Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of bringing forward legislative proposals to ban (a) organ trafficking and (b) transplant tourism to China.

The Human Tissue Act 2004 prohibits commercial dealings in human material for transplantation and makes it an offence to traffic organs.

Clinical advice to United Kingdom patients is not to travel to less well-regulated countries to seek an organ transplant. It is thought that very few patients in the UK choose to do so but data on those who do is not available.

The Government has welcomed China's move to stop using organs harvested from executed prisoners from January 2015. The Government continues to monitor the degree of implementation of this commitment, and encourages China to make further progress in bringing transparency to their organ transplant process.