Lauren Edwards MP: speeches

Speeches

• 11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I am sorry; I will not. Those people include Christie Arntsen, who has lived for more than a decade with incurable metastatic breast cancer, which has sadly returned for the fifth time. She is undergoing what may be her final treatment of chemotherapy. Christie speaks eloquently about how her fear of a difficult death has weighed on her mind since her diagnosis and affected her life: “For me the scariest part of having the diagnosis was that I had no control over the last few weeks of my life…If I had known that assisted dying was an option, a weight would have been lifted from my mind for the last 10 years.”

• 11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I disagree with the position that any time we amend a Bill in this place, it is ultimately deficient and unworkable. That is not how it works. All I am asking the Chamber to do today is to send the Bill back to the House of Lords so it can continue its work, which was interrupted, of scrutinising the Bill.

• 11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  Absolutely—it would set a dangerous precedent. Those Members who want to come in on the specifics of the Parliament Acts will have ample opportunity to do so later in my speech, and I will be willing to take interventions on that matter. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley for the courage, courtesy and openness she showed during the passage of her Bill. Her engagement with those from all sides of the debate, particularly in Committee, delivered a stronger Bill that this House voted for on Report and Third Reading. One strengthening factor was the introduction of a requirement for the Health Secretary to report regularly on the availability, quality and distribution of palliative care. In asking parliamentarians to consider assisted dying, my hon. Friend also prompted a national conversation about how we improve and fund palliative care. We saw more funding for hospices, as well as Government action to develop a new framework to improve palliative care and end-of-life care.

• 11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I will make some progress. Members took the best part of a year to grapple with this issue: spoke to constituents; engaged with the organisations that would be affected; read the materials; thought deeply; consulted their conscience. They arrived at a decision—whatever that decision was and however they voted or, indeed, did not vote at all—but it was a difficult process. It is not acceptable that the outcome of those deliberations has not been respected. We owe it to the people we represent to find a resolution on this issue one way or another within this Parliament.

• 11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  It is not quite the exact same Bill; it incorporates two amendments that were agreed without a vote in the House of Lords last time. We have had our conversation in this Chamber about this Bill in 2025, and we have had an interrupted conversation as a nation. I am asking Members of this House to send the Bill back to the House of Lords so that they can continue their important work of amending and scrutinising legislation.

• 11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I would start by saying that the Bill is explicit that it does not apply to people with a disability.

• 11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I would be happy to address that point. There is not a uniform view among disabled people on assisted dying. Like with anything, within organisations there are people who arrive at different views. It is important that we are giving disabled people the same rights as other people. It is very clear in the Bill that it is for adults aged over 18 who have a terminal illness and who only have six months to live. It specifically makes clear that it does not apply to people who have a disability.

• 11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I will make a little more progress. This is the cost of accepting the status quo: the fear and worry for those who know that palliative care may not be enough to avoid a difficult and painful death. It snatches away their final moments, which, as I know from speaking to friends and family in Australia, can be much better spent when there is a safe voluntary assisted dying system in place.

• 11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  No, I will make some progress. We heard difficult stories about patients with bile duct cancer facing the prospect of faecal vomiting as their illness progressed. We listened as Members recounted memories of watching patients bleed to death while conscious, cancer having eaten away at their carotid artery. We felt their frustration when the maximum dose of sedatives could not alleviate the choking and suffocation of someone with peritoneal cancer. Those people deserved choice and a dignified end, too.

• 11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  No, I will not give way. I will make some progress— [ Interruption. ]

• 11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I point out that if this Bill received Royal Assent, the four-year implementation period provided for at the end of the Bill would give us the opportunity to work together to improve palliative care and assisted dying, creating the holistic end-of-life care system to which I have referred.

• 11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I will make some progress. As important as a democratic point of principle is to the argument I am making, we must not lose sight of the people who are relying on us most: the terminally ill and their families. The Gallery today is filled with inspirational people campaigning for this much-needed change in the law—people who are themselves terminally ill and who, due to the passage of time, may never get the opportunity to choose a dignified death surrounded by their loved ones, but who nevertheless spend the time that they have left campaigning so that others in future may have that choice.

• 9 Jul 2026 · Waste Crime Action Plan · Hansard source

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  10. What progress she has made on implementing the waste crime action plan.

• 9 Jul 2026 · Waste Crime Action Plan · Hansard source

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  I really welcome the three-pronged strategy in the Government’s waste crime action plan—focused on prevention, enforcement and remediation—and I welcome the small number of recent and really significant illegal waste sites, which the Minister mentioned, that will be assessed for clearance. Will the Minister, however, outline how older but equally significant sites such as Brambletree wharf, which has blighted my local community for nearly a decade, can be tackled under the plan?