S4C from 2015 – 16. S4C does not appear to have been consulted at all. Moreover, the Government told the House of Commons that guaranteeing S4C’s operational independence would compromise the BBC’s accountability for licence fee money. Yet operational independence was the basis on which S4C was founded. The Coalition Government does not appear to have grasped the importance of an independent S4C. It is one of our national institutions and needs to be both independent and adequately funded. Both the Welsh Affairs Committee and the Culture Committee at Westminster have criticised the total lack of consultation involved.”
The Archbishop said the issue raised the question about the place of the Welsh language in all our institutions, including the Church in Wales. He said a working party was looking at how the Church could encourage more bilingual services and ministry.
He said, “This is, in reality, an issue about our mission to the people and nation of Wales and also an issue of justice…Wherever I go, I use the Welsh language for part of the service and I am amazed at the number of people who speak to me in Welsh afterwards and the number of people who do not speak Welsh, who nevertheless value the use of the language. I look forward to receiving the report we have commissioned to see how we can address this issue.”
Turning to education, the Archbishop praised the work of Church schools and thanked the Welsh Government for acknowledging their contribution to education in its Faith in Education document (see below), published in June. Church schools, he said, helped teach children about moral responsibility.
He said, “It is a seminal document because it acknowledges that church schools in Wales are now a feature of the educational landscape. It acknowledges the very positive contribution church schools make to the publicly funded system of education in Wales. Archbishop Rowan, commenting on the recent riots, stressed the importance of schools teaching the value of virtue, character and citizenship – things which our church schools try to do. It is their emphasis on moral responsibility as well as academic achievement that can directly counter what the Prime Minister identified after the riots as the ‘slow motion moral collapse’ of society.”
