Gordon Brown has signalled support for the removal of organs from dead patients without their consent.

Unless people opted out of the donor register or family members objected, hospitals could be allowed to take their organs.

Junior Health Minister Ben Bradshaw said that around one thousand lives could be saved per year as a result of Government proposals, which could also reduce medical costs as fewer people need services such as kidney dialysis.

He told Sky News: "Given that 1,000 people in this country die every year waiting for organs, and we have a relatively low level of donation, anything we can do to get those numbers up must be right."

Ministers will embark shortly on a review of the existing system, with doctors and nurses expected to sign up more donors.

Mr Bradshaw said that an inquiry was being undertaken into presumed consent by the Organ Donation Taskforce which would report back in the summer. The Taskforce was set up to look at barriers to organ donation.

Mr Bradshaw said that 90% of the population were in favour of organ donation but only 20% of people were on the organ donation register.

Mr Brown's indicated backing for the more radical approach is similar to that in Spain where there are more organ donors per head of population than anywhere in the world.

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Brown said: "A system of this kind seems to have the potential to close the aching gap between the potential benefits of transplant surgery in the UK and the limits imposed by our current system of consent."