Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether (a) NHS England, (b) his Department and (c) other bodies for which his Department is responsible has issued guidance to hospitals on whether they must seek consent from women who have experienced a miscarriage before tissue from the miscarriage is sent for analysis.

The Human Tissue Act 2004 introduced a regulatory framework for the removal, storage and use of human tissue. Fetal tissue is regarded as the mother’s tissue and is consequently subject to the same consent requirements for analysis under the Act, as would apply to all other tissue taken for diagnostic or treatment purposes. The Human Tissue Authority (HTA) publishes codes of practice that provide guidance to professionals carrying out activities lying within the HTA’s remit, including ‘Code of Practice 1, Consent¹ ’. This recommends that ‘whenever possible, the consent process for the examination of stillbirths and neonatal deaths involves the mother…’.

Neither NHS England nor the Department has issued relevant guidance additional to that provided by through the HTA’s Codes of Practice.

Note:

¹ Code of Practice 1, Consent, published by the Human Tissue Authority (as updated) July 2014, available at:

https://www.hta.gov.uk/guidance-professionals/codes-practice/code-practice-1-consent