Scottish Donation and Transplant Group written update: December 2024

Human Tissue Authority (HTA)

Update given by:

• Jessica Porter, Head of Regulation, Human Tissue Authority

General updates

The HTA continues to see a steady number of referrals under the Human Tissue Act 2004 (Supply of Information about Transplants) Regulations 2024 which came into force on 01 April 2024. These Regulations make it mandatory for relevant clinicians in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to report:  

• a reasonable suspicion that an organ donation and transplantation related offence may have been committed under the Human Tissue Act or Modern Slavery legislation, or  
• a patient who has received an organ transplant outside the UK

Colleagues are reminded about the amendment made to Section 32 of the Human Tissue Act 2004 and Section 20 of the Human Tissue (Scotland) Act 2006 on 01 July 2022. This amendment extended the offences set out in these sections so that they have extraterritorial jurisdiction. These offences relate to financial or commercial dealings in human material for transplant, such as buying or selling human organs. 

In practice, this means that any person who is resident in England, Wales or Scotland is committing an offence if they are involved in seeking, offering, or receiving payment or reward for donating organs for transplantation or initiating, negotiating, advertising or being involved in buying or selling human organs for transplantation, anywhere in the world. 

Living donation

For the period 01 August to 30 November 2024, we assessed 44 living organ donation cases where the transplant was due to take place in Scotland.

Eight of these cases were for donors and recipients taking part in the National Kidney Sharing Scheme.