ORGAN donation remains a very sensitive issue despite the fact that the majority of Labour Assembly Members saw fit to vote this bill through to the second stage.

Let me make it clear that while I fully support the aim of this bill, to increase the number of organs available for transplant in Wales, I do not agree with presumed consent.

Under these proposals, people who “opt out” will be making a clear decision not to agree to donate their organs upon their death.

However, for others, the state will assume they do agree to have their organs removed.

In reality, most people will either not have made a decision or not have confirmed that decision with a health professional. Consent is an important issue.

The state now owns an expensive but failing airport, a hotel in North Wales that is not being used and a careers service that could survive perfectly well otherwise now it has been restructured.

Why does everything, my organs included, have to be owned by the state?

The Archbishop of Wales, Doctor Barry Morgan, said “organ donation surely ought to be a matter of gift and not of duty.

“Giving organs is the most generous act of self-giving imaginable but it has to be a choice that is freely embraced, not something that the state assumes.”

Many Muslim scholars do not permit organ donation because it compromises the special honour afforded to the human body, which is inviolable.

However, one of the fundamental purposes of Islamic law is the preservation of life, so it is clear that organ donation is a personal, not a political choice.

By listening to my constituents, I have concluded that a system of presumed consent is not necessary.

The number of people donating organs has risen by 50% since 2008 and the number of transplants in the UK has increased by 30%.

This is the result of specialist nurses who approach and support bereaved relatives in hospitals.

It should be mandatory for doctors to ask patients whether they would like to join the Organ Donor Register in every appointment and patients should be able to sign up on the spot if they agree.

We can encourage people to opt in every year through television and radio campaigns for new donors and by publicly commending those who have donated.

I voted against the bill, with my mind and my heart, two things so dissociated with the Labour state in which we live that the state can never truly own them.