Danny Kruger MP: speeches

Speeches

• 25 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I thought that might be the case too, and I was wondering about that, but I am very concerned about some of the evidence that Professor Whitty gave. I regret that the hon. Member for Spen Valley has removed the role of the chief medical officer from the process that she is designing by introducing the new commissioner, but I will not be sorry to see that particular chief medical officer excluded from the process. He has made significant mistakes; he had to write to the Committee to explain that he had misrepresented the Mental Capacity Act, and, on his evidence, the Committee voted to reject certain amendments. I am concerned about what Professor Whitty said, but if the reason for including “medical condition” is to reflect the fact that there might be multiple diseases or illnesses that, together, mean that somebody is terminally ill, that is what should be stated in the Bill. It could very well include “a combination of illnesses or diseases that amount to terminal illness”. My concern is about this new concept of a medical condition, which, as I have said, implies something different from a disease or illness. The Bill would say “the person’s death in consequence of illness or disease”—if we remove “medical condition” —so that would be the qualification or eligibility. If there is a number of illnesses or diseases that amount to a fatal prognosis, that would be captured in the clause, even once we have excluded medical condition, because the singular “illness” or “disease” would, as I understand it from our guidance on statutory interpretation, include the plural. If it is about there being a number of illnesses or diseases that add up to a fatality, the Bill as I propose to amend it would be adequate to the scenario that the hon. Member for Sunderland Central described and that Professor Whitty accounted for. The question is, what is additional illness or disease, or illnesses or diseases, that are captured by the term “medical condition”?

• 25 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am sorry if it offends Members, but the fact is that the Bill in its present form, with the amendments rejected, will place no obligation on doctors to refer people to palliative care or to seek a palliative care consultation. Many will do so, of course—many good doctors will do exactly that—but they will not be obliged to. If we are imagining that every doctor will be as brilliant as the best doctors, I am afraid that I will have to talk about the Liverpool care pathway and the many tragic scandals that we are constantly dealing with. It is simply not the case that the option of a palliative care consultation equates to the absolute expectation that it will happen.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I do not want to cut off the hon. Lady in full flow, but I want to echo her points. The hon. Member for Stroud has made his point before and we have had an exchange on it. There is quite a lot of research, to which I refer him, that shows how people in the UK, being treated by the NHS, are having diagnoses of terminal anorexia. It is happening. I refer him to Professor Agnes Ayton, the campaigner Hope Virgo and the eating disorders all-party parliamentary group in this place, which is looking at that. It seems bizarre to us, because of course someone can resume eating, but the fact is that anorexia is treated as a terminal illness in parts of the NHS today.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am grateful for that clarification, but it rather concerns me. Can the Minister elucidate exactly which conditions might fall into the category of medical condition that would not be captured by “illness” or “disease”? Does he accept the point that I made in my speech—that the interpretation of the law by the court will be that the phrase expands the definition of a terminal illness beyond illness or disease, as it is in the current law? What are the new conditions that will be captured by the term?

• 25 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I will be fairly brief in speaking to the amendments, but they go to the heart of things. We have tried to tighten the Bill by excluding medical conditions from the definition of a terminal illness; I am very pleased that the Committee has accepted that tightening. We have also sought to exclude illnesses that are consequent on mental disorders and disabilities; we have not succeeded with that tightening. We have further sought to tighten the Bill by circumscribing the prognosis period more precisely. The amendments would tighten the Bill further by explicitly listing the illnesses that qualify. The argument is quite straightforward. The problem that we are trying to address is that, under the Bill, it will be up to doctors and potentially to the court—or a panel, if that is where we go—to decide whether a particular condition is terminal. It would be set by case law and by medical doctors deciding what conditions qualify.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I just wanted the hon. Gentleman to comment on the reality in our NHS at the moment that people are described as terminally ill with anorexia. They are given the label of being terminally ill and put on palliative care pathways because it is assumed that their condition is not reversible. Doctors today, in this country, are concluding that people with eating disorders are going to die and are treating them accordingly. Is he aware of that, and how does it affect his comments?

• 25 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I accept that, which is why amendment 282 is probing only. It is trying to demonstrate the point. I recognise that even the expedited process is likely to take up to a month to get through, so that would be difficult. Nevertheless, if our intention is to restrict this to people who are literally in their last days, which is frequently what we hear, I think it would be appropriate to restrict the time.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I sense that the wish of the Committee is probably not to accept the amendment, so I do not propose to press it to a Division, but we have just heard quite clearly, in response to the amendment, that the Bill is essentially permissive. Once again, we have declined to put clear parameters around the eligibility for this new law. We have heard specific conditions mentioned so many times in the course of the debates over the preceding months. It is a shame that we are not prepared to state those conditions clearly in the Bill, with the opportunity for Parliament to amend them over time. I end by echoing a point that the hon. Member for Spen Valley made about the importance of good data. I hope that if the Bill passes, we will have the best data collection in the world. I am afraid to say that data collection is not good in other jurisdictions. Nevertheless, it is possible to see how often in Oregon, Australia, Canada, and Europe, albeit in a minority of cases, conditions that most people would not recognise as deserving of assisted dying, including anorexia, arthritis, hernias and diabetes, are listed as causes of death. Indeed, so is frailty, as I discussed earlier. My fear is that if we pass the Bill, we too—if we do data collection properly—will have a shameful appendix to the annual report showing that people have had an assisted death for reasons that most people would regard as inappropriate. I will leave it there. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Amendment made: 401, in clause 2, page 2, line 5, leave out “, disease or medical condition” and insert “or disease”.— (Danny Kruger.) This amendment is consequential on Amendment 399. Amendment proposed : 402, in clause 2, page 2, line 6, at end insert— “(2) A person who would not otherwise meet the requirements of subsection (1), shall not be considered to meet those requirements as a result of stopping eating or drinking.”— (Naz Shah.) This amendment means that someone who is not terminally ill within the meaning of subsection (1) cannot bring themselves within that definition by stopping eating or drinking or both. Question put, That the amendment be made.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I will be as quick as I can be. I recognise the powerful contributions that have been made on a number of the amendments. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Broxtowe, who made a very interesting speech in support of her amendment 123. I was struck by her point that we should do what we can to reflect the reality of clinical situations in people’s lives. I very much respect the power of the arguments she made. My concern is that by changing “inevitably” to “typically”, her amendment, although it might reflect reality more closely, would widen the scope of eligibility. I am afraid I will not support her amendment, but she made an important speech about how things actually work. I will speak briefly in support of amendment 282 in the name of the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), and of amendments 48 and 402 in the name of the hon. Member for Bradford West. At the end, I will refer quickly to the amendments in the names of the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough and of my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer). All those amendments, with exception of the last ones, fit the Bill to the campaign—they make the Bill more accurately applicable to the people whom the campaigners have been campaigning for and whom everyone has the most sympathy with. Amendment 282 in the name of the hon. Member for York Central would restrict eligibility to people with a one-month diagnosis only. I stress that the amendment is probing and I do not propose to press it to a vote on her behalf. She tabled it and I am speaking to it to make the point that, if we are serious about the Bill being for people who are dying and not for people who are not—for people at the very end of their life, as we hear so often—we need to be much stricter about the period of prognosis. I will not repeat points that have been made by other hon. Members, but the fact is that the six-month test is literally as good as tossing a coin. It has a less than 50% accuracy. In particular for advanced cancers and neurological conditions, accuracy is very low.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am not. I think we have allowed six months to creep into common legal parlance because of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992; we now recognise in law that it is possible to have certain rights and entitlements on the basis of a six-month prognosis. I presume that is the basis of it. It does feel like a reasonable period, and I understand the rationale for it, but given the difficulty of prognosis and the intense seriousness of what we are doing, I think it is inappropriate and dangerous. Another way of achieving greater safety—less precise but perhaps more generous to people who want an assisted death—is to tighten the definition of terminal illness to mean those whom doctors think it is reasonably certain, rather than reasonably expected, will die within six months. That is the intent of amendment 48 tabled the hon. Member for Bradford West. The amendment also insists that the condition is terminal even with “all recommended treatment”, so that somebody could not make themselves eligible by refusing treatment. That is a very important point that the hon. Lady is trying to insist on. By the way, that does not mean—and I hope people will not conclude that it does—that someone is required to have every treatment that might be possible, including invasive and unpleasant chemotherapy. The point is that it would have to be treatment recommended by the doctor: if the doctor recommends it, then it is appropriate. A doctor might be offering chemotherapy, but they would not be recommending it in all circumstances. For the avoidance of doubt—an important phrase— I think that the hon. Lady’s amendment 402 is very important too. Just in case nutrition is not seen as treatment—perhaps it is arguable that it may not be—it is very important that we specify explicitly that declining food or drink does not qualify someone for an assisted death.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am grateful, Mr Dowd. I recognise the force of what the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge is saying. To be clear, the amendments that I am supporting would not deny disabled people any of the other rights that are being awarded in the Bill. She is absolutely right that a disabled person with a terminal illness would qualify just as much as someone who was not disabled. That is absolutely right. The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that people whose illness is a direct consequence of a mental disorder in particular would not be eligible. The reference to disability is because of the confusion, which I expect the hon. Member for Spen Valley recognises in current law and guidance, about where the distinction between disability and terminal illness lies. That is our concern. The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that people would not be deemed as eligible for an assisted death in consequence of disability or mental illness. I know that is what the hon. Lady is trying to do with the amendment, and with the clause that it amends, so we are on the same page. Our concern is that, by including the words “For the avoidance of doubt” and the word “only”, we will be leaving quite a large loophole, through which, I am afraid to say, some vulnerable people might fall. I look forward to the Division on the amendments. We have not been able to discuss them all in close detail, but I am grateful to Members for the debate that we have had. Amendment 399 agreed to.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I think so. The hon. Lady is absolutely right that there is this difficult loophole that somebody may have capacity and be refusing food and drink and would therefore potentially be eligible. In the Bill as it stands, we have an expedited process for people whose prognosis is only a month. There, the 14-day waiting period could be reduced to just 48 hours. If a person stopped eating and drinking, their death would almost certainly happen within a month. In other words, a person who is not terminally ill could make themselves eligible for an assisted death within 48 hours simply by refusing sustenance. It is very important that we recognise that and explicitly exclude it. I will refer quickly to other jurisdictions where this specific situation occurs and the voluntary stopping of eating and drinking is used to qualify for legal drugs. A peer-reviewed article in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society discusses this case—it may be the one referred to earlier. The authors noted that if anyone can access VSED—voluntary stopping of eating and drinking—then anyone can qualify for medical assistance in dying. In Colorado, 12 people qualified for assisted suicide based on a diagnosis of severe malnutrition. The American Clinicians Academy on Medical Aid in Dying, an organisation of doctors who provide assisted suicide, acknowledges this loophole. Its guidance states that “there is nothing in the letter of the law” to prevent voluntary stopping of eating and drinking from being used in this way. It adds that that would “essentially eliminate the criteria of terminal illness,” because a person could always qualify as having terminal illness if they stopped eating and drinking. That is obviously not what the Bill’s sponsor and drafters wish. I hope they will consider accepting the amendment to close that loophole. I will not repeat points made very eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate, but I echo the need to ensure that the Bill is not for conditions that, although they cannot be reversed by treatment, can nevertheless be controlled or substantially slowed. I will therefore support the amendments in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough and to the people he speaks for in tabling amendment 234. I recognise absolutely that the MND Association has pointed out that the six-month rule would not work for all MND sufferers. It successfully persuaded the last Government to change the rules on benefits in recognition of that point, and its evidence to us, it has requested a clear and workable definition for assisted suicide. It was not very clear on what that would be, and there are practical problems with extending to 12 months, specifically the one we have with six months—the difficulty of prognosis, which would be twice as bad. I also refer to the evidence from Professor Sleeman, who made the point that a non-neurologist would find it particularly difficult to make an accurate 12-month prognosis for MND. The main reason to object to the principle of the amendment—I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is not moving it, but it is an important principle to discuss—is that it makes no sense at all to have two different prognosis periods. Of course, we can see where it will go. The fact that the amendment has been tabled and selected, that it is in scope, and that people will support it in this Committee or beyond, or outside Parliament, is evidence of where things go. We saw it very clearly in the evidence we heard from witnesses from Australia, who pointed out that there is no logical reason to have two prognoses—one for cancer and one for neuro-degenerative disorders. Their response was, “Well, let’s make it 12 months for everyone,” and of course that is the way things would go. I finish with a tribute to the great quixotic effort of my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge, who is not on the Committee. Runnymede is the home of Magna Carta; the spirit of liberalism lives on in my hon. Friend, a genuine liberal who wants to scrap the period of prognosis altogether, because he genuinely believes in absolute autonomy. I have been trying to make the Bill live up to its claim to be a Bill for safeguarding; he wants it to live up to its claim to be a Bill for autonomy. In principle—in logic—he is absolutely right. If we think that some people should have access to suicide assisted by the state, then why should person A get it and not person B? Needless to say, I disagree with him.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is making a very important point, and he picks up the observation by the hon. Member for Bradford West that there is a link, through the Equality Act, with disability. It is absolutely right that we address that. Does he agree that the way to do so is not to accept amendment 181 tabled by the hon. Member for Spen Valley, which would retain the dangerous words “only” and “for the avoidance of doubt”, but to accept amendment 11, which would exclude those words and ensure that someone could not get an assisted death by reason of disability or mental illness? Because of that concern, perhaps we need to table a further amendment to exclude the Equality Act from the operation of this clause, and I await the Chair’s ruling on whether that is possible at this stage. Amendment 181 does not refer to the Equality Act, although the Bill does, so we should follow that point. Rather than accepting that amendment, which would not move us forward, we should accept amendment 11. I hope that that is clear and that it might satisfy the hon. Gentleman’s concern.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move amendment 12, in clause 2, page 2, line 2, at end insert— “(c) their illness, disease or medical condition is found on a list that the Secretary of State may by regulations specify.” This amendment would require an illness, disease or medical condition to be specified in regulations that may be made by the Secretary of State to be considered a terminal illness under the Act.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I was going to remind the Minister that he is, in his strange Jekyll and Hyde personality, speaking as a Minister but voting as a Member of Parliament, so if he has given the Government’s view that my amendment is not acceptable, but he personally thinks that it is, I hope that he will vote for it.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member invites me to suggest that I think it would be possible to draw a safe safeguard. I do not. I think that one month is better than six months, because with one month we can have more accuracy and doctors are more genuinely right when they say that someone is close to death at that point, while six months is much more inaccurate and 12 months is notoriously inaccurate. If we restrict the Bill by using a time limit, that limit should be as close to death as possible in my view.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am delighted to hear it. I am grateful to the hon. Lady and to other hon. Members who have indicated their sympathy for the amendment. I look forward to the Division and to the Minister’s decision. May I follow up on a point made by the hon. Member for Bradford West? I do not know whether the hon. Member for Spen Valley would like to intervene to help me understand the point. Amendment 181 would redraft clause 3(2) to make it clear that a person does not qualify as terminally ill “only because they are a person with a disability or mental disorder”. It would add to clause 3(2) the following additional sentence: “Nothing in this subsection results in a person not being regarded as terminally ill for the purposes of this Act if…the person meets the conditions in paragraphs (a) and (b)”. Does the hon. Member for Spen Valley agree that that will essentially mean that the clause does nothing? It confirms the terms of eligibility set out earlier in the Bill, and confirms that a person would still be eligible to receive an assisted death if they had conditions that were a consequence of a mental disorder or a disability. If she feels like intervening on me, I would like her to help me understand what that additional sentence adds. To my mind, it negates the purpose of the clause.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I emphasise that the basis of the Bill, despite what many campaigners might want, is not one of total autonomy. The Bill requires us to have some responsibility towards the applicant, and not simply to say “Do you want it? You can have it.” There are already provisions in the Bill that put an obligation on the assessing doctors and then the judge not so much to conclude that it is in the person’s best interests—I am afraid it does not have that stipulation—but it does seek to insist that they make their own decision. As the hon. Lady said, many people make a decision and might not even be fully aware themselves that they are the subject of undue influence. They may be being deceived by their loved ones. Their loved ones might be deceiving themselves about the pressure they are putting on them, but let us just talk about a genuine intent to persuade, which does happen. In answer to the question, “Have you been coerced or pressured?”, the patient may say, “No, of course not.” But if they are asked, “Have you been encouraged?”, they might say, “Actually, yes, I have.” That should raise a very significant red flag, and it is absolutely appropriate and sufficient at that point to say, “I’m sorry, but I don’t conclude that this is an autonomous decision.” To conclude, I refer back to the debate we have been having since the news broke two days ago that there will be an amendment to scrap the judicial stage that is currently in the Bill. If there were a High Court judge sitting at the end of this process, as we were promised and as was understood by the House when it voted on Second Reading—if there were a judge sitting over each individual case, rather than sitting at the head of a national assisted dying commission, and if there were a judge sitting in court reviewing the case properly—there might arguably be no need for the amendment on undue influence. It is possible, as the Minister explained, that coercion would sufficiently capture the more insidious undue influence and encouragement we are concerned about. It is possible that we could strengthen the definition of coercion through guidance, or through further definition in the Bill. But if we are going to have a panel, and not a court or a judicial process at all, it is even more necessary that we insist on added protection.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I remember the hon. Lady’s very powerful speech on Second Reading and I fully recognise that, which is why I said that I recognise that including suffering would be problematic. I understand her point about pain as well. I think we need belt and braces. If we are going to do this, we should have strict restrictions on prognosis, because I want to restrict the time limit. I could go further than six months; we keep hearing about people in the very last stages of their life, and I think it should be restricted to them, but I also think the purpose of seeking an assisted death should be consistent with all the arguments that we keep hearing about people suffering terribly at the end from an agonising death, and we need to restrict it to those cases as well. It should be for people at the very end of their life, for the avoidance of suffering terrible pain. Those are the reasons that the public, in so far as they do support the Bill, support it—they support it for those reasons only.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  This is my last intervention, I promise. I want to hear the hon. Lady confirm that under the Bill as currently drafted, after all these conversations have taken place, as long as the doctor cannot find evidence of coercion, they would be obliged to approve the assisted death, as would the judge and the judicial panel. If that is the case, and they conclude that a person has capacity and there is no evidence of coercion, no matter what conversations go on—if the person wants to do it in order to save their family money—the doctors and the judges would have to say yes.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am very conscious that people feel like a burden at the end of their life. It is quite right that at the moment the system says, “No, you are not. You have value. You might feel a burden, but we want to sustain your life until its natural end. If you want to withdraw or decline treatment, that is your autonomous choice, but we do not recognise you as a burden.” It is very important that the British state does not tell people or confirm to people that they are a burden, which is what we would do in the Bill. To the point that the British people are very self-effacing, I should say that I suspect we would be at extreme risk from this law. I think many people would indeed feel like a burden. If we pass this law, we are explicitly saying, “Yes, you may well be a burden and it might well be right for you to seek an assisted death.” My right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree, who tabled the amendment, makes the powerful point that a right to die should not become a duty to die. Nobody wants that. Nevertheless, the implication of a law that confirms that people may seek to get the state’s help to kill themselves—not for their own sake but because they feel a burden to others—is incredibly dangerous for our society and for our culture. I would be very concerned if we proceeded with it. I will now conclude on the amendment before quickly talking about pain. It addresses the motivation of doing things for one’s own sake. I do not underestimate the difficulties. My right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire has stated a number of them at least, as have other Members. Implementing this safeguard will be difficult, but the fact is that the Bill’s sponsors have already put enormous faith in doctors and judges, or other experts, to detect external coercion and make all sorts of judgments—to ferret around in people’s minds and in their lives to understand what they are doing. We have to consider how best to implement this safeguard, but at the moment the Bill does not even say that asking for an assisted death for other people is something that should be protected against. That is wrong, and it is right that we make the amendment. I will proceed quickly to a few points about the amendments in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), which specify that the purpose of seeking an assisted death must be the avoidance of pain. They would make the Bill honest. The point has been made repeatedly by advocates in the media and in Parliament, including in our evidence sessions, that the reason why we need an assisted dying law is that so many people die terribly. My right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire has referred to some of that today, and he did so very powerfully on Second Reading too. Sir Nicholas Mostyn made a fairly unarguable case that if we are honest about what we are trying to do here, it is unclear why we have a period of prognosis as a qualifying factor: why should people have to be within six months of their death in order to qualify if we are concerned about the avoidance of suffering? If the logic of the Bill’s proponents and the argument for it is followed through, of course it should be only about the avoidance of pain. I recognise that “suffering” is a more complicated word, but I do not agree with my right hon. Friend that pain is too difficult to determine. The motivation of avoiding pain is straightforward. It should be simply about pain, and unless someone is a full-blown ethical egoist who believes there should be no restrictions on someone seeking the assistance of others to take their life—

• 12 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  Would the hon. Lady be content if somebody who had capacity chose an assisted death for the purpose of saving their family money?

• 12 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Mrs Harris. The Minister gave a brilliant speech in support of the Bill as it stands, so I simply do not understand how, having explained so clearly why she believes that the amendment is inappropriate, she can claim to have a neutral position on it. This is not in any way personal; she made a very good speech and she ended it with—

• 12 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  Okay. I am sorry to hear that.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend says that the primary purpose is control, and that is certainly the argument made by some of the most passionate advocates of this sort of legislation. However, does he recognise that, in the majority of cases, in jurisdictions where this is legal, being a burden is a primary cause for people to seek an assisted death? People request an assisted death explicitly for the purpose of not being a burden on others. If my right hon. Friend is content with that because he respects their autonomy, and he thinks that that is an acceptable reason for people to want to die, that is fine, and let us say so. However, I do not think it is acceptable to hide behind the idea that we are talking about people who simply want to control their own passing. In fact, many want to do this because they are concerned about being a burden on others.