'Horror' over NHS organs blunder

Joyce Robins, of pressure group Patient Concern, drew parallels between the mistakes made recording people's wishes on organ donation and the series of scandals over the mishandling of personal information which have beset the Government over recent years.

She said: "This Government has got an absolutely dreadful record when it comes to data, but it is absolutely horrific that such sensitive details were handled in such a careless way."

The errors over organ data related to the different ways in which people can choose to become a donor.

Would-be-donors can either give permission for any of their organs to be taken, or provide more specific agreements allowing only certain types of donation. Many people choose not to give consent for their eyes to be removed, for example.

However, in some 800,000 cases this distinction was accidentally deleted in 1999, when details held by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency – which includes a request for organ donor consent in its application forms for a driving licence – were transferred to the organ registry.

The mistake came to light last year when NHS Blood and Transplant, which runs the organ donation register, wrote letters to new donors thanking them for joining the register, and outlining what they had agreed to donate. Respondents wrote back complaining the information was wrong.

The NHS has been able to correct 400,000 of the flawed records, but hundreds of thousands more people are now due to be contacted and asked to confirm what consent was given.

Until fresh consent is obtained, organs will not be taken from any of those people in the event of death.

It is illegal to remove organs without prior consent from the person who died, or their next of kin. In the cases where errors were made families are believed to have been asked for permission but their decisions were based on misinformation about the wishes of their relatives.

A spokeswoman for NHS Blood and Transplant said: "We are aware of issues with the records with a small proportion of the people who signed up to the NHS organ donor register. We are taking it very seriously and are urgently investigating the situation."

Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb said a full inquiry was essential to ensure mistakes are not repeated.

He said: "This is a shocking failure of proper controls over organ donation. There needs to be a full inquiry."

His colleague Dr Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrats' science spokesman and chairman of the Parliamentary Kidney Group, said the wider problems around organ donation related to the opt-in system itself.

He said: "While most people are willing to donate, only 25 per cent are on the register, which means in three-quarters of cases their relatives are likely to wrongly refuse life-saving donation. So under our current opt-in system, every year the wishes of thousands of people who are willing to donate but are not on the register are disregarded because the decision is transferred to bereaved relatives.

"Only with an opt-out register for organ donation, with a presumption of life-saving consent for those who don't opt out, can the wishes of the vast majority who are willing to donate be respected."