When he was offered an innovative and potentially life-saving type of lung transplant, Sam Galbraith considered turning it down. The prognosis wasn't good - two years, maybe three - and the former neurosurgeon knew better than anyone about the unpleasant side effects that went with the treatment.

"It was still pioneering surgery. I was the 13th in the UK to have the procedure and it was still at its early stages," the retired politician said.

"The results weren't good. It had always been fraught with complications and I wasn't sure it was worth it. As it turns out, it was. I was wrong and very happy to be wrong."

Nearly 18 years later, the former cabinet secretary, now approaching his 62nd birthday, has grown used to be referred to the UK's longest-surviving lung transplant patient. He appears to have given up on second-guessing his life expectancy. "I always live life to the next day," he added.

Mr Galbraith was 44 and an MP for Strathkelvin and Bearsden and when he was admitted to a Glasgow hospital on December 29, 1989 suffering from pulmonary fibrosis, a respiratory disease which had left him close to death.

Days later an organ donor was found and he was flown by air-ambulance to Newcastle's Freeman Hospital where he underwent a single-lung transplant. The more normal procedure at the time was for both lungs, or a lung and the heart, to be transplanted.

On recovery, he returned to politics and rose up through the Labour ranks, serving as minister at both Westminster and Holyrood before retiring in 2001 on health grounds.

He now supports moves to make donation easier by having a presumption of transplant consent which people can then opt out of - a reversal of today's practice.