Danny Kruger MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  It will be interesting to hear from the Minister, who is more equipped than the rest of us to opine on this. My understanding is that a judge sitting as chair of a judicial inquiry might not be sitting in court, but they are there because they are a judge; their function, as the chair of the inquiry, is essentially judicial. That is the only comparison and it is essentially different, because the exercise of a public inquiry is time-limited and specific to a particular case, which is to determine the truth or otherwise of what happened in whatever situation it is being asked to inquire into. Here, we are setting up a quango—an arm’s length body of Government—that will sit in perpetuity and oversee a bureaucracy of state. That is something that no judge does in our system and, in my view, would be completely inappropriate for a sitting judge to do, even if we could find a sitting judge prepared to fulfil that function, which I think might be challenging. The other key difference is that a judge chairing a public inquiry is appointed by the Lady Chief Justice; they are essentially judicial in their appointment and work. The judiciary appoints one of its own to fulfil a judicial function as the chair of an inquiry. It is being proposed here that the Government—the Executive, not the judiciary—appoint the chair of the commission from the Bench of judges.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I will be voting for clause 12 to stand part, because I think it is an essential safeguard, but it is not strong enough. There are all sorts of problems with it around capacity and the way it is constituted, and I will come on now to how I think it can be improved.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I regret that my right hon. Friend is making that argument. The fact is that the panel is already going to consider whether it is appropriate. There might not be some professional who is there with the purpose of suggesting that there are other things that the panel should consider, but the patient is already lying there waiting for powerful people in another room to make a decision about whether they are going to get an assisted suicide or not. That process is already going on. On my right hon. Friend’s point that it is intolerable for somebody to hear the case made against their assisted death, let me put to him an alternative hypothesis. Rather than somebody in the situation that he describes, let us imagine somebody who is the victim of years of coercive control, who has undiagnosed mental health conditions, who is feeling a burden on their family and whose relatives want their money. None of that has yet been fully identified through the initial doctor’s stage of the process, but it has been commented on in some of the evidence that the multidisciplinary team heard. That person might hope that somebody is there making the case for them, as might their family. It is totally appropriate for a court to hear that this procedure should not go ahead because of those other factors, which are only now being properly understood by the decision maker. That decision maker is doing so openly, not in a private session. The decision is being made not by people who are committed to the procedure and process of assisted suicide, but by an independent judge, sitting in their judicial capacity in open court, with all the safeguards and accountability that the judicial system has. That feels to me like a perfectly appropriate safeguard, and I suggest that it is, in principle, what the House of Commons thought they were getting when they supported this.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  All right. I regret my failure to assuage the anxieties of the hon. Member. Let me explain why it was so important that we had a judicial stage. My complaints were never against the principle, but always against the practicalities, for the reasons I have just given and will go on to say more about. The value of a judicial stage is that it gave the doctors certainty and, indeed, protection for the process they were responsible for. I want to cite the evidence from the Medical Defence Union, which provides doctors with insurance against claims of medical negligence. Responding to the suggestion that judicial involvement could be replaced by some other decision-making body, it stated: “The MDU strongly rejects this assertion. The involvement of the judiciary is essential. Its absence leaves doctors unduly exposed. Media reports suggest that an alternative safeguard is being mooted. No ‘independent panel’, however so constituted, can replace the legal authority of a course of action sealed and ratified by a judge. Doctors deserve that certainty when relying upon this Bill to provide the very best for their patients at the most delicate moment of their duty of care.” I will also cite the evidence that we received from Ruth Hughes, a senior barrister with 17 years of experience in mental capacity law. I cannot say that she is a King’s counsel because she does not become one until later this month—congratulations to her. She stated in her written evidence that “if there is no judicial declaration because the judicial safeguard is not enacted, then there is a risk that the estates of persons who have been assisted to die will be sent into turmoil. This is due to the possibility of arguments being made that beneficiaries of the estate have ‘influenced’ the person into obtaining the assisted death.” She said that “even if there is no conviction but another person asserts there was ‘influence’…not undue influence”— and certainly not coercion, which is banned by the Bill— “but a lower standard of ‘influence’ by a beneficiary of the estate…then the personal representatives will be advised to obtain directions from the Court as to how to administer the estate.” Her point is that, even if the bar for the assisted death is met, in terms of influence, coercion and so on, the testamentary or probate challenges that the estates will then go into are considerable. The fact is that somebody has to be the judge—somebody has to take legal responsibility for the decision that is made. In the common law system, we do not give powers of life and death to panels; we give them to legally constituted bodies with judicial authority. To cite the MDU again: “To put it plainly, without judicial involvement someone will have to take responsibility for the legality of the action.”

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Yes, a number are neutral. I will be grateful if the hon. Lady can tell the Committee if there are any representative bodies working with the professionals who administer end-of-life care that have endorsed either the Bill as it was or the Bill as it is. I do not believe there are.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making that absolutely central point. This is a judicial process, and a decision is being made. I recognise that the hon. Member for Spen Valley has correctly abandoned the claim that this is a judge-led process—because it is not—but the function of this panel will be essentially judicial, not least because the decision to proceed with an assisted death entails the people involved in administering it being exempt from criminal law and not being liable to prosecution under the Suicide Act 1961. We have made an exemption for what is otherwise a crime, and if they do not get the go-ahead from this panel, they will be committing a crime if they proceed. So in all essence, a judicial decision is being made, and it is right that we have the protections of a court. Let me make a couple of brief points about the practicalities, and they have partly been made by others. The central point is that we do not know whether the professionals who will be required to take part in this panel have the capacity to do so. We know that the judges do not have the capacity under the current design of the law, which is an essential flaw—or we think they do not, because that point has been comprehensively argued by the judiciary and I suspect by officials at the Ministry of Justice. What we do not know is whether the psychiatry and social work professions have adequate capacity. There has been no impact assessment, and we have had a lot of comments from representative bodies expressing anxiety about the capacity of these professions to supply the panels. The point I am trying to make is that we cannot, and should not, legislate in the dark. We should not draft laws in ignorance of these basic facts. We need to know whether the law before us is workable in the real world, and I would be grateful for clarification on that from Ministers when they speak to this clause. In my view, we need robust and clear data on how many professionals might take up the posts, and more importantly, we need the clearest and earliest warning of where there might be deficits that would compromise the entire system, particularly around the capacity of psychiatrists. We have a central problem with ignorance around capacity, but my strong view is that we do have a problem with capacity. An important point was made by Alex Ruck Keene in evidence around the judge-led process, which we discussed earlier. His point was that it would not be possible for the judge to decline an assisted death on the basis of what he calls service denial—that is, there is not enough social care treatment or medical treatment available for the patient. If the reason why the patient were to receive an assisted death was that the local authority would not provide them with improvements to their home or funding, or that they could not get the medical treatment they wanted early enough, that would be a legitimate reason, or would not be a reason not to proceed with an assisted death. That is a very grave concern to us, and it is what happens in other countries. We heard this morning about evidence that when a patient is denied the medical or social care that they need to carry on living and living well, they are offered an assisted death. In those circumstances, I would really hope that the decision maker would conclude that it is wrong that we offer an assisted death, and that we in fact need to insist that they get the support they need to live well. I reference that because, as I understand it, there is no opportunity in the new clauses for the panel to decline an assisted death on grounds that it is being sought only because of the inadequacy of the wider care system. It has been suggested that the judicial option remains, through the judicial review system. Other hon. Members have responded to that point, so I will not labour it. However, I want to make the point that new clause 17 makes judicial review less likely because it offers the opportunity for a sort of appeal. It is an appeal only in one direction—against a refusal—but there is a sort of appeal process in the system. As my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate said, if there is a JR, it is likely to take a long time. There is nothing about whether legal aid will be arranged. The state has proposed to pay for people to go through the assisted dying process, but is not prepared to pay anybody to challenge it, so they would have to raise their own money. It would also take a long time. It would be much simpler and better, whether it is a panel or a judge, to set up the system in a way that allows both sides to be told and that does not rely on a cumbersome judicial review system. I reiterate that I support the multidisciplinary team. It is a very good thing that the hon. Member for Spen Valley has decided to introduce a proper stage at which a psychiatrist and a social worker will have to consider the application properly. I have concerns about how it would actually work, which I will come on to, but having a multidisciplinary team is in principle the right system. I stress that the professionals who made the case for multidisciplinary teams as part of the assessment process have not endorsed the new clauses. They are not saying that we have adequately met their concerns about the process.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I do not think the hon. Lady can say she has done her job very, very well if, after presenting a Bill, and after months and months of work and debate, including many hours’ debate on Second Reading, she suddenly decides that its central part is deficient. She talks about the opportunity for the Committee to take and debate evidence, but we have not had evidence on this new element—these new clauses and the panel process. There were vague suggestions from some of the people we heard evidence from that it might be appropriate, but although we heard evidence on the High Court stage and the deficiencies therein, we have not had the opportunity to properly examine the panel element that is now being introduced.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I greatly respect the position that the hon. Lady has come to. She has been persuaded that this is an improvement on the Bill, and I respect that. I recognise that that is what the hon. Member for Spen Valley and others think, but I am afraid I do not accept that the process has been adequate. The hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge cites Justice Munby and others who criticised the High Court proposals. I also have my criticisms of them—I think they were inadequate—but the response to that is not to scrap them all together, but to strengthen them, as Justice Munby suggested. The hon. Lady will know that Justice Munby is not supportive of the new proposals either; he thinks they also fail the essential test of being an effective safeguard. Nor does the new proposal—the panel—provide the opportunity for evidentiary investigation, which would indeed be appropriate if we were to have a proper safeguard at this stage. I respect the hon. Lady’s position, but I am not persuaded.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. If Parliament decides that we should proceed, then we should, and the public sector will be obliged to make accommodation and provide the necessary resources. Does he agree that, on that basis, it would be appropriate for the Government to have clarified by this stage what the resource requirements of the new system would be, to make clear that there is the capacity in the system to do it? Does he share my regret that that has not been done?

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Member, but I am afraid I am going to have it both ways. I think the Bill is profoundly flawed, particularly if large numbers of people will be going through this system. Whether they are going through a judicial system or a panel system, there will be huge capacity constraints on the professionals involved, and we have transferred that responsibility and that problem from the judiciary to psychiatry and social work—unless, of course, it is a rubber-stamp exercise, which I fear it might be, but even then, we are still involving psychiatrists and social workers in a rubber-stamp exercise.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Throughout this debate, the hon. Lady and others have frequently made the case that we should stick with the existing systems, such as the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and the use of doctors to make decisions about healthcare. Now the opposite point is being made: that we have a unique system and we therefore need to tear up the current way of working. In this one case, I think we need to stick with the current way of working: in the British judiciary, the High Court of England is the appropriate body to make decisions about life and death. That is how it works in other major decisions of life and death. These are questions that go to court. On the point about the VAD commissioner being a sitting judge, even when it comes to inquiries that judges conduct outside their role as sitting judges in court, my understanding is that the Executive do not pick whichever sitting judge they want for the role. Instead, they request that the Lady Chief Justice make a judge available, and the Lady Chief Justice will select the appointee. What is proposed here is that the Prime Minister should pick from the bench of judges his or her preferred candidate. That feels like the use of a judge simply to fulfil a role that, frankly, does not need to be carried out by a judge. For clarity, I emphasise that I am very much in favour of judges deciding on cases, but I do not see why a judge should fulfil the role of chief quangocrat for the administration of the regime. When we look at the functions the commissioner will have, it is quite right that, under the previous version of the Bill, most of those functions were given to the chief medical officer, because most of the required functions have to do with the administration of the medical aspects of the Bill. The collection of data and the monitoring of the operation of the Act are best left to a medic with experience of our healthcare system, rather than to a judge. These are not judicial functions. The only function carried out by the commissioner that would require one to be a judge, or that is in a sense judicial, is the review of panel decisions, because a judicial decision is being made. Under new clause 17(2), the test is limited to an error of law, irrationality or procedural unfairness; those are the grounds for judicial review. If we did not have new clause 17, the ability for judicial review of panel decisions would remain. It could be argued that the new clause would actually limit judicial review by only allowing the person concerned to apply for reconsideration. I understand that some courts in Canada, which has a comparable judicial and common law system to ours, have held that family members do not have standing to judicially review decisions to authorise medical assistance in dying. The suggestion has been made that families who are concerned that an error has been made in a decision to approve a death should be able to quickly get an injunction through a JR. I hope that that will be the case, if this law passes as proposed, but it certainly is not the experience elsewhere and I fear it might not be the experience here. I am afraid that we have a dog’s breakfast of a system: all the problems of the High Court system that have been aired, but without any of the benefits. I will finish by quoting Sir James Munby. I know he has been cited regularly, but the hon. Member for Spen Valley said yesterday that, having listened to Sir James, she set herself the task of designing a system that would satisfy a former president of the family division. I am afraid to say that she has not succeeded in her task. I will quote a few points that Sir James made in response to the proposals in these new clauses. He stated: “The process…is simply not apt to enable the panel to perform its function…The panel is given an extraordinary degree of discretion in relation to the process it is to adopt”. He suggested that the panel is “little more than a rubber stamp providing a veneer of judicial approbation”— I do not think that rubber stamps provide veneers, but his point is well made and I respect it— “and that is fundamentally unacceptable”. Finally, he said: “If the panel is to perform its function effectively and do more than just ‘check the paperwork’—if it is to be the real safeguard intended by its proponents—then its processes must be much more thorough than is currently proposed…All in all, in relation to the involvement of the panel in the process, the Bill still falls lamentably short of providing adequate safeguards.”

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady must not apologise for intervening on me. I can hardly be one to object to people intervening. This is a very good forum for the kind of exchanges we are having, so I am very happy to take interventions. She is absolutely right that lots of evidence has been presented. I cite it myself all the time. Further evidence is coming in, and much of it is very critical of the new proposals. That is an absolutely fair point, but my point remains that we invited witnesses and had three days of evidence on a Bill whose core safeguard has now fundamentally changed—well, it has not changed yet, but I suspect it is about to.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady is absolutely right. Having said that the panel is not a proper multidisciplinary team, I agree that it is not a proper judicial entity either. It is a panel with judicial power to approve life-or-death decisions, but it is without a judge or the normal judicial processes that would happen in a tribunal or court. There is no oath being taken by members of the panel or by witnesses; there is no independent appointment process, so the members of the panel will be appointed by the commissioner; there is no power to order the disclosure of information to the panel; there is no power to investigate wills, financial records or anything like that; and there is no requirement to meet the doctors or even to discuss the case with the patient themselves, if the panel considers that appropriate. There is also no appeal against an approval, just a one-way appeal against a refusal. That appeal goes not to an independent judge sitting in a court, but to a commissioner—an appointee of the Government, who has been set up to facilitate the whole system. Let me turn to the role of the VAD commissioner, or the Vader as I think of it; I will not labour the point. They can be a sitting judge, which is good, but I suggest to the Committee that it is highly unusual for sitting judges to be appointed to other public functions that are unrelated to a judicial role. I would be interested in the Minister’s view on that. Judges can be appointed to a second judicial job, such as chairing the Sentencing Council, but I am not aware of many examples in which a sitting judge sits in a non-judicial function. Having looked into it, I discovered that there are three exceptions to the rule. First, the Master of the Rolls holds a number of sinecures in relation to the keeping of the public archives and the payment of the national debt, so that is a non-judicial function that a judge carries. Secondly, the chair of the Law Commission is a sitting High Court or Court of Appeal judge. Thirdly, and exceptionally, with permission of the senior judiciary, sitting judges can be asked to conduct public inquiries. A singular public inquiry, which is time-limited and essentially judicial in its purpose of determining what happened, and which will of course operate in an adversarial way, hearing proper evidence from counsel, is the only exception. However, that is not comparable to the model being set out here, in which a sitting judge is being asked to chair a permanent quango—a Government body.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Yes; it would be inappropriate to ask a panel to operate in an adversarial system. It would be inappropriate to ask a psychiatrist and a social worker to act as a judge. We need a proper court system, as we always do with other important decisions in which two sides make arguments. Let me try to explain. I agree that what is being proposed is an inquisitorial system through a panel, which is completely alien to the British common law model of making important decisions. That is what is being suggested, but I do not think it is appropriate. I do not believe in assisted dying; I think it is the wrong thing to do. But if we were to do it, we should have a proper multidisciplinary team at the outset—I sort of feel that that is where we have got to through these debates, and if the debates had happened properly and prior to the Bill being drafted, something more like this system might have been proposed. Perhaps a doctor does the first declaration as proposed, but we then go into a proper multidisciplinary team, rather than just having the options to refer to psychiatrists if appropriate or to maybe consult palliative care specialists. The involvement of all the appropriate specialists in assessing capacity and coercion, making clear the alternatives that the patient has, making a proper diagnosis, and hearing from family members—all the appropriate processes that should be followed in a case like this—should happen at the very beginning of the process. There is no need for a lawyer at that stage on the multidisciplinary team that we have created; it will be a proper combination of clinical and social work professionals. Their reports would then feed into the judicial process, which would be the second or third stage, if we have a doctor at the beginning. The judge would then hear arguments from, as it were, both sides. That need not be a distressing or time-consuming process, but it would be an appropriate one under British law to make decisions of life and death. That court would clearly hear arguments made by both sides.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I certainly do. That is exactly the scenario that I fear, and I fear it within the NHS too. Let us not imagine that every NHS doctor has all the time and the access to the wider specialisms that they would wish. Under the Bill in its current form, there will be a very strong incentive and a very strong personal instinct for compassionate doctors, who believe in the autonomy of patients and in respecting the patient’s wishes, to take at face value what they are told and not to seek the expertise that would happen automatically if there were a proper multidisciplinary team at that stage of the process. My point is that we do need a multidisciplinary team, but what is in the Bill is not it. At best, it is half a multidisciplinary team. There is no doctor on it. There is a lawyer, pointlessly. There is a sort of quasi-MDT—a duo-disciplinary team—but it is in the wrong place, and it will not assess, which is the job it should do, but judge. It will not diagnose or advise in the way that a clinician should; it will simply decide whether the criteria have been met for an assisted death. That job was rightly given to judges in the Bill that the House of Commons voted for, but this Bill does not have the powers, the safeguards, the accountability or the independence of a tribunal, let alone that of a court. As the hon. Member for Spen Valley candidly says, the panel is not a judicial entity in any sense. It is a weird creature, neither one thing nor the other: a quasi-multidisciplinary team, at the wrong stage in the process, for the wrong purpose. I have said that it is not a multidisciplinary team, but it is not really a judicial entity either, as the hon. Lady has mentioned. It is certainly not “judge-plus”, as was originally suggested. There is no judge, just a legal member—not a judicial member but a legal member, who might be a lawyer.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am sorry; I did not intend to give that impression. That is not what I am suggesting. What I am saying is that we have seen the rejection of a series of amendments that would have restricted eligibility, or ensured that only certain people would be eligible: those for whom we all understand the reason for the case for assisted death. Whether our amendments related to the burden, the pain, or questions around capacity and coercion, our amendments would have restricted access to only the most desperate people. On that basis, it would have been appropriate to have a High Court stage, because the High Court could have accommodated that lower demand. Given the opportunity that the Bill affords to a larger group of people to gain access to assisted death, it has become obvious—I presume, in the mind of Government and others—that there is insufficient capacity in the court system to accommodate the regime being instituted here. I think the question of High Court capacity has been driven by the desire for a system that can cope with many thousands of deaths per year. I have seen ranges suggesting between 6,000 and 17,000 deaths per year. If Members have other calculations or estimates, I would be grateful to hear them. In fact, it would be good to know whether the Government have done any estimation of the numbers we are looking at. It is not simply a case of averting those desperate cases of people who help their relatives to die by going to Switzerland or who assist them in committing suicide in other ways—we heard from Max Hill that only a handful of cases cross his desk every year. It is clearly the intention to greatly widen the scope beyond that desperate group. It is unclear what the overall number is, but my strong sense is that we are looking at many thousands, and for that reason, it has been decided that the High Court would not have the capacity to cope with this.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  To be clear, I was not suggesting that they all said so on Second Reading, because not everybody spoke in that debate—nor am I saying that it is only because of this safeguard that MPs voted for the Bill, but there are 60 colleagues of ours who have cited the judicial safeguard as a reason for supporting the Bill. Indeed, I hope the Committee will agree that this was always presented as a very significant aspect of the safeguarding regime, if not the most significant aspect. I suggest it was the most significant, because it enabled people to argue that this was the strongest Bill in the world, given that other regimes do not have a judicial element. I opposed the Bill on Second Reading and I expect that I will oppose it on Third Reading, but I respect the Committee process enough to accept that the House wanted the Bill debated. Because I respect the process, I have not opposed clauses that concern the heart of the Bill, but we are now going to see the hon. Member for Spen Valley, Government Ministers and their supporters vote against this clause—the essential safeguard in the Bill, and the principal element used to persuade the House that the Bill was safe—standing part of the Bill. It is an extraordinary thing that we are going to see the Bill’s promoter and the Government oppose the centrepiece of this Bill.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Was there any evidence that changed my mind?

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I apologise; the hon. Lady is absolutely right. No doubt there are representative bodies, whether it is patients’ groups or bodies representing professionals, that are satisfied with the new proposal. I do not know which—genuinely, I just have not come across them—but I have no doubt that there are some.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am sorry to report that my mother could not hear a word of the proceedings. I am exaggerating, but she grumbled about the mumbling, which is a lesson for us all.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady does always come back to that point, and I respect it. She imagines that the good practice that is prevalent in the system will obtain automatically, in all cases, under the assisted dying regime, even though that regime is completely new. She says that she cannot envisage a scenario in which the doctors would not hear from all the professionals we all think should be consulted at this stage of the process. I have two points to make on that. First, why not make it explicit that that is required? Secondly, I am afraid that I can envisage scenarios in which for doctors—perhaps some years down the line, once this model of death has become normalised, as it has in Canada and elsewhere, with up to 10% of deaths coming through assisted dying—it just becomes a procedure. Again, we have not ruled out the possibility—the likelihood, in fact—of independent clinics establishing themselves with a business that is about providing the support for people who want to end their life. There will be doctors who are happy to conduct the assessments; to take at face value what they hear from the patient; not to involve a wider multidisciplinary team in their consultations; and to expedite the process as the Bill, as drafted and amended, allows. I am afraid I do foresee a scenario in which the good practice in which all believe does not happen. My concern, and I expect the hon. Lady’s is the same, is to prevent that.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman does not seem impressed by my straight answer to his straight question. Yes, I do support clause 12. I think we should strengthen it, in the ways that I will now explain. We do need a court, and I think Parliament was right to demand this, or to support it. We have a comparable model in the Court of Protection, which applies when there are disputed decisions about whether to withdraw life support. By the way, I mention to hon. Members who have referred to this—just to go back to an earlier debate—that, with the Court of Protection, one is obliged to notify the family. So even there, when there is a decision to withdraw life support, the family is notified, but we have decided not to notify the family under this Bill. But anyway, the Court of Protection does provide an appropriate comparison. Whether we are talking about the Court of Protection or the High Court, either would work if the system was set up right. The crucial thing, in my view, is that it needs a proper adversarial arrangement so that the judge can actually judge. The way that judges work in this country, under the common law system, is that they hear arguments and then make decisions. It has been suggested that there could be a role for the official solicitor in acting “for the state”, as it were—or indeed “for society”, perhaps, or however we would want to put it—to perform the role of challenging the application and taking responsibility for presenting any alternative pieces of information that the judge should consider.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I appreciate that an impact assessment is due to come later, after we have debated whether we should have this system or not. Nevertheless, will the Minister tell the Committee whether officials in her Department or in the Department of Health and Social Care have informed the hon. Member for Spen Valley whether the workforce will have sufficient capacity to provide the professionals required? Has any estimate been made of the number of people who will be required to step forward to take part in these panels? I note the point that the reason why the proposed High Court stage was dropped was not that Ministry of Justice officials had informed the hon. Member for Spen Valley that the family court system would be overwhelmed. Can the Minister confirm that there was no communication to the hon. Member that the courts would not be able to cope with the demand? That was clearly reported in the media at the time, but can she confirm that it was not the case?

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I think this is important. Those roles are what those judges do in their spare time—they could also chair a football club or something as well. The point is that they are being asked here to fulfil a function on behalf of the Government in their working hours, explicitly because they are a judge—yet they are not sitting as one. Surely my right hon. Friend acknowledges that that is essentially unprecedented.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Let us not rehash the argument about whether there is a difference between withdrawing treatment and actively killing somebody or giving them the opportunity to kill themselves. On the point about withdrawal of treatment, does the hon. Member acknowledge that when there is dispute over whether somebody should have their treatment withdrawn, it goes to a court and there is representation from both sides of that argument about whether the treatment should be withdrawn? If he is saying that these measures are essentially identical in principle, surely we should have the same mechanism to resolve disputes.