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Meg Hillier – 2024 Speech on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

The speech made by Meg Hillier, the Labour MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch, in the House of Commons on 29 November 2024.

In my brief remarks today, I want to touch on principle, policy and practice. We have to be very clear that we are having a debate not just on the principle, but on the Bill. The principle at stake is that we would cross a Rubicon whereby someone who is terminally ill, according to the definition in the Bill, is assisted by the state to die. That is a fundamental change in the relationship between the state and the citizen, and the patient and their doctor. If we have a scintilla of doubt about allowing the state that power, we should vote against the Bill today.

Like most of us, I came into politics partly to stand up for the vulnerable, and we have heard heartbreaking stories today about those vulnerable at the point of death. We have also heard—and I concur completely with my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott)—about those who are vulnerable for other reasons and who could be coerced or persuaded down this route.

I have had the privilege of being around the hospice movement for nearly 50 years, as my father established one of the first national health service hospices in this country. I saw what he did as a doctor in a world where death was not talked about, where surgeons would say, “We’ll whip this bit out and you’ll be fine.” He would be one of the first to have to tell the patient that they were actually going to die. The work that he did, on the back of giants such as Dame Cicely Saunders, is something we should be proud of. We were the first country in the world to recognise palliative care as a separate profession, and some of the tragedies we have heard about today arose from a failure in that system. A failure in palliative care and support is not a reason to continue.

I have personal experience of this. Many hon. Members will remember when my daughter was very ill a few years ago. I had not intended to speak about this today, but she was admitted to hospital as a teenager with acute pancreatitis. The Bill would not have covered her, but I did not know for five days—in fact, many months—whether she would live or die. For those first five days she did not sleep and she did not eat, and she was crying out in pain. I saw what good medicine can do. It palliated that pain and got her to a place where, although she was unable to eat for two and a half months, she was saved and her pain was managed. Our best friends were the pain nurses and the anaesthetists. I have other examples of another family member, but I do not have time to go into them today.

I hope my daughter forgives me for raising her personal situation in the House today—

Lola McEvoy

Will my hon. Friend give way? I pay tribute to her for the strength that she is showing. Indeed, I pay tribute to all Members on both sides of the House who are dealing with this very difficult issue. Does she agree that we already have assisted dying in this country? Legislation already allows for choice, proving that people would be able to die at home with carefully administered, practitioner-led pain management. Does she agree that the inconsistency of this application of good pain management at the end of life, causing compassionate legislators to feel that the only option is to vote for the Bill, is a failure of our existing national health system, and does she—

Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)

Order. Interventions will have to be short in this debate because many Members wish to speak, so perhaps that is enough.

Dame Meg Hillier

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. She is absolutely right. When we see the system working, it is great, but some of what we have heard today has referred to a failure of the system. That cannot be a reason for us to accept the Bill today. For more than 30 years I have been scrutinising the policies and actions of public bodies and seeing the mistakes that they make, both in the care sector when I was in local government and more recently as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee.

Mr Adnan Hussain (Blackburn) (Ind)

The time for us to make this decision is wrong, frankly. At a time when 44,000 terminally ill pensioners are set to lose their winter fuel allowance—indeed, many of them have lost it—we are discussing whether we will pass a Bill, a state-sanctioned Bill, dealing with a taboo that many of us are reluctant to talk about.

Dame Meg Hillier

Where I do agree with the hon. Gentleman is that the time is not right. We have not had the proper discussions about palliative care. Some of us have been trying to talk about it for many years, and we need to ensure that this debate does not stop today, but the Bill must stop today. It is not developed to deliver the palliative care resource that we need. I do want to touch on the policy, but let me first return to the point that I was making before the hon. Gentleman’s intervention.

We have seen many failures in the system, including contaminated blood, and whistleblowing in the NHS repeatedly shows such failures. There is great trust among those who support the Bill that these safeguards will deliver. I will not go into the details, because others have already done so, and I am sure that many more will, but we made coercive control illegal in 2015, and although the Bill refers to safeguards, I fear that that will not pick up coercive control. When we ruled it to be illegal, we thought that was a moment of progress in the House.

Given the time, I will now move on to some of the practical challenges. My constituents are struggling to see doctors face to face, and seeing the same doctor twice seems like a miracle in today’s Britain. My right hon. Friend the Health Secretary is trying to sort it out, but it will take a long time. We need to sort out our battling health service, we need to support palliative care, and we need to discuss what a good death is. Cicely Saunders campaigned and triumphed to ensure that we had one of the best hospice movements in the world.

If Members have any doubt in their minds about the impact of the Bill on people who do not have the same capacity as those who are talking about this in the television and radio studios, they should think of those in my constituency who have poor English, or the woman who came to see me a month ago with terrible pain in her gall bladder. Removing it would have been a simple daytime operation, but she did not understand what the doctor had told her, and she was not going to have her gall bladder taken out because she did not know what it meant to be without a gall bladder. Let me say this to those Members: if someone who was English, a bright woman in her 60s, was unable to challenge what was said to her and to have that conversation with a doctor, just think what passing the Bill today would mean for many more vulnerable people.

I thank the House for its indulgence.

December 3, 2024
Ben Spencer – 2024 Speech on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

The speech made by Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP for Runnymede and Weybridge, in the House of Commons on 29 November 2024.

Prior to my election to Parliament, as a consultant psychiatrist with a PhD in decision-making capacity, I would have met both criteria to be a medical expert assessor under clause 9(3)(b), so I have a particular perspective as someone who, in different circumstances, might have been called upon to make these assessments.

I strongly believe that we should respect and support the right to bodily autonomy for people with full decision-making capacity, subject to the caveat that it does not cause serious harm to others. I argued for this when I was on the working group of the independent review of the Mental Health Act 1983 and on the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee on the Mental Health Bill, which, among other things, aims to prevent people from coming to harm when suffering from severe mental illness. These reforms were debated in the House of Lords this week, and they demonstrate how Parliament should legislate in complex areas that balance individual autonomy and risk.

In contrast, as a private Member’s Bill, there is limited ability for scrutinising this Bill’s provisions. It has had no independent review, no pre-legislative scrutiny and no impact assessments. Many MPs support the principle of assisted dying yet have concerns about implementation, resource implications and safeguarding. That is why I, along with colleagues on both sides of the House, tabled a reasoned amendment calling for an independent review and consultation before a vote in Parliament, to provide a third way through. I thank the Members who supported the amendment, particularly the hon. Members for Shipley (Anna Dixon) and for Twickenham (Munira Wilson), for their work and their extensive and careful consideration.

Although the general debate on assisted dying may focus largely on the principles, legislation must address the limits to and the safeguards on consent. Should people be able to agree to a medically assisted death? If so, what restrictions, if any, should there be on people who can make this decision—age, capacity, terminal illness, intolerable suffering? And then, what safeguards are there to uphold these limits and to prevent abuse—assessments by two doctors, judicial scrutiny?

Given that the main argument I see in favour of assisted dying is the exercise of personal autonomy, I believe the most substantive issues we need to wrestle with are the limits that we set. Why is this Bill limited to the terminally ill and not those who are suffering without that being terminal? What even comes within the scope of terminal illness? With the refusal of treatment and medication, conditions such as type 1 diabetes and HIV can be designated as terminal, despite being fully treatable.

There are many questions, but in this Bill the most prominent problem is that, in a legal context, if the availability of assisted dying is limited only to those who are terminally ill, it is discriminatory either to those with or without terminal illness. Either their right to autonomy is greater than others’, or the value of their life is worth less.

We must also ask whether autonomy can be exercised where there is no choice. If good palliative care is simply not available, can we really rely on this as a true and free decision? I would argue that we cannot, and that this Bill does not safeguard against coercion through state neglect.

Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Dr Spencer

I usually would, but unfortunately that would impact on other Members who wish to speak. I apologise.

What is fundamental to me, given my interest in capacity, is that we have not considered how much human decision making is driven by altruistic intentions. “I did it for my children” is rightly a primary motivation in many settings, but as a society are we comfortable with a decision to seek a medically assisted death so as not to be a burden on one’s family or to save them money?

This will not impact on capacity. We cannot pretend that capacity assessments will be a shield for these moral concerns. Where is the line, if there is one, between indirect coercion and the natural human responses in a stressed family unit looking after a sick loved one?

I believe that we could introduce legislation on assisted dying that has fully reviewed and addressed these issues, but parliamentarians must deal with what we have in front of us today. Proponents on both sides of the debate frame this vote on Second Reading as a vote on the principle of assisted dying, but in reality it is a vote on implementation as put forward in this Bill.

As a former mental health doctor, I am proud that I was there for the most vulnerable. Today, I think about those without a voice in this debate or in the TV studios. I think about the elderly woman in the care home with mild cognitive impairment, who retains capacity but is nevertheless vulnerable to coercion and undue influence, or the sick mother whose child may lose their job or their relationship due to the burden of caring responsibilities. The Bill would not protect them. It risks placing implicit pressure on people already vulnerable at a time of life when they should receive our unwavering care and support. We should and must vote it down.

December 3, 2024
Tonia Antoniazzi – 2024 Speech on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

The speech made by Tonia Antoniazzi, the Labour MP for Gower, in the House of Commons on 29 November 2024.

I have led two Westminster Hall debates for the Petitions Committee on the subject of assisted dying. I have grappled with this subject, and I still do. When my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) was speaking earlier, I had a packet of tissues, and I made swift work of them. It really is so difficult for so many us, with our personal experience and our own thoughts.

It is genuinely our privilege to be able to say that this is what we want or what we do not want. We may not be facing this right now in our lives, but when you are, you think about it deeply. I will be voting for the Bill today. I think about this all the time—I need to maybe get a bit of a life—because it really is something that bothers me. It is an honour for all of us in the Chamber to be able to debate this today, whatever our views. I have to say, this is just not easy. I want everybody out there to know that it is not easy. It is really difficult, and it is difficult for those on both sides of the debate.

I will get to the Bill now, because as has been pointed out, we are here to talk about the Bill, not to get overly emotional. I want to talk about how it impacts Wales. I hope we will be able amend the Bill to take consideration of these things, and I hope that we can look at this in detail in the Lords. I believe that the Bill should pass today, because we need to discuss it and know how it is going to work. As it is currently drafted, we will need to look to the Welsh Government to see if there needs to be a legislative consent motion, because it does not seem to engage with the Sewel convention in a substantive way.

Issues that have been raised with me include that the Bill places multiple duties on the Secretary of State in England around codes of practice and ensuring assistance within the NHS. The Welsh Government need to be happy with the Secretary of State in England deciding how services are to be provided within the Welsh NHS. There will need to be an amendment, which I suspect will then engage with the Sewel convention.

The need for subordinate legislation to enact the Bill is really complicated, and we need to see how it will be passed in this place. There are issues around the codes of practice, because some of them are devolved. I want to highlight that, because regardless of the emotional stories that we will hear today, we need to mindful that the Bill has an impact on legislation in Wales. It is very important that if the Bill does go through today, those discussions are had, because everybody’s life matters, and we have to get this legislation right.

I do not want to take up any more time, but I thank all my hon. Friends and, in particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley, who has been an absolute gem.

December 3, 2024
Layla Moran – 2024 Speech on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

The speech made by Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, in the House of Commons on 29 November 2024.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) on bringing the Bill. I commend her for the tone she has set in shepherding the debate and, indeed, I commend Members across the House with sincerely held views for the way we have done this so far—I hope it will continue.

Most things we do in this place have some bearing on life and death, but it is rare we discuss those concepts in their most visceral and direct forms. As a nation, we do not talk about death nearly enough, especially while we are well, but it happens to us all, so I welcome the chance to enable better conversations not just in this place together, but in people’s own minds for themselves. No matter how anyone votes today, I hope that we can all agree that this debate is a profound and proud moment for our democracy.

To that end, I want to be up front: I will be voting for the Bill today, because I want this conversation to continue. To those arguing the moral grounds and making the point that we are crossing the Rubicon, I sincerely respect their views. These are moral judgments. There will be Members who are making the moral case, and I want to hear them. But I urge those MPs who might be minded to vote for the Bill on principle, but are worried about the details—how we might change a word, the role of clinicians or MPs, or whatever it may be—to reconsider the question they are asking themselves today.

This is Second Reading. The media are asking all of us, “Are you for or against the Bill?”, but I urge hon. Members to think about the question differently. The question I will be answering today is, “Do I want to keep talking about the issues in the Bill?” I am asking myself if I want to keep grappling with the detail until I get to Third Reading, when I might reserve the right to vote no. They can decide the answer to that question for themselves.

Mr Cleverly

I appreciate the hon. Lady giving way, but she is misrepresenting what we are doing at this point. We are speaking about the specifics of this Bill: this is not a general debate or a theoretical discussion, but about the specifics of the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) has highlighted numerous deficiencies, and I will provide one example. If the proposed legislation is such a good thing to alleviate pain and suffering—a right that we should be proud to pass—why are we denying it to children? If it is a positive, why are we denying it to children? We are discussing the specifics.

Layla Moran

The right hon. Gentleman might want to raise that issue in Committee, at a later stage. However, it is important for hon. Members to appreciate that they can vote yes today, and vote no later.

I want to come on to palliative care, which is really important. The message from the sector, patients and their families is crystal clear: palliative care is not good enough and we must do better.

Mr Lee Dillon (Newbury) (LD)

Does my hon. Friend agree that we are not talking about a choice between palliative care and assisted dying? The two can go hand in hand, but with the knowledge that if palliative care does not provide the individual with the comfort they require, the Bill would give them the option to decide how they want to end their life, rather than drifting away without being able to have a final cuddle or say a final goodbye.

Layla Moran

There needs to be a debate around palliative care. My concern is that we have not had any firm commitments from Government, other than woolly words, about how they are actually going to tackle the issue, and that a royal commission will push it into the long grass.

I say to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, who is in his place, that the gauntlet has been thrown down. If he wants someone like me to not vote for the Bill moving forward, he needs to do two things: he needs to put firm commitments on palliative care on the table and resolve them within the next one or two years, and then, afterwards, commit to bringing back a Bill like this one in Government time. Without those firm commitments, I will continue to make the case for wanting to see progress.

Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Ind)

The hon. Lady and I come to this subject from different places, as I will be voting against the Bill. I agree with her and all the hon. Members who have spoken about the need to massively improve palliative care, but she says we can address some of those concerns at a later stage. How does one address coercion and guilt through legislation?

Layla Moran

These are conversations that I want to keep happening, but I say to those who are making the argument about the process and asking how we can make that better, what does a Bill that addresses assisted dying that they might vote for look like? If the answer is that there is none, let us be honest about that.

I want to end by giving a tiny amount of my time to someone who is in the Gallery today. Tracey, I cannot see you right now, but thank you for coming. I said to Tracey, my constituent, when we met that I would allow some of her words to be spoken today. Tracey was 58 when she was diagnosed with incurable stage 4 breast cancer, which spread to become a brain tumour in 2023. It was successfully removed, but Tracey lives every day knowing that her cancer is likely to return. These are the words Tracey wants us to hear:

“Despite this prognosis I can honestly say that I am a happy person now. I feel lucky to have made it to 60. There is just one black cloud on the horizon for me, and it is the way that I will die. I am terrified that I will suffer a long, painful death. If I knew I had the choice to have a good death, these worries would disappear. Please change the law so I can live what life I have left, safe in the knowledge that I have a choice about how and when I die. If you do this, I will be able to live even more happily today knowing that I do not need to worry about the prospect of a cruel and painful death.”

I will end by saying that there are sincerely held views being heard today. Let this be this Parliament that ensures, regardless of how we vote today, that we give people a good death.

December 3, 2024
Rachael Maskell – 2024 Speech on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

The speech made by Rachael Maskell, the Labour MP for York Central, in the House of Commons on 29 November 2024.

This is hard, Madam Deputy Speaker. With compassion, we search for ways to best alleviate pain and suffering and ensure that those we love die in peace. Initiated by the Bill, focus has rapidly turned to caring for the dying and optimising every moment of the life that we want to hold on to; it breaks us knowing that at some point we have to let go. That was the mission of Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the hospice movement.

Thankfully, most die in peace, but tragically not all. Funding for palliative care has regressed against rising demand in an ageing society with growing comorbidities. Hospices are paring back services. Research by the Anscombe Bioethics Centre in Oxford highlights how jurisdictions with assisted dying fall down the rankings on palliative care, while promised funding never materialises. When more than 100,000 people, predominantly in poverty, from minoritised communities or based on postcode, fail to access any palliative care despite needing it, or when those who access care do so from frequently overstretched services, unable to make timely or optimised interventions, or when, for most, care starts far too late, tragic testimonies follow, as we have heard in recent days.

We all know that the NHS is under significant duress, and just cannot do what it should. Social care is fragmented and costly, and palliative care is significantly underfunded and inequitable. This is a mess. Following Lord Darzi’s devastating report, we must give my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary the opportunity to reset health and care. I believe that that is what we on these Benches were elected to do.

With just 17 days since publication, this Bill has consumed us and that will only intensify if it proceeds. Instead, our focus should be on getting palliation right and then seeing what is really needed. We cannot do both as there is simply not the capacity. More than 70% of the public say that they want a commission on palliative and end-of-life care before we consider assisted dying. Other polls agree. Plans for a commission are well advanced.

Sir Roger Gale (Herne Bay and Sandwich) (Con)

I agree with the hon. Lady entirely: the way forward should be through better palliative care and not through assisted suicide. The Bill does not address the needs of children. Would she recognise that we also need better palliative care for children as well as adults?

Rachael Maskell

I completely agree with the right hon. Gentleman, who makes a pertinent point. After all, we would never write a prescription before making a diagnosis, yet this Bill does that. It is simply prescribing the wrong medicine. Extraordinarily, there is no critical analysis, not even an impact assessment, when such significant matters of life and death are at stake and when our broken health and justice system would be stretched even further.

My constituent was just 46 when she received a terminal diagnosis. She did not have long; the cancer was advancing and the prognosis would have qualified her for an assisted death. Had it been law, she would have consented. Now 54 and in remission, she pleads that the Bill should not pass. Palliative care consultants say that it is nearly impossible to prognosticate at six months; just 46% get it right. Experts say that the arbitrary six-month threshold is insecure. We must recognise its prematurity. Clause 2(2) says that someone for whom treatment only relieves symptoms but does not cure them would qualify for an assisted death if they were within the criteria. We understand someone declining chemotherapy, but the provision extends to any condition where a cocktail of drugs is sustaining life. The person involved may be only 18. That would not need a change in the law; it is written in the Bill.

My greatest concern is coercion. We live in a coercive society; the UK spends £40 billion on advertising and ever more powerful algorithms drive us to content online. We recognise coercion in relationships or elder abuse, but the Bill fails to safeguard against it when someone is dying and there is malign intent. People often recognise coercion only after years have passed, yet within a month someone could be dead. Malign coercion cases may be few, but as a clinician working at the fringes of life, I heard my patients frequently say, “I don’t want to be a burden,” or “I’d rather the money went to the grandchildren than on my care,” or “Somebody is more deserving than me.”

Intrinsic coercion is very real, not least where the law has changed—rapidly becoming an expectation, verbalised as a duty to die. In fact, not wanting to be a burden is cited as a major reason to opt for an assisted death, alongside loss of dignity, loneliness, and needing personal care, yet every day, disabled people live in this reality. We fight in this House to take away stigma and give dignity, equality and worth. That is why disabled people fear the Bill: it devalues them in a society where they fight to live.

We should understand why Disability Rights UK opposes and why Liberty opposes: to push back against the Bill is the cause of the progressive and the libertarian, not just the domain of the conservative. Under this Bill, a doctor may raise an assisted death with their patient—clause 4(2). Given the trust we place in doctors, not least when people are vulnerable, this is so significantly coercive. Let us suppose there is unconscious bias, which is well known in healthcare. Before people question that assertion, let me cite the industrial application of the Liverpool care pathway, and then, five and a half years after its ban, the covid “Do not actively resuscitate” letters. The evidence shows that disabled and ethnic minority people experience bias in healthcare. Those who stand for equality will recognise the safeguarding failures in the Bill. While not wanting to encourage suicidal ideation, rates are 6% higher in jurisdictions where there is assisted suicide.

On the process, two doctors—possibly unknown to the patient—ask a set of questions. It can take days to establish capacity in the courts, but it only needs a consultation. That is the same for assessing coercion and prognosis. Doctors are proponents of assisted dying. Risk increases in closed environments. At least the Isle of Man is considering a parole board-style approach; this Bill does not. The documentation of the decision fails in its rigour, not even seeking evidence for the decision. It is passed to a judge.

Sir James Munby, former family division president, describes,

“a scheme which does not provide for an open and transparent process but, on the contrary, permits a secret process which can give us no confidence that it will enable the court to identify and prevent possible abuses.”

In decrying how the Bill changes the role of the judge to one of certifying compliance, he states,

“the Leadbeater Bill falls lamentably short of providing adequate safeguards,”

describing the suspension of any appeal as an “extraordinary” omission, not least if the patient’s concerned relative or physician cannot take their case. That is backed by Thomas Teague KC, former chief coroner, who said the safeguards “will not hold” and that they

“amount to nothing more than arbitrary restrictions, with no rational foundation.”

Lord Sumption, former Supreme Court judge, highlights that once the law facilitates assisted suicide, it could be deemed discriminatory to deny others—disabled people—the same right. Barristers say they will take cases. They expect the law to change.

Lewis Atkinson

Will my hon. Friend give way?

Rachael Maskell

I will press on.

Much would rely on regulations using the negative procedure, and some the affirmative. Even if not prepared within two years, clause 42(3) says the Act would be fully implemented. The Bill changes the role of the chief medical officer without any analysis, as is the case for doctors. During the 14-month Health and Social Care Committee inquiry, we heard how the clinician-patient relationship changed with assisted suicide. Record keeping and data collation is inadequate, as we found in Oregon.

Clause 18(9) highlights that the procedure may fail. The Bill is silent on how to manage such cases, but it should be explicit. We must acknowledge that it is not always peaceful. We learned in Oregon that some have seizures or vomit as the body rejects the toxic medication.

The Bill falls woefully short on safeguarding patients, too. It is too flawed to amend. It is a wrong and rushed answer to a complex problem. Today, we must be beyond reasonable doubt of error if voting for the Bill. Remember, the vote is not on the principle of assisted dying or on choice, but the principles detailed within the clauses of the Bill. Polling overwhelmingly says that if Members are in any doubt, the public expect them to vote against the Bill today. We can focus on optimising palliative and end of life medicine to build consensus and to discern what further steps need taking. For death, as with life, is too precious to get this wrong.

December 3, 2024
Kit Malthouse – 2024 Speech on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

The speech made by Kit Malthouse, the Conservative MP for North West Hampshire, in the House of Commons on 29 November 2024.

When I was a child, my parents shielded me from death. Centuries of art, literature and religion taught me that death was something noble or even slightly romantic. When I became an adult, I learnt pretty quickly that that was not the case. For far too many, it is anything but and certainly not noble. The deathbed for far too many is a place of misery, torture and degradation, a reign of blood and vomit and tears. I see no compassion and beauty in that, only profound human suffering. In 10 years of campaigning on this issue, I have spent many, many hours with dying and bereaved people, which has, time and again, reinforced my view.

I am a co-sponsor of the Bill and I am the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for choice at the end of life. I could give a speech to promote the Bill, but my hon. Friend—and I do call her a friend—the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) has done that remarkably well. In my speech I want to address some of the common issues that have been raised, and that will no doubt be raised during the debate, with which I struggle.

First, we will no doubt hear an awful lot about the overseas experience. I am married to a Canadian, and I can tell the House that they love their children just as much as we do. The idea that the Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Spanish and Austrians care little for their relatives, or indeed for the wider society in which they live, is frankly offensive. We should not pretend that somehow we are special or different. They have thought as profoundly on these issues as we have over the past 10 years. We can learn from them, and design a system for our own sensibilities and culture, as they have done. They all have different laws on abortion, some of which we would not pass in this House, but that does not mean we should not have abortion laws here. We are a 1,000-year-old democracy, and we should be able to design legislation that deals with this issue for ourselves.

The second issue that has been raised with which I have struggled regards the impact on the NHS and on judges. People are already dying; they are already in the national health service and entitled to care. Even if we think there will be an impact, are people seriously telling me that my death, my agony, is too much for the NHS to have time for, or too much hassle? It is even claimed that such matters would overload the judges—that I should drown in my own faecal vomit because it is too much hassle for the judges to deal with. We send things from this House to the NHS and to judges all the time. Is anyone suggesting that we should not create the new offence of spiking, which has come through this week, because judges are overworked? Of course not. They will cope as they have done with all sorts of things that we have sent from this House over the years, and we should not countenance the idea that some logistical problem will get in the way of our giving a good death to our fellow citizens.

I also want to address directly those Members who are considering voting against the Bill, to ensure that they are clear in their minds that a vote against the Bill is not a passive act. There are two states of being on offer today. I have to break some news to Members: whatever happens to the Bill today, people with a terminal illness will still take their lives. If the Bill falls today, we will be consigning those people to taking their lives in brutal, violent ways, as they are at the moment, and will see increasing numbers of our fellow citizens making the trip to Switzerland if they can afford it. We know that between 600 and 700 people a year are killing themselves in violent ways—shooting themselves, throwing themselves in front of trains, taking overdoses in lonely, horrible circumstances. As I said, many are going to Switzerland, but more than that are lying in hospital—I guarantee that there will be somebody over the river in St Thomas’ hospital now who is refusing treatment and starving themselves to death because they cannot face what is in front of them.

Sam Rushworth (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that we had a choice today? We have come here to debate assisted dying, but we could have come here to build cross-party consensus on how finally, once and for all, to fix palliative care in this country. We could have come to look at a funding consensus, as that does need to be cross-party. I agree with his point that voting no is also a choice, but what follows from that should be a cross-party consensus on how we fix palliative care.

Kit Malthouse

I agree with the hon. Gentleman, and what a surprise it is that the conversation about palliative care has started. We were not having that conversation before this Bill came forward. The evidence from the Health and Care Committee, published only in February this year, shows that palliative care and assisted dying go hand in hand.

Mr Perkins rose—

Kit Malthouse

I will not give way.

Improvements also go hand in hand; medics from across the world told us that the two things are complementary. In Australia I discussed this issue with a palliative care doctor who was against the introduction of assisted dying when they were contemplating it. She now finds it an invaluable tool, and she embraces it as something that her patients want and need. My concern is that if the Bill is turned down, as it was in 2015, the conversation about palliative care will wither, as it has done for the past 10 years.

I want to share a story that has particularly affected me. Mark Crampton was a former police chief inspector who was suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. His COPD became too much for him, so he informed his family that he was going to take his own life. He took his oxygen tank and mask and late one night went out and sat on a railway embankment. He wanted a death that was instant and quick, and that he could rely on. He waited until 2 in the morning—heartbreakingly, he had worked out when the last train was going, so he would minimise disruption to the public—and then took his life in lonely circumstances in the middle of the night. By not passing the Bill, we would deny to Mark supervision, conversation, access to doctors, periods of reflection, advice. Even if he had been through all that and decided it was still too much, the Bill would give him a much better end than he actually achieved. Members should be clear, as I say, that whatever happens to the Bill, terminal people will still take their lives.

I have to say to the hon. Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner), who says that hundreds of people dying in agony every year is a price worth paying for the good of society, that I find that an appalling prospect. A society that looks away from these people —like those in the Public Gallery who are living in terrible fear of what will face them, or who have watched their families die in fear—and says that that is okay for the good of the whole is a terrible, terrible prospect. We have a duty to assist them, as other countries around the world have done, and to find a way to make them comfortable in the end.

Mr James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Kit Malthouse

I will not.

Finally, I want to talk briefly about rights. We hear a lot about rights in this debate—quite rightly. We hear about the rights and fears of the disabled community, who are specifically excluded from the Bill; we hear a lot about the rights and fears of the elderly, who are also specifically excluded from the Bill; we are even hearing about the rights of doctors, who are allowed to conscientiously object to participating in this process, if they wish. When are we going to have the conversation about the rights of the dying? Where do we put them in the ranking of rights, as they face their end? When do we grant them the autonomy and choice for which so many of them have campaigned over the years? Surely, as they come towards the end of their life, their rights have to be at the forefront of our mind. The last, best gift we can give them is control over the disease that is destroying them.

If we do not pass the Bill today, we are cornering all those people; we are trapping them, with the law, in their disease, and consigning them to an end of torture and degradation that they do not wish to go through. As I said before, we are a 1,000-year old democracy. It is not beyond us to design legislation that will give those people what they want, while protecting those whom we feel need to be protected. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), I want this choice for my constituents, but profoundly I want it for myself and for the people in the Public Gallery who have worked so hard over the past decade to get us to change our minds.

I ask Members please to be clear that whatever happens today, terminal people will still take their own lives—all we are deciding today is how.

December 3, 2024
Andy Slaughter – 2024 Speech on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

The speech made by Andy Slaughter, the Labour MP for Hammersmith and Chiswick, in the House of Commons on 29 November 2024.

It is a pleasure to follow the excellent speech of the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell). In preparation for today I have had a number of discussions with my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater), and I want to put on record that the measured way she has dealt with the proceedings has been excellent. I do not know whether she has ever had moments of doubting whether this was the right thing to pick as a private Member’s Bill, but she has been an absolute credit to this House in the way she has dealt with these matters so far.

In 2015, in the last Chamber debate on this subject, I wound up for the Opposition Front Bench, but my interest in it goes back much further. Like all Members of this House, I have had hundreds of emails from constituents on both sides of the argument. Many ask me to oppose the Bill; those emails come from people of faith, and I wholly and entirely respect what they say, but they are the first people also to say that this is an individual decision for every individual Member of the House to make.

As I have been at the bottom of the list of speakers to be called for so many years, I have great sympathy for those who find themselves there today, so I will try to keep my remarks to one narrow point: the legal context of the Bill. There is a false dichotomy that the law as it stands is fit for purpose, that we go into the unknown with the Bill before us and that we should somehow keep the safety of the status quo. I think that could not be more wrong. There are no safeguards in the current law. The only sanction against coercion is ex post facto; we are leaving it to individual directors of public prosecutions to make decisions in individual cases after the event.

DPPs take that job extremely seriously, as anyone knows who has heard Sir Max Hill, the last DPP to speak on the subject. They have, at the instigation of the courts, set out guidelines—I think we know that it was an excellent Director of Public Prosecutions who set out the guidelines on this case. They have done everything they can, but it is not their responsibility; it is our responsibility, and the courts, up to and including the Supreme Court, have made that clear.

We assign in this Bill a role to the High Court as part of the process, but we are the final decision takers. That has been made clear not only by domestic, but by international courts; the European Court of Human Rights has said in every case in which such matters have come before it that the margin of appreciation should be put into effect and therefore it should not interfere with the law as we decide it. We cannot dodge our responsibilities and I know that we do not want to do that. We have a duty to put in place the best law we can, and that is not the law as it stands.

There are three choices for people who want to end their own lives. They can go to Dignitas alone, if they can afford to do that. They can attempt, and perhaps succeed in, suicide. They risk failing. If they succeed, they will have a lonely death. They may, as others have pointed out, simply have to resort to refusing treatment or food. The third option is that they can embroil their relatives or friends, at the risk of their being investigated or prosecuted. They also risk ending their lives too soon.

On safeguards, I do not follow the view of opponents of the Bill. At some times they seem to say that they are too complex, too expensive and that there are not enough resources. If we want to resource the Bill, we can. I do not think that those are the strongest arguments.

Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)

Will my hon. Friend give way?

Andy Slaughter

I really do not want to, because of the time. I am sorry. [Interruption.] Should I? I will give way once.

Jonathan Davies

My hon. Friend talks a little about safeguards. I invite him and the House to reflect on the covid pandemic, when a lot of safeguards around a lot of things were relaxed. I worry that if we were to see another pandemic on the scale that we saw in 2020, people might feel that they were doing something patriotic by getting out of the way and freeing up a bed for a younger person. I invite him to reflect on that.

Andy Slaughter

In practice, a terminally ill person will need to formally consider their decision at least eight times under the provisions in the Bill. This is a starting point—a number of Members have made that point. I believe the Bill has already had more scrutiny than most public Bills we consider, but we have up to nine months before us to consider it further.

All the practical and legal considerations point towards the Bill. It may well be amended to change the safeguards or the way it operates, but we have the opportunity to do that. In the end, for me, that is not the decision. The decision is about two things: it is about human dignity and it is about agency. I would like to think that even at the end of life—no, especially at the end of life—when someone has their faculties but may be at their weakest ebb, they can still exercise that agency and still make decisions for themselves. They can have the longest life they can and they can end that life in the way that is most beneficial to them, their loved ones and their family. That is simply not happening, and by voting against the Bill today Members ignore those facts.

December 3, 2024
Andrew Mitchell – 2024 Speech on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

The speech made by Andrew Mitchell, the Conservative MP for Sutton Coldfield, in the House of Commons on 29 November 2024.

I want to make three brief points. First, I have completely changed by mind on this subject since I entered the House during the last century, because I have sat in my advice surgery with tears pouring down my face listening to constituents who have set out so clearly, speaking with such emotion, about how their mother, brother, father or child had died in great pain and great indignity.

I strongly support the Bill, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) on the excellent way in which she has presented it. I believe that we should give our constituents—our fellow citizens—this choice. I want this choice for my constituents; I want it for those whom I love; and I want it, perhaps one day, for myself.

Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr Mitchell

I will not, I am afraid. The current law forces people to plan their deaths in secret. Their bodies are found by their loved ones. Often, they die in the most horrific circumstances. They have no chance to say goodbye to their loved ones. It is devastating for their families. The former Health Secretary commissioned the Office for National Statistics to try to find out how many people who committed suicide every year were dying people. The figure was between 300 and 650.

Secondly, in our democracy, the Commons must make this decision. Only we, elected by our constituents, have the legitimacy to do this. It is not the DPP, the Crown Prosecution Service, the police, doctors or even unelected Members of the House of Lords—this House of Commons must make this decision. Let us be clear that all of us on both sides of the debate strongly support an increase in the quality and extent of palliative care. For me, the debate is about extending choice, in very narrow and heavily regulated circumstances under the Bill, as the hon. Lady so clearly set out—the choice not to be forced to end your life in pain and indignity. No element in the Bill talks about intolerable suffering. Many believe that the Bill is too narrowly drawn. I stand by the hon. Lady’s drafting. We should remember that in Oregon there has been no serious attempt to change or amend the law.

I had the privilege of speaking to an NHS consultant last year, the day before she headed to Dignitas. She said, “I love my country, but I object very strongly to my country forcing me to make this choice, and to having to travel unaccompanied to a foreign country to die.” The status quo is cruel and dangerous. People caught up in these circumstances have no transparency; there is no regulation, safeguards or oversight. The Bill contains a whole series of safeguards that are not present at the moment.

Thirdly, we are deciding today on a principle. If the Bill is voted down on Second Reading, that will be the end of the matter for many years, and we will do that in the knowledge that Scotland, the Isle of Man, Jersey and many other countries are likely to bring in legislation like this. There are 300 million people in 30 jurisdictions who have secured this ability to choose. There will be numerous safeguards. There will not be a slippery slope unless this Parliament agrees to there being one. If we agree to a Second Reading today it is, in my judgment, inconceivable that the Government Front Bench will not ensure we have the proper time to scrutinise the Bill.

This Bill goes with the grain of our constituents’ views—about 75%, according to the most recent polling. There is an opportunity and a chance, as the hon. Member for Spen Valley has set out, to consider in detail these matters ahead of Third Reading. As drafted, the Bill seems to me a very modest and controlled proposal. Let us not forget this: Oregon shows us that fewer people take these steps once they know they have this choice as a back-up.

I end with something I have never forgotten. Some years ago, I was listening in a debate to a young man who had recently lost his father. He had visited his father and seen him in great pain and indignity. He had seen him three days before he died. In the end his father put a bag over his head and used his dressing-gown cord to hang himself. That young man said to all of us: “If you are ever in this position, let’s hope that God will help you, because they certainly won’t.” Today, this House has the opportunity to ensure that they will.

December 3, 2024
Diane Abbott – 2024 Speech on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

The speech made by Diane Abbott, the Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, in the House of Commons on 29 November 2024.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) on bringing forward this Bill, which has been the occasion of a very important national conversation. I recall to the House the fact that, in 1969, Parliament voted to abolish the death penalty for murder. Public opinion was actually against that change, but MPs believed, on a point of principle, that the state should not be involved in taking a life. It was a good principle in 1969 and it remains a good principle today.

I am not against legalising assisted dying in any circumstance, but I have many reservations about this Bill. In particular, I do not believe that the safeguards are sufficient. They are supposed to be the strongest in the world because of the involvement of a High Court judge, but the divisional courts have said that

“the intervention of a court would simply interpose an expensive and time-consuming forensic procedure”.

Sir James Munby, the former president of the family division of the High Court, said recently:

“Only those who believe implicitly in judicial omniscience and infallibility—and I do not—can possibly have any confidence in the efficacy of what is proposed.”

Is the judge supposed to second-guess doctors? Will the judge make a decision on the basis of paperwork? Or will there be a hearing in open court? Where will be the capacity in the criminal justice system to deal with all this? Far from being a genuine safeguard, the involvement of a judge could just be a rubber stamp.

Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)

More than two thirds of care proceedings involving the most vulnerable children in our society cannot be completed within six months. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is a real concern that the safeguard is not deliverable, or risks being the rubber stamp that I know my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) does not want it to be?

Ms Abbott

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend.

Robust safeguards for the sick and dying are vital to protect them from predatory relatives, to protect them from the state and, above all, to protect them from themselves. There will be those who say to themselves that they do not want to be a burden; I can imagine myself saying that in particular circumstances. Others will worry about assets they had hoped to leave for their grandchildren being eroded by the cost of care. There will even be a handful who will think they should not be taking up a hospital bed.

Jake Richards (Rother Valley) (Lab)

My right hon. Friend makes her case powerfully. Can I ask her to comment on the current situation whereby people ask themselves the question she just asked today? What safeguards are there for those people? What inquiry is made before those people pass away, often having taken the most drastic and horrific action to do so?

Ms Abbott

But if the House passes this legislation, the issue that I have raised will become foremost in people’s minds even more so.

We are told that there is no evidence of coercion in jurisdictions where assisted suicide is possible, but people do not generally write letters to sick relatives urging them to consider assisted suicide and then put those letters on file. Coercion in the family context can be about not what you say but what you do not say—the long, meaningful pause.

Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)

As a medical professional who is surrounded by even more senior medical professionals, I know we can all miss things when there are tangibles in front of us: the shadows on X-rays and the markers on blood tests. As professionals, we miss things that can be seen. What security will we have that we can pick up things that we cannot see, like coercion?

Ms Abbott

That is the point: coercion is something that there will be no material evidence of and that we cannot see.

People keep saying that the Bill cannot be amended, but of course any future Government could bring in new clauses. We can see what has happened in Canada, which introduced assisted dying in 2016 for adults with terminal illnesses. In 2021, it was extended to people with no terminal illness and the disabled. In March 2027, anyone with a serious mental health problem will also be eligible. The House should remember that no single organisation representing the disabled supports the Bill.

Mary Kelly Foy

My daughter Maria lived her life with severe disabilities and health conditions. Since her birth, we were told many times that she might have only six months to live. She lived for 27 years. Crucially, Maria was non-verbal. I am filled with dread and fear about what might happen to people like Maria who are non-verbal and do not have that capacity, if they are not loved and cared for and do not have somebody speaking out for them.

Ms Abbott

I have heard so many stories like that. The arbitrary cut-off of six months does not necessarily meet with the reality of sick people.

Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)

The case of Maria, and others, should give us all pause. Does the right hon. Lady agree, with two thirds of the Cabinet apparently supporting this measure in principle, that we should reject the Bill today, but that we should as a House commit not to go another 10 years ignoring this topic, but to come forward in a considered way, ensure it is looked at properly, and do everything possible to have a system that is more robust, more caring and ensures good outcomes for people like Maria?

Mr Speaker

Order. Let me also say that we must try to keep to the time limits.

Ms Abbott

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. As I said right at the beginning, I am not against assisting dying in any circumstances. If the Bill passes, we will have the NHS as a 100% funded suicide service, but palliative care will be funded only at 30% at best. The former Member for Dunfermline East, Gordon Brown, has said recently:

“we need to show we can do better at assisted living before deciding whether to legislate on ways to die.”

I represent very many vulnerable people in marginalised communities. I cannot vote for a Bill when I have doubts about whether they will be protected. We can come back, have a commission and craft a better Bill, but I will not be voting for the Bill today.

December 3, 2024
Danny Kruger – 2024 Speech on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

The speech made by Danny Kruger, the Conservative MP for East Wiltshire, in the House of Commons on 29 November 2024.

I think you indicated that I could speak for a little longer than eight minutes, Mr Speaker.

Mr Speaker

Yes.

Danny Kruger

Thank you very much. I do not want to have too much grumbling at the eight-minute moment. I will take my 15 minutes, with time for interventions.

I start by paying tribute to the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) for her very powerful speech and the way in which she has led this campaign—with great respect, sensitivity and, to use a contested word, dignity. She and I knew each other before we were MPs, when we both worked in the charity sector. I like and admire her greatly, and I know that we have more in common than might appear today.

All of us in this House have this in common: we all share a deep concern about the experience of people dying or fearing death, pain and suffering. I bear heavily on my conscience the people whose lives will be prolonged beyond their wishes if I get my way and this Bill is defeated today. I will not disregard those people or minimise their anxiety. We will hear those voices in today’s debate—we have heard many of them already—speaking through hon. Members in what I know will be very moving speeches.

If I voted for this Bill, I would have on my conscience many more people whose voices we cannot hear—the people who would be vulnerable as a consequence of the huge changes that this Bill would introduce in our society and in the NHS. My view is that if we get our broken palliative care system right and our wonderful hospices properly funded, we can do so much more for all the people who we will hear about today, using modern pain relief and therapies to help everybody die with a minimum of suffering when the time comes. We will not be able to do that if we introduce this new option; instead, we will expose many more people to harm.

I will go through the Bill in a moment, but first I will say a word about process, in response to the points made by the hon. Member for Spen Valley. This Bill is simply too big for the time that it has been given, and I implore hon. Members not to hide behind the fiction that it can be amended substantially in Committee and in its later stages. The remaining stages of a private Member’s Bill are for minor tweaks, not the kind of wholesale restructuring that we would need if we were ever to make this Bill safe. Members who vote for the Bill today must be prepared to see it become law largely unamended. I suggest that if they have any doubts, the only responsible choice is to vote no, and let the advocates of assisted dying bring back a better Bill at another time.

Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)

I deeply appreciate the respectful way in which the hon. Gentleman is making his point, but I stand before him not sure of how any colleague in this Chamber cannot have doubts whichever way they are voting today. It feels like there are two necessary harms that we are all forced to weigh up. If the hon. Gentleman is so certain that doubt should push people one way, I am deeply intrigued to hear why that is, when it is very clear that many people will continue to suffer unnecessarily if we reject this Bill.

Danny Kruger

I recognise that there are very many doubts on each side, and I fully respect the arguments that have been made by the hon. Member for Spen Valley. Of course this is a finely balanced debate, but the point about process is that this Bill is too flawed; there is too much to do to it to address in Committee. By all means, let us have this debate, but let us have that before a Bill of this magnitude is brought forward, The consideration of the Bill should be much more comprehensive.

Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)

Contrary to what the media are saying, today’s decision is not about bringing this Bill into law; it is about allowing it to go to the next stage. People may have misgivings, but the hon. Gentleman is making the assumption that the Bill cannot be corrected or amended in order to make it palatable to people who have doubts. We all have doubts, but surely today’s vote is simply to let it go to the next stage. The final decision on Third Reading is the critical one in deciding whether the Bill goes into law.

Danny Kruger

I think I have made the point that this Bill is too comprehensive and there is too much in it to address through the process of a private Member’s Bill. If the hon. Gentleman has serious concerns about aspects of the Bill that he would not be prepared to see come into law, he should not be supporting it today.

Let me explain the concerns about the Bill that I think are too comprehensive to be dealt with in Committee. I recognise how hard the hon. Member for Spen Valley has worked to try to ensure that it is safe, but I do not believe it is, for the following reasons. Let us start at the beginning. The process starts with a conversation between a patient and a medical practitioner—not necessarily a doctor; just a medic of some sort, unspecified at this stage. If the patient tells their ordinary family doctor that they want an assisted death, the doctor is obliged to either explain how it works or pass them on to someone who will do it—which is probably what will happen, by the way. The likelihood is that we would see a new branch of medicine spring up, like the medics I met in Canada.

Kevin McKenna

Will the hon. Member give way?

Danny Kruger

I will in a moment.

These medics I met in Canada are specialists in assisted death and personally kill hundreds of patients a year in their special clinics. [Interruption.] If hon. Members have difficulty with the language, then I wonder what they are doing here. This is what we are talking about. I met doctors for whom this is their profession and their job, and they are proud to do it.

Lewis Atkinson (Sunderland Central) (Lab)

Will the hon. Member give way?

Danny Kruger

I will give way to the other hon. Gentleman.

Kevin McKenna

I want to be very clear that “medical practitioner” is a synonym for doctor—not nurse, pharmacist, dentist or any other practitioner. To be a doctor is to be a practitioner of medicine. We need to be very clear on this. There is lots of law and regulation on this, and I believe that what the hon. Member said is incorrect.

Danny Kruger

What the Bill actually says is that a doctor means

“a registered medical practitioner…who has such training, qualifications and experience as the Secretary of State may specify by regulations”.

Obviously they are some sort of regulated medic—I recognise that—but they are not necessarily a doctor. We will find out. I recognise that they will have professional qualifications, but it is not clear what those are going to be because it is not in the Bill.

Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)

I commend the hon. Gentleman for the way in which he is engaging in this discussion, in the same spirit as the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater). We often hear that one of the safeguards associated with the Bill is that medical practitioners would be involved and that a diagnosis of a terminal illness, with six months or less to live, would be required. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that medicine is not an exact science? It is the science of uncertainty blended with the art of probability. There is no exactitude in this. No court will second-guess medical opinion; it will simply look at process.

Danny Kruger

I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman; he is absolutely right. I am afraid that the definition of terminal illness is in a sense the essential flaw in the Bill, but I will come on to that.

Going back to the conversation that the patient has with the medical practitioner, the crucial point is that the conversation does not need to be started by the patient, according to the Bill. It could be started by the medic—any medic—perhaps in hospital, who could make the suggestion of an assisted death to a patient who has never raised the issue themselves, whose family have never suggested it and whose own doctor does not think it is the right thing to do. And so the idea is planted.

Then, for whatever reason—and, by the way, there is no need ever to give a reason—the patient says that they want to proceed with an assisted death. They sign a declaration, or rather somebody else can sign it for them. It could be any professional, someone they do not know—maybe a new medical practitioner. A total stranger can do all the paperwork on their behalf. That is what the clause about the proxy entails. Then these two medical practitioners make their assessment.

Paula Barker (Liverpool Wavertree) (Lab)

I urge the hon. Member to check the wording of the Bill, because if somebody signs as a proxy, they have to have known the individual for two years, and would simply be signing to say that they agree with the patient who wishes to go forward with assisted dying.

Danny Kruger

I do not have time to check the Bill now, but from my memory it refers to someone who has known the patient for two years or someone of good standing in the community, which could be some sort of professional who is not known to them at all. Someone can quickly check the Bill, but my understanding is that it could be a total stranger to them.

Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)

Is the matter not very clear? Clause 15(5) states:

“In this section “proxy” means—

(a) a person who has known the person making the declaration personally for at least 2 years, or

(b) a person who is of good standing in the community.”

So there is no protection such as that which is pretended by the supporters of the Bill.

Danny Kruger

I am grateful for that intervention.

The assessments have to determine whether the patient is terminally ill, whether they have mental capacity to make the decision, and then whether they have been coerced or pressured into the decision. In many ways the whole issue turns on the question of whether someone is terminally ill. I am afraid that it is a term of great elasticity, almost to the point of meaninglessness. It is well known, as the right hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) said earlier, that it is impossible for doctors to predict with any accuracy that somebody will die within six months. It is a purely subjective judgment, made in this case by a doctor whose job will be approving assisted deaths. They simply have to determine not whether it is reasonably certain that death will occur, but that it can be reasonably expected—in other words, that it is possible.

Simon Hoare

The thrust of the Bill, as I understand it, is to ease suffering and pain in a patient who has a diagnosis and will die of the condition that has been diagnosed. But that right could only be exercised within a six-month period, and the pain and discomfort could last a lot longer than that. Has my hon. Friend heard—because I have not—what the importance of six months is? Why not eight, 10 or 12? What would stop people challenging it on the grounds that the dam has been breached, the six months is entirely arbitrary and it could, and indeed should, be extended by negative resolution in a statutory instrument?

Danny Kruger

My hon. Friend makes the right point, and I am afraid to say that is absolutely the case. The six-month cut-off is completely arbitrary and impossible to determine. It is a line in the sand, and of course it could be challenged, as so much of the Bill could be challenged, on human rights grounds. Every one of the safeguards that has been introduced by the hon. Member for Spen Valley would in fact be a barrier and a discrimination against the new human right that has been awarded to one group but should of course be awarded to all—if the point is conceded in this way.

Melanie Ward

Earlier this week, colleagues and I met two eminent doctors who were former presidents of the Association for Palliative Medicine, and they raised serious concerns about the Bill, including that the doctor or medical practitioner who makes the assessment need never have met the person they are assessing, or been involved in their care at all. What does the hon. Gentleman make of that?

Danny Kruger

The hon. Lady makes a very important point. I will not get into the question of public opinion and the polling, because it is so contested, but there is clear evidence that the doctors who work with the dying—the palliative care professionals—are opposed to a change in the law by a great majority. They see the damage that it would do to the palliative care profession and services, and they see the danger for vulnerable patients.

Wera Hobhouse

I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman talks to us as a medical professional and we need to listen to his views. But is it not true that any medical assessment is an approximation; something that cannot be said for certain? For this decision too, we cannot be 100% certain, but that is life. We cannot make legislation that is 100% good because at some point we have to make a decision, on balance, whether something has merit or not. For that reason, we should vote for the Bill.

Danny Kruger

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, especially for promoting me to the status of doctor; I am actually a charity worker and political hack by background. It is good of her to credit me with those skills—perhaps I should set myself up as a medical practitioner. She is right that medics and indeed judges have to make difficult judgments all the time. I think it would be very dangerous and inappropriate to give them the power to do so in this case.

The whole question of the six-month cut-off is very important. I acknowledge all the points that have been made, but there is another problem with the definition of terminal illness. Almost anybody with a serious illness or disability could fit the definition. I recognise that these are not the cases that the hon. Member for Spen Valley has in mind—of course they are not—but that is the problem with the Bill. All that someone needs to do to qualify for an assisted death—for the definition of terminal illness—is refuse treatment, such as insulin if the person is diabetic. In the case of eating disorders, a topic on which I have worked with the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), a person just needs to refuse food. The evidence from jurisdictions around the world, and our own jurisprudence, shows that that would be enough to qualify someone for an assisted death.

Lewis Atkinson

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that every day in the NHS patients refuse treatment, and indeed food, and that there is currently legal oversight in respect of coercion and other such matters? Would the Bill not strengthen protections in those areas?

Danny Kruger

I am perplexed by that argument. The suggestion that there may be coercion—of course there will be—and abuse, and all sorts of injustices that take place in the current system, does not strike me as an argument for regulating and licensing assisted suicide. If we have concerns about practice in the NHS, let us deal with that. Let us not license suicide—and, by the way, evidence from around the world shows that that increases suicide in the general population. Suicide is contagious. For instance, Oregon is often pointed to as an example. The incidence of suicide, outside assisted suicide laws, has risen by a third there since it was legalised. There would be enormous contagious effects were we to regulate and license it in this way.

Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent case for the Bill to be passed today. What he is actually saying is that there are specifics that require debate, analysis and discussion in great detail in Committee—that is the whole point of it. If it is not dealt with properly in Committee, it will not pass Third Reading. He is suggesting that because he does not like those specifics, we cannot discuss the Bill in any detail.

Danny Kruger

I am sure that the hon. Member for Spen Valley is delighted to have the support of the hon. Gentleman. I refer him to the point that I was making: this is an inappropriate process.

Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)

My hon. Friend is making a superb speech, as I expected him to do. On the issue of process, I say this to the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice), my constituency neighbour: as he will know, I have introduced some very serious Bills, including the one that became the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. It was preceded by three independent reports and pre-legislative cross-party scrutiny by both Houses, which happened before the Committee stage. The point is that that process should take place before Second Reading, not after.

Danny Kruger

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. I will now run through the process before taking any more interventions.

As I have explained, pretty much anybody with a serious illness or disability could work out how to qualify for an assisted death under the Bill. Members may think that far-fetched, but it is what happens everywhere that assisted suicide is legal, including in Oregon.

Cat Eccles (Stourbridge) (Lab)

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The hon. Gentleman is using incorrect language. It is not suicide. That is offensive. I ask him please to correct his language.

Mr Speaker

That is not a point of order.

Danny Kruger

I am sorry if offence is given, but the fact is that the value of having a Bill in black and white is seeing what the law really is. What the Bill would do is amend the Suicide Act 1961. It would allow people to assist with a suicide for the first time. I respect the hon. Lady’s concern, but I am afraid we do need to use the proper language here.

The Bill’s scope is very broad. Members who think that assisted suicide for people with anorexia or other conditions that would not be regarded as terminal could not happen here should consider the young people in the UK today who are given a diagnosis of terminal anorexia and put on a palliative care pathway—essentially, assigned to death. Of course these are extreme cases—

Wera Hobhouse rose—

Danny Kruger

I am not going to give way again.

There are a great many of these cases, I am afraid, and I mention them to show how wide open the Bill is. [Interruption.]

Mr Speaker

Order. May I ask the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) to keep a little calmer? She has intervened twice already, and plenty of other Members who also need to be heard.

Danny Kruger

I think particularly of disabled people, many of whom require constant treatment to stay alive. All, immediately and by definition, will be eligible under the terms of the Bill for a state-sponsored death. I refer Members to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which has made the point that the line between disability and terminal illness is very blurred. That is why the Bill’s title is, in fact, so dangerous.

Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab) rose—

Danny Kruger

I will make a little progress.

The second question that medical practitioners have to answer is about mental capacity, and here again is a great vagueness. How do they judge if someone is in their right mind when they are asking for help to kill themselves? The Bill says that the definition of capacity is based on the Mental Capacity Act 2005, but that Act is deliberately expansive. It explicitly assumes capacity in the patient, so having acute depression is no bar to being judged to have capacity under the Act. Being suicidal is no bar under the Act, so the capacity test is no bar at all.

Finally, there is the question of coercion. Is the patient asking for an assisted death because of pressure from someone else? There are two glaring problems here. The first is that the process does not even attempt to answer the question properly. There is no investigation, no requirement for medics to interview friends and family, and no need for a psychiatrist or family doctor to be consulted. The medics just need to satisfy themselves—who knows how?—that, to the best of their knowledge, the person has not been pressured.

The second problem with the coercion test is that it focuses on only one type of coercion—the less likely type. The bigger danger is not other people pressuring someone to do this; it is that they pressure themselves—hon. Members have made this point. The Bill has nothing to say on that. Internal pressure is absolutely fine. If you feel worthless or a burden to others, if the NHS will not offer you the treatment you need, if the local authority will not make the adjustments you need to your home, if you have to wait too long for a hospital appointment, or if you want to die because you think the system has failed you, that is absolutely fine.

Several hon. Members rose—

Danny Kruger

I will get to the end of my speech.

That is the medical stage, and I will jump straight to the judicial stage. The medical practitioners sign it off, and then the judge has to confirm all the same tests. Of course, many eminent judges have made the point that it will overwhelm the family courts if the test were applied properly, but it will not be applied properly, because the Bill assumes that judges will fulfil a new inquisitorial role and actually look into cases as investigators, which is entirely unknown in English common law. But the Bill will not require any actual investigation.

There is no requirement for a judge even to meet the applicant. They simply have to have a phone call, or maybe it will be an email, from one of the medics. That is it. That is the inquiry. On that basis, the judge must decide whether it is more likely than not that there has been external pressure. After the judge approves it—they are required to approve it, unless they can find evidence of external coercion—we go to “the final act”, as the Bill says, where a junior colleague, as a medical practitioner, oversees your death by pills or lethal injection.

And here is the last thing that the Bill does or does not do. There is no requirement at any stage of the process—at either the medical or the judicial stage—for anyone to tell the patient’s next of kin, their wider family or even their GP that the NHS and the judicial system are working in secret to bring about the death of their loved one, maybe their father or their daughter. I say again that these are not the cases that the Bill was designed for, but they are directly in scope, and it is going to take more than a tweak in Committee to get them out.

Is this what is meant by having choice at the end of life? Let us talk about choice. I am often accused of wanting to impose my view on others—that point was made earlier. People say, “If you don’t approve of assisted death, don’t have one, but don’t deprive me of the choice.” In fact, the evidence is that, with this new option and the comparative loss of investment and innovation in palliative care, real choice will narrow. There is a broader point to make about choice, which is that no man or woman is an island. Just as every person’s death, even a good death, diminishes us all, so we will all be involved and affected if we make this change.

The Bill will not just create a new option for a few and leave everyone else unaffected; it will impose this new reality on every person towards the end of their life, on everyone who could be thought to be near death, and on their families—the option of assisted suicide, the obligation to have a conversation around the bedside or whispered in the corridor, “Is it time?” It will change life and death for everyone.

I am very aware of the terrible plight of the people who are begging us for this new law. I think we can do better for them than they fear, but we also need to think in real human terms about what the effect will be on the choices of other people, and I do not mean the people who are used to getting their way. I am talking about the people who lack agency, the people who know what it is to be excluded from power and to have decisions made for them by bigwigs in distant offices who speak a language they do not understand—the sort of people who the hon. Member for Spen Valley and I both know from our previous charity work, and who we all know from our constituency work. They are not the people who write to us campaigning for a change in the law, but the people who come to our surgeries with their lives in tatters, or who the police or social workers tell us about—the people with complex needs. What are the safeguards for them?

Let me tell the House: we are the safeguard—this place; this Parliament; you and me. We are the people who protect the most vulnerable in society from harm, yet we stand on the brink of abandoning that role. The Rubicon was a very small stream, but on the other side lies a very different world—a worse world, with a very different idea of human value. The idea that our individual worth lies in our utility, valuable only for so long as we are useful—not a burden, not a cost, not making a mess. Let us not be the Parliament that authorises that idea.

I mentioned at the start of my speech the voices of those we cannot hear: the frail and elderly and the disabled. As we are surrounded by such a cloud of witnesses, let us do better than this Bill. Let today be not a vote for despair, but the start of a proper debate about dying well, in which we have a better idea than a state suicide service. Let us have a debate in which we remember that we have intrinsic value; that real choice and autonomy means having access to the best care possible and the fullest control over what happens to us while we live; and that true dignity consists in being cared for to the end.

December 2, 2024