Naz Shah MP: speeches

Speeches

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

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  Q I have just one question, and it is for Sir Max. You have said that you were very concerned about the CPS, during your time at DPP, having to investigate people who accompanied their loved ones to Switzerland to end their lives. I share that concern. However, my understanding is that around half of those who currently visit Dignitas would not qualify for assisted dying under the Bill, because they do not have a diagnosis of six months to live. Is the Bill the right measure to solve the problem that you are actually worried about? Sir Max Hill: If the problem is anybody in future going on their own or accompanied by their loved ones to Dignitas, the answer is no—this Bill does not satisfy that. What we have learned from other jurisdictions around the world, where we see broader or multiple groups beyond the terminally ill who are entitled to use new legislation, has not been the model for this legislation, unless you and Parliament were to dramatically change it. The nuanced answer to your question is that this Bill does provide an opportunity for those in the category of being terminally ill, as defined in the Bill, to no longer have to resort, on their own or supported by loved ones, to going to Dignitas. So, yes, it can and will make a positive difference. I should add, in answering this question, that my often-quoted personal experience is that 27 cases investigated as assisted suicide came across my own desk as the DPP —five to six cases a year. A substantial proportion of those cases did involve Dignitas, because an accompanying relative who had returned alone was then investigated, but a proportion did not involve Dignitas at all, because there had been deaths at home. Of all those 27 cases, I made the decision to prosecute in only one, which was the case of an individual who was 19 years of age encouraging another teenager to end their life. That was a correct and successful prosecution. I will also add—because until 15 months ago I was a prosecutor, and prosecutors look to bring criminal cases whenever the law is broken—that there was an additional handful of cases in which, although I was not making the personal decision, I supported authorisation of charges for murder or manslaughter where it was clear that an individual’s life had been brought to an end not at the time of their choosing. It is perhaps important to remember that this Bill, as and when passed—that is a matter for Parliament—would not truncate the homicide jurisdiction in this country. It will still be possible to prosecute for murder in those cases when one would expect to be prosecuted for murder. I think it is important to say that, as a very recent former prosecutor.

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

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  Q Thank you very much for those introductions. I have a few questions for each person on the panel. Mr Sanderson, do you think palliative care in this country is fit for purpose? James Sanderson: There are clearly gaps in the provision of palliative care. However, to start with a positive, I think that the provision of palliative care in this country is exceptional. We are leaders in many ways across the world in the way in which we support people who are facing those challenges in their lives. However, our findings in relation to palliative care show that, although about 90% of the population could benefit from palliative care, only 50% of people are currently able to access it. One of our concerns is that the provision of palliative care across the country is quite patchy at the moment. I do not think there has been a thorough assessment of the level of palliative care in place—not just the provision of palliative care specifically, but how other services, such as district nursing services, interact with palliative care. In some areas, the provision of district nursing services for general care and support for people who may be at the end of their life is very strong and in other areas it is not so strong. At Sue Ryder, there is one thing that we are really concerned about. In our survey, 77% of respondents said that they were concerned that the lack of availability of palliative care might enable more people to consider an assisted death than otherwise would. That concern went up to 84% for those who were in favour of assisted dying. We really need to look at the provision of palliative care and the specifics in the Bill that make reference to the fact that people should be offered what is available to them. We need to have a much clearer definition of what “available” means.

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

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  Q Yes, but does it cover any conditions that would fall under the scope of a six-month bill? Dr Spielvogel: If you have a six-month prognosis to live, regardless of the condition, that would fall under this. That would make you eligible. That has nothing to do with insurance coverage for your condition. Insurance coverage is completely separate. It is not tied to this. All that prognosis does is to allow the individual to seek this care.

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

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  Q Following up on that, in the cases in which you authorised prosecution for murder or manslaughter, were issues of coercion ever involved? What were the bold points—the top lines—of those prosecutions? Sir Max Hill: That small handful of cases involved an elderly couple where either he—it was usually a he—or she had chosen to bring to an end the life of their lifelong partner and, once that act had been carried out, claimed that it was an assisted suicide in circumstances where the surviving partner was merely carrying out the wish of the person now dead. There are a handful of cases in which that is clearly wrong and should not be accepted and where murder should be the offence brought before the court. The point, though, is that throughout the time that I served as DPP—and, indeed, the time served by all my predecessors—we did not have the coercion offences created by the Bill, which I suggest would be a significant advance, and nor did we have a legal system in which the investigation was taking place before the death. It was the other way around. In each of the 27 cases I considered, the deceased individual was already dead, and that is when the scrutiny started. The major advantage of the Bill, if I can put it that way, is that that will be reversed, and scrutiny will be before death. In the case of coercion, where it fits the new potential clauses, prosecutions can—and, I am sure, will—be brought.

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

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  There is nothing in my amendment that suggests Professor Monckton-Smith is not capable in her expertise. I am asking for other expertise to be brought to the table. Yes, there is the argument that people can submit written evidence—but so could every witness we have heard from today, and that we will hear from tomorrow and the day after. If that is the yardstick, is this just a tokenistic exercise? I would argue that for women in particular, who are the victims of domestic abuse—

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

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  Q Dr Spielvogel, there is a Bill in California, SB 1196, which was introduced on 24 February 2024. It proposes, first, to remove the six-month terminal illness prognosis and allow requests from those with a “grievous and irremediable” disease causing unbearable suffering; secondly, to allow dementia patients to request assisted suicide if two doctors deem them to have capacity; thirdly, to allow self-administration of lethal drugs via intravenous injection; and, fourthly, to eliminate the sunset clause in the current law. Do you know what the status of that Bill is? Is it still live? It suggests a significant broadening of the law, which would have similarities to that in Canada, and it would seem to reinforce the slippery slope argument. Dr Spielvogel: That is a good question. I do not know the specific status of the Bill, but I would assume that it has itself undergone an assisted death at this point. That Bill is not really being supported by any of our advocacy groups or, by and large, the physicians who perform assisted dying, because it is, as you mentioned, very broad and not aligned with how we feel standard practice is going and where we would want it to go. That Bill did not receive support from many of us.

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

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  Q Sorry, but just to clarify, the question was: would the availability of Medicare apply to all those conditions that come under the six-month prognosis? As for kidney failure, would they be entitled to Medicare? Would all the other conditions included also be entitled to Medicare once the insurance ran out? Dr Spielvogel: No. Insurance does not run out. There is maybe a misunderstanding of how medical insurance works in the US. Medical insurance does not run out. I think we are talking about two different things.

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

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  Q When it comes to renal failure, in particular, there are people who can request assisted dying because their insurance company will not pay for more than six months. Here we have an NHS, in which there is no limit on the kind of interventions you would have to live a longer life. Dr Spielvogel: That is not factually accurate. When people go on dialysis, they automatically get Medicare, which is our version of the NHS, more or less. That is a national health insurance for people who are 65 and older or who have certain kinds of diseases. When you have end-stage kidney disease and you need dialysis, you automatically get Medicare and you get dialysis for the rest of your life, however long that is. People are often on dialysis for years. It is not that you are on it for six months and then you are off.

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

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  Q But there are cases where insurance companies would stop paying for the treatment of the individual. Am I right? Dr Spielvogel: No, I actually do not think that you are right. When we are talking about lifesaving interventions such as chemotherapy or dialysis, that is not correct. They are bound by law to cover all things that are medically necessary. They do not say, “You have gotten six months of chemo. We are not paying for any more.” That is not how it works.

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

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  On amendment (b), given the issue we are considering, I think it is important that the Royal College of Psychiatrists is involved. One thing that is very important to me is the issue of coercion, and the royal college would be able to shed light on that. One of the many reasons advanced for giving the Bill its Second Reading was that we would have further debate, and the royal college would add value to that. On amendment (c), Dr Ramona Coelho is a physician with well-founded concerns about the operation of the law in Canada. She is a member of the Ontario Medical Assistance in Dying Death Review Committee, and she gave evidence to the Scottish Parliament Committee that considered the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill. On amendment (d), Ellen Clifford is co-ordinator of the UK Deaf and Disabled People’s Monitoring Coalition, and she has a key role in advocating for people with disabilities.

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

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  Thank you, Sir Roger.

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

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  Just following on from the speech of the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire, I would not read the situation as a misunderstanding by the hon. Member for East Wiltshire. I read the motion to sit in private not as an informal discussion, but as a very formal discussion. I am grateful to the lead Member for the Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley, who before this meeting explained to me what has now been explained here—about the issue of people’s availability, privacy and so on. But I do not suspect that we will be going into those details. If people are not available, we do not have to discuss why they are not. We do not have to discuss their personal lives. I am not sure that that is a good enough reason not to have a discussion in public. I trust colleagues across the Committee to be collegiate enough and big enough to refer to witnesses with respect. I think that is a given, considering the way in which we have conducted the Bill so far. I therefore do not support the motion to sit private.

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

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  I appreciate that, Sir Roger. Adding Richard Robinson—

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

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  Thank you, Sir Roger. By adding Karon Monaghan KC, an eminent equality and human rights law barrister, amendment (e) would add balance among the lawyers in the Committee. I would also like to add James Munby, or someone from His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, because we need someone who can speak to court capacity issues in relation to the Bill. Professor Katherine Sleeman is a great expert on all these matters. I am going through the list, and I am unclear what the Australian MP would add. If we remove the other two, there are other pro-AD Australian experts who will speak instead. If we replace those three, who are experts from—

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

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley, the promoter of this Bill, because she has been very helpful. She has certainly added one of my key witnesses to her list, and I am grateful for that. I want to respond to some of the points that have been made. One of the biggest issues for me is amendment (b), which would insert “Royal College of Psychiatrists”. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashford made the point that all psychiatrists come under the GMC, but not every member of the GMC is a psychiatrist. That speaks to the issue of coercion, mental health and capacity. That is the expertise that I am looking for in the line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill, and I would really like to hear from the Royal College of Psychiatrists. I am happy to be guided by you, Sir Roger, because I am new to this process and I have not done a Bill of this nature before, but my only worry with the outside evidence and briefings is that they will not be on the record when we are looking at Hansard and seeing whether they have been taken into account. I would be happy to receive some assurance about that. Yes, we can organise lots of briefings and lots of experts, but does that not defeat the object of having this debate so robustly in the first instance? The hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough raised the issue of language, and the point about added value. I think that language is correct, because I do want to add value to this debate. I want value added, because it is important for my constituents that when I vote on the Bill on Report, I do so knowing that I have listened to all sides of the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud asked whether this is a for-and-against argument. In particular, he said that we do not need to hear from those who are opposed, because we want to strengthen the Bill so that it can go through the House. Although I appreciate the sentiment, I put it to everyone that it is not about getting the Bill through; it is about getting the right information so we can scrutinise whether it is fit to go through the House. For that reason, it is important to hear from those who are opposed. It is naive to think that we only need to hear from people who are in support.

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

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  Given what you have just said, Sir Roger, I would be happy not to go through the individual amendments unless anybody wants to comment or wants me to add anything.

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

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  These are replacements of the words in your paper.

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

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  Sorry—may I just make my point? I need to know the other side of the argument in order to make a balanced decision. Those who are opposed to the Bill might have very valid concerns, while those who have expertise in support of the Bill might not give me the same arguments. I want to hear a balance. At the moment, I think there is a real discrepancy between the number of people who are for and against the Bill; it is not very close. I appreciate that my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley, the Bill’s promoter, really wants to get this legislation through Parliament. I also value how she has taken part in the debate and been amenable to having discussions both in Committee and in our offices. I have given my reasons for tabling the amendment, and I particularly want the Committee to accept amendment (b), on the Royal College of Psychiatrists; that is my top amendment. Question put, That the amendment be made.

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

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  I apologise. I thank everybody for bearing with me on this one. Amendment (e) would insert Karon Monaghan KC after Lord Sumption. I have said that I would like her added because of her expertise. Amendment (f) would insert Dr John Daffy, previously head of infectious disease at St Vincent’s hospital in Melbourne, Dr Stephen Parnis, previous vice-president of the Australian Medical Association, and Professor Sinéad Donnelly, a consultant palliative medical professor in New York. That is what I was speaking to when I was talking about having three people from one country and not having an alternative voice. I think it is really important to have an alternative voice, and I am not sure what added value the MP for Sydney would bring to the debate when we have so many people contributing from countries that are pro and delivering, rather than from those that have concerns. Amendment (g) would remove Dr Amanda Ward and insert Barbara Rich, barrister, and Dr Philip Murray from the University of Cambridge.

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

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  rose—

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

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  I beg to move manuscript amendment (b), after “General Medical Council”, insert “, Royal College of Psychiatrists”.

• 29 Nov 2024 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Member give way?

• 25 Nov 2024 · Israel-Gaza Conflict: Arrest Warrants · Hansard source

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  While we watch and work tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza—which is really important simply because if children do not see an end in sight, neither do the families in Gaza—does the Minister agree that Britain’s reputation on the world scene as a global leader in upholding justice would be undermined if Britain did not respect the independence of the ICC, which is what Conservative Members are implying?

• 30 Oct 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer), but may I urge some humility given the number of repossessions that my constituents in Bradford West experienced after a Budget that he supported, which led to a run on the pound? It was not that long ago that repossessions increased, mortgages went up and people were suffering. The party over there think it is quite good to—you know, food banks have become food porn. That happened under his Government’s watch, so maybe there is a need for a little bit of humility. Let me say thank you to the Chancellor—the first female Chancellor to stand in this Chamber—for delivering today’s landmark Budget. I have waited more than 15 Budgets for one from the Labour Benches. It is heartwarming after nine years in opposition having to fight for the basics like school meals for children, and having footballers campaign for it. It was an embarrassment for us as a country when austerity was a political choice that the Conservatives made when they were in government. It is lovely to see the grown-ups back in charge, delivering a Budget for the working people of Great Britain. There must be no doubt that the Chancellor’s task to deliver that was extremely difficult, given the reality of the public finances that we inherited from the Conservatives. Today, the Chancellor put forward a plan to turn the tide. She has delivered a Budget that will put money back into the pockets of working people. It is a Budget that will not only save the NHS, but ensure that it remains the pride of our public services for generations to come. It is a Budget that provides for our children and schools, giving them the education they deserve for a brighter future. It is a Budget that invests in infrastructure to rebuild Britain. From the moment the coalition was formed following the general election in May 2010, the then Prime Minister David Cameron stated that his first priority was to “reduce the deficit and restore economic growth.” Well, how did that work out? Let me remind the House: by the end of the Conservative era, both those priorities had failed. UK GDP is now £400 billion less than expected in the OBR’s growth rate forecast when the Conservatives took office in 2010. When it comes to wages, from 2010 to 2014, earnings grew at probably the slowest rate in more than 200 years. For my constituents in Bradford, this Budget provides us with infrastructure investment, which I am really grateful for—a huge boost that we need. Therefore, I welcome the Chancellor’s announcement today of funding for upgrades to Bradford Forster Square station and investment in mass transit system for the Bradford tramline, which will redefine the urban journey from Bradford city centre to Leeds city centre. That will improve public spaces, drive economic growth and ensure faster and more reliable access to essential destinations while linking key communities in between. I will be speaking to the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Transport on the finer details, but this infrastructure investment is needed for Bradford to drive our economic growth. On the flip side, what happened with the Conservatives? Time and again in the 17 statements I sat through they promised Northern Powerhouse Rail and to unlock growth. They promised to level up, and all they did was level down, level down, level down. Now, we have the chance to fix all those issues and what they did wrong. Our Chancellor and our Government had difficult choices because of Tory failures, but today they delivered. They delivered a pay rise for 3 million workers, the biggest increase in carer’s allowance since its introduction and a £2.3 billion increase in core school budgets. They delivered a Budget that tripled free school breakfasts, added £1 billion in funding for special educational needs and disabilities, and £1.4 billion for the school rebuilding programme to provide our children with the school buildings they need to thrive in education. They delivered to protect the NHS, with an extra £22.6 billion for day-to-day spending in the NHS, £25.6 billion over two years to cut waiting times and 40,000 extra elective appointments a week—a manifesto promise made true and delivered today. People can have the care and the health protections in the NHS that they deserve. This is unashamedly a Budget for working families and working people, putting money in the pockets of the very people who have been let down by 14 years of Conservative rule. I welcome this Budget, and I am pleased to see the positive impact it will have on my constituents across Bradford West.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  As the Minister will know, the ICJ has ruled that member states such as the UK are obliged to distinguish in their dealings between green-line Israel and occupied territory. In line with that ruling, as well as obligations under United Nations Security Council resolution 2334, what steps are the Government taking to address the issue of products entering the UK from illegal settlements?