Christian groups have spoken out against a possible new policy that would automatically assume everyone wants to be an organ donor unless they manually opt-out.

UK Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said families should overcome the "fatal reluctance" to talk about organ donation as he launched a consultation into plans for an opt-out system.

According to NHS Blood and Transplant, around 6,500 people are currently waiting for a transplant in the UK, but in the past year 1,100 families decided not to allow organ donation because they were unsure or did not know whether their relatives would have wanted to donate.

However, Christian organisations have told Premier an opt-out system is not the answer to the problem.

Philippa Taylor from the Christian Medical Fellowship told Premier while most Christians believe organ donation is a good and honourable thing to do, they may have issues with the method of the proposed measures.

"I think it's the way that this is being done and the assumption that everyone is donating without it being a deliberate decision," she said.

"Therefore, it's not necessarily a gift that is voluntarily offered.

"In countries where specialist nurses can talk to families about donation, then families are far more likely to agree to donating the organs of the deceased... we will be asking the Government to increase funding for specialist nurses for organ donation, as a more effective, as well as ethical, ways to proceed."

The opt-out system was launched in Wales two years ago. Christian charity CARE said it is not confident the scheme would work in England after a Welsh Government showed a fall in donors. Around 178,000 people opted-out.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt talking to staff during a visit at St George's Hospital in Tooting, west London.

CARE's Chief Executive Nola Leach said: "This decrease clearly shows that despite all the expense of introducing presumed consent, so far the only evidence that we have of any effect on resident Welsh donors is negative."

"It's important that we take action to increase the number of organ donations across the UK, but let us put the money into something that has been proven to increase organ donations."

While 80 per cent of people say they would be willing to donate their organs, only 36 per cent are officially registered and just half of adults on the register have discussed their wishes with a family member, the Department for Health said.

Listen to Philippa Taylor speaking with Premier's Cara Bentley here: