Chamber and committees

Agenda item 2 is consideration of continued petitions. PE1911, which is on a review of the Human Tissue (Scotland) Act 2006 as it relates to post mortems, was lodged by Ann Stark, who I believe is with us in the gallery this morning—you will have to forgive me, because my glasses are not that good, but I am aware of people at the other end of the room. Thank you for coming along this morning to observe our discussions.

The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to review the Human Tissue (Scotland) Act 2006 and relevant guidance to ensure that all post mortems can be carried out only with the permission of the next of kin; do not routinely remove brains; and offer tissues and samples to next of kin as a matter of course. This morning, we will take evidence remotely from witnesses, because we will be exploring the relevant issues as they relate to practice in England, which the committee has been intrigued by in our previous considerations of the petition.

I am delighted to be joined this morning by Dr James Adeley, senior coroner; Dr Simon Beardmore, consultant radiologist; Ann Edwards, coroner services manager; and Dr Mark Sissons, consultant pathologist. Thank you all for giving us your time this morning and for joining us to discuss the petition, because the committee is genuinely intrigued to understand the different practice in England and why for the moment it is judged as being difficult to emulate in Scotland.

Having wished you all good morning, I will move to questions. I should say that our clerks will be keeping a careful eye on things, so please just indicate when you wish to contribute.

All of you provide a post-mortem scanning service in Lancashire and Blackburn with Darwen Council, and it is a collaboration between the county council, Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and a private scanning provider, Digital Autopsy UK. I understand that the whole arrangement has been in place since 2016 and was the first of its kind in the United Kingdom.

Can you, by way of introduction, provide a bit of background? What prompted the establishment of the service? Was it simply a good idea? Was there similar public concern about the arrangements that had been in place? Was it a matter of professionals coming together who believed that it was possible to do things differently and in a way that better served the public interest? I am very interested in understanding how all this came about in the first instance.

Who is going to kick off? I am looking for one of our witnesses to volunteer.

What you have said is very helpful. At the start of your comments, you said that there was a rapid reduction in the number of pathologists. Can you elaborate on why that was the case? Has that reduction continued apace, or has anything been done to try to arrest that decline?

Yes. That is fine. When questions are asked, to avoid us operating in a vacuum, it will possibly be helpful if I come to you first and you direct us to the colleague who you think would be most appropriate to answer.

Fear not. We will have a number of questions.

This is all incredibly technical. In some of your answers, you may well volunteer information that will come up again in questions that my colleagues will ask. It is quite a complicated subject, and we are keen to understand it as well as we lesser mortals can.

The conclusion that I am coming to is that there is variable practice, but the common feature no doubt is that the number of pathologists is reducing everywhere because of the way in which the service is structured and the voluntary nature of electing to participate in post mortems. That is an interesting consideration.

I will bring in my colleague David Torrance. We have been told by the Crown Office in Scotland that achieving the skill sets required to move to different technology would be incredibly difficult.

That is helpful to know, because it sets in context what we are discussing. It means that our situation in that regard is not unique, and yet the provision has been established elsewhere.

My colleague Foysol Choudhury has a supplementary question.

Yes, thank you for that. In the written evidence that we received, the Royal College of Pathologists put up what the committee felt was almost a smokescreen—I do not think that that is too strong a word to use—in discussing the issue, by saying that a decision would have to be made that the tissues were no longer of use; that if the tissues were to be buried or cremated, that would delay the process; that if the tissues were not to be buried or cremated with the body, the options would need to be explained and understood; and that the process would be very complicated, which could lead to delays and to the family not properly understanding matters. You mentioned the Home Office; here, matters would be referred to the procurator fiscal. That would be a completely different type of event.

From what you have articulated, it seems as though an operational practice has been established where you are that has not led to a massive increase in cost and which has worked perfectly satisfactorily for all those concerned. That is quite an important piece of counter-evidence.

I am sorry—in summing things up, I hope that I have not editorialised anything that you said.

Ms Edwards mentioned brains. I want to come back to a couple of general issues that arose out of the petition that have not been covered in the commentary that we have had to date. In her petition, the petitioner asks that all post mortems

“can only be carried out with permission of the next of kin”

and that post mortems

“do not routinely remove brains”.

What is your view on those two propositions?

Please do.

Thank you. Like you, I hope that our guests in the public gallery who are directly concerned with the issues have appreciated the evidence session that we have held this morning, which will certainly help to inform the committee. It seemed that, in a number of areas, there is clear opportunity for progress; in others, it might be more complicated.

In summation, colleagues, we will clearly want to further reflect on the evidence at a future meeting. We might anticipate that, following that consideration, we would then want to have the opportunity to put questions to the minister in relation to some of the issues that have been raised. Do members agree that we should seek to secure a session with the minister, and that, before then, we should have the opportunity to reflect further on the evidence that we have heard?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you, Ms Baillie. Indeed, you pointed out to us on a previous occasion that we have a reputation for liking to get out and about from Holyrood and, in our response, we said that we might even manage to come and visit at some point. It is a little early to admonish us for not having managed to do that already. However, the recommendation about the STAG report is significant. Do members want to comment or make any recommendations on that?