What is really going on in politics? Get our daily email briefing straight to your inbox Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

With the Organ Donation Bill certain to become law, there is new hope for thousands on Britain's NHS waiting lists for heart, lung and other transplants.

Within the next few months, a new system, under which we are all opted in as organ donors – unless we decide to opt out - will come into being.

Soon, thousands of lives will be saved -and it's been possible because of a campaign led by the Mirror and taken up by Coventry MP Geoffrey Robinson as a private members bill.

I have met a number of men and women across Britain fortunate enough to have had transplants that saved their lives.

A friend of mine was hours from death when, miraculously, a heart became available from a dying donor and because of that, he is still alive - and remarkably healthy - 30 years on.

But I have also spoken to brave men and women who suffered for months and, in some cases years, who then died after being on a waiting list too long for a transplant that never came.

Today there are 6,000 people who are registered on the UK’s active waiting list, hoping for an organ transplant and until today on an invisible death row.

Indeed many hundreds have been dying every year--- removed from the active waiting list when after waiting so long they simply became too ill to receive a transplant.

Currently we have a system where you opt IN to donating your organs but the British rates of consent for organ donation are among the lowest in Western Europe.

The statistics show that at least a third of the suitable organs that could be available are never used to save lives.

An organ donation is the gift of the dying to people they will never meet but whose lives will be saved even as the donor loses theirs.

Like the donation of blood to save lives, it creates what some call 'a gift relationship' that binds us together - a real community.

Britain has been slow to adopt the continental system where it is assumed you have opted in unless you make a decision to opt out.

(Image: Andy Stenning/Daily Mirror)

But, today, while in one part of Westminster, parliament is spending all of its time unable to make decisions on Brexit, in another part of Parliament a big decision was being made.

The Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Act that will save thousands of lives was passing its final Parliamentary stages

A similar law has been passed in Wales and organ donations are already rising. Legislation is planned for Scotland too.

At Westminster, Geoffrey Robinson MP has succeeded where others like me failed.

I tried to get an organ donation bill through the House of Commons when I was Prime Minister and didn’t succeed. I could not get an agreement from the faith communities that this was essential at that time.

In the meantime, since 2008, 7,000 people have lost their lives unnecessarily. The bill that Geoffrey has piloted through Parliament opts you into organ donations unless you opt yourself out.

It follows a public consultation - the biggest consultation ever undertaken by the Department of Health - which received 17,000 replies, almost all favouring a law change.

Now the government has given Geoffrey their support. With the new law a new organ transplantation system will come into being and in operation, hundreds of lives a year can be saved.

The evidence is that people are happy with their organs to be donated after death but never get around to signing the register.

Grieving families anxious to honour the wishes of their loved ones struggle with the fact they never had the important conversation.

Geoffrey’s brilliant bill will spark the cultural change which will help us save lives and honour the wishes of all individuals while respecting the role of the family.

In a recent poll, the British Heart Foundation has found that around 75 per cent in England would support changing the law, yet only 36 per cent of the UK population are on the organ donor register.

(Image: Parliament tv)

Partly because of their commitment to an opt out system, Spain and Belgium have moved to the top of international league tables - and since the 1980s they have become the two world-leading countries for organ transplantation since the 1980s.

The majority of European countries now have the opt out. Not one country has moved back to the old system. The system Geoffrey has developed will be built on a high level of trust.

Its success depends on a high level of investment in the infrastructure that makes the transportation of organs easy, safe and quick.

With the average age of deceased donors 48, and with currently only one per cent of people dying in a way which makes organ donation possible, even greater investment in machine perfusion, which Britain is a world leader in, is needed to ensure organs can be preserved for longer.

More money will be needed for the NHS to beef up the Blood and Transplant service which is in charge of linking the patients in need with the organ donor.

The NHS organ donor register itself will be improved including a new phone app which will make organ donations easier to register than ever.

And so thanks to Geoffrey Robinson's vision and persistence and the work of a committed team around him, Parliament is showing that it can – at least sometimes – rise above the deadlock division and distrust within our political system and by its actions give hope to the sick and infirm for whom an organ transplant will mean a new life.