Daniel Francis MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q My question is to Dr Ahmedzai. In the paper you produced you talked about specific recommendations regarding the training and experience of the doctors involved in the process. You suggested five years, for instance, and some other experience. Have you got examples elsewhere in the world where such a scheme has been implemented? Do you believe that we have enough trained doctors in the United Kingdom who have that level of experience and would therefore be taking part in this part of the process? Dr Ahmedzai: You have caught me on the hop, because I cannot quote the level of training that doctors have received elsewhere, except for examples in the Netherlands, where there are additional doctors who are, through their medical association, trained specifically in assisted dying. I cannot tell you the number of years’ experience that doctors have in other countries. I felt that it was self-evident that you would want doctors who are experienced—three years, five years or whatever post qualification—and who have seen real life. It is up to the medical associations to stipulate how much experience, but I would not like the idea of a doctor immediately, having got their certificate of training, going off and making these kinds of decisions. That is why I suggested that ballpark figure.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Just to clarify, is there nowhere else in the UK where we have that? I am just trying to understand, because we would need to go away and do a piece of work on whether there are enough doctors with that level of experience if we were to take on that kind of recommendation. Is there nowhere else in the medical profession in the UK where we insist on that level of experience? Dr Ahmedzai: Probably not, but this is a very, very special situation, and it may be, once it has become embedded in the health service, that that stipulation could move back. I am so glad that Dr Clarke keeps coming back to training. One thing that is absolutely needed if this Bill goes forward is to take the topic of assisted dying out of being an optional training—where people might sign up for a course—to become mandatory. In the NHS, we do mandatory training for all sorts of things, including washing hands, lifting and basic life support. There should be basic dying support mandatory training as well. Why do we not have that? That kind of provision would become part of training doctors up to become good at those conversations that Dr Clarke is obviously involved in teaching, and in ensuring that they keep up to date with how the law is changing too. I would look to the royal colleges and the GMC to lead on those aspects.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Alex, in paragraph 8 of your written evidence you touch on clauses 9, 15 and 18 of the Bill and the potential complications that could arise when the substance is taken. Could you expand on the concerns you have about that? Alex Ruck Keene: I should make it absolutely clear that all I am trying to do is make sure that whatever law is passed is a good law and has as few inadvertent consequences as possible. My concern here arises out of the fact that understandably the proponents of the Bill want to make it very, very clear that this is about people carrying out a final act, and no doctor is allowed to do something that involves going beyond that. At the same time we have a situation where doctors—I am using the word “doctor” slightly loosely, but for present purposes that is what we are talking about—have to be present and have to remain with the person. We know that there will be some people for whom there are complications. My concern is to make sure that there has been sufficient consideration given to what exactly a doctor is meant to do at that point, because it seems to me that it ends up putting the person who is undergoing those complications in a horrible position. It is also—I am perfectly happy to use this phrase—putting the doctor in a position of extraordinary moral distress. Are they at that point supposed to try and rely on the doctrine of double effect and say, “All I am trying to do is treat the complication, not bring about your death,” but the Bill is saying, “No, you are not allowed to do that”? I understand entirely why the intention is to say that the doctor must always be hands off, as it were, but you need to super clear that you are going to put some people in some very, very difficult positions, and Parliament needs to be clear-eyed about that.

• 23 Jan 2025 · Fraud: Public Sector · Hansard source

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  14. What steps he is taking to reduce fraud in the public sector.

• 23 Jan 2025 · Fraud: Public Sector · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for her answer. One of the biggest scandals that we saw under the last Conservative Government was Ministers giving out dodgy covid contracts to their friends and donors. Will the Minister update the House on what steps the Government are taking to ensure that there will never again be a repeat of that shameful behaviour and that where the public have been defrauded, we will get our money back?

• 21 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Sir Roger. Amendment (i) clashes with the sitting times on Thursday suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Local Government Reorganisation · Hansard source

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  My residents in Crayford, in the London borough of Bexley, have their services provided by one council, but in many cases, residents on the same road have their services provided by two councils—by Kent county council and Dartford borough council—which causes confusion, as the Minister said. Does he agree that the changes introduced in the English devolution Bill will make local government more effective and save money for those taxpayers?

• 14 Jan 2025 · Parking: Town Centres · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate. In the Northumberland Heath ward in my constituency, Councillors Baljeet Gill and Wendy Perfect have been working tirelessly to support local traders who would like to introduce free parking for a very short period for the small range of independent shops in Northumberland Heath. Does she agree that councils should investigate measures to reduce parking charges and also consider free short-term parking arrangements to support, as she put it, the viability of such small independent traders?

• 8 Jan 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  For the record, my wife is employed as a special educational needs co-ordinator in a local authority school in the London borough of Bexley. I welcome the opportunity to speak in support of the Bill on aspects relating to looked-after children and academies. On looked-after children, the Bill would make a series of changes on accommodation, as colleagues have commented, which include increasing Ofsted oversight of organisations that operate multiple children’s homes or independent fostering agencies, introducing a financial oversight regime for certain independent agencies and children’s home providers, and allowing the Secretary of State to cap the profits of children’s home providers and independent fostering agencies. From my years as a local councillor, I know how badly those changes are needed. My local authority in Bexley, like many others, has struggled to control those areas with regulation and struggled with the financial aspects. Last year, we saw the largest children’s services overspend of any London borough as a result of those issues. I therefore welcome the measures to limit the profits of specified non-local authority, Ofsted-registered social providers of children’s homes and fostering agencies, which have continually raised their costs far above inflation to profit from the taxpayer and from the care costs of our most vulnerable children. I welcome the changes in clauses 47 to 50 to school admission arrangements, requiring schools and local authorities to co-operate to manage admissions and giving local authorities the power to direct academy schools to admit pupils. In my local authority, we have schools where over 50% of the children do not live in our borough because of the admission arrangements that our academy schools have decided to put in place. In a borough where 79% of schools have been academised, we rely on their good will as to how many pupils they will admit each year from our local authority and how those applicants will be prioritised. That has resulted in the same Conservative councillors who cheer-led the roll-out of academies openly complaining to me and colleagues that they no longer have control over admissions criteria. Today, we have the opportunity to give this landmark legislation its Second Reading. It will improve education standards and strengthen protections for the most vulnerable children in Bexleyheath and Crayford and across our country. It will drive high and rising standards in schools through common-sense reform, and it will prevent children from falling through the cracks by introducing landmark reforms to safeguard children’s social care. The Bill is the single biggest piece of child protection legislation in a generation. A vote for the amendment is a vote against the Bill and against the safety of our children, their childhoods and their futures. I urge all Members to vote with me and the Government and to give the Bill its Second Reading.