Pippa Heylings MP: speeches

Speeches

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

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  I begin by thanking the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Lauren Edwards) for her courage and compassion in bringing this Bill back before Parliament. The debate in this House, the other place and across the country is profoundly important. “We need to get better at talking more openly about death and what dying well means.” Those were the words of the end-of-life care clinical lead during my last week’s visit to the new dedicated palliative and end-of-life care ward at Addenbrooke’s hospital in my constituency of South Cambridgeshire. It is something my own father said to me many, many times over 40 years ago. He was a family doctor in Hull, in the deprived communities, witnessing the family births and deaths of many patients at home and in hospital. “Love life, live life as much as possible and have a good death.” The last time this Bill came before the House, it encouraged that conversation. There was respectful debate, evidence was examined and safeguards were strengthened. The Commons voted in favour and the Bill was sent to the House of Lords for further scrutiny. What we are doing today is allowing due process to continue by sending the Bill back to the Lords, so it can complete its passage. I am grateful to the many constituents who have written to me on all sides of the debate, sharing deeply personal experiences that have shaped their views and informed my own thinking. Having listened carefully over all our debates—the Bill Committee, the witnesses, the evidence—I continue to support the Bill. There is a need to change the status quo. Receiving a terminal diagnosis, as we have heard, is devastating. It brings a loss of control of the future that many people find deeply frightening. One of those people is my constituent Jodie, who is living with a terminal grade 4 astrocytoma brain tumour. Following lifesaving surgery, she continues treatment aimed at preserving the best quality of life possible. Fiercely independent, she is living every single day. Yet, in her own words, the prospect of the disease eventually taking over her brain, leaving her unable to think clearly, communicate or make decisions, frightens her more than she can express: “None of us know what the future holds, but knowing that the option of assisted death would be available should I ever reach that point…would provide me with enormous comfort and reassurance”. As we have heard today, what we do not talk enough about is the status quo—it is almost as if there is a taboo—which for some terminally ill people is an unsafe and cruel status quo, with hundreds of people already taking matters into their own hands. I want to share the story of my constituent Cath Shepherd. Her sister, Emma Windred, was a keen and active outdoors woman who loved life. Facing the end of that life, she chose the only legally defensible and medically supported route available to her: voluntarily stopping eating and drinking. We know that many medical practitioners feel that that is a grey area, and much more guidance is needed. That should not be the only option. Emma felt robbed of the death she wanted and she campaigned for the law to change until her end came. After Emma’s death, Cath has continued that campaign so that others might have the option of the gentle and dignified death her sister believed she was denied. As we have again heard today, too often assisted dying and palliative care are presented as competing alternatives. They are not. Both are rooted in the same aim: ensuring that people approaching the end of life are treated with dignity, compassion and respect. I am fortunate that Arthur Rank hospice serves my constituency and the wider region. It provides outstanding care and support to patients and families at some of the most difficult moments in their lives. Its staff and volunteers do extraordinary work. Yet, like many hospices around the country, it faces huge cuts and the loss of beds, something that I and many others are campaigning to stop happening. We all know there is a disgraceful crisis in adult social care. Hospices, hospice-at-home services, district nursing and community palliative care are all desperately underfunded. I therefore welcome the Prime Minister’s call for cross-party talks on social care—we all do as Liberal Democrats—but I do not share the premise that assisted dying legislation must wait until palliative care is fully funded and available everywhere. This is not an either/or. This is not a before/until. These are not and should not be competing priorities. My support for the Bill is matched by my belief that we must equally strengthen palliative and end-of-life care. Dying with dignity means access to outstanding palliative care, compassion at every stage of life and the ability to have choice, agency and dignity for those very final days. This Bill will not make a choice for anyone. It will simply allow terminally ill people to make that choice for themselves, safely, challenging the status quo and with their loved ones around them, if they so wish.

• 14 Jul 2026 · Extreme Heat: Preparedness · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) on securing this timely debate. As Britain experiences yet another summer of extreme heat, we cannot ignore the fact that the UK was built for a climate that no longer exists, as we have heard from all hon. Members here today. Climate change is not a distant threat; it is here today. Minister, it is an issue of national security. It affects our constituents, damages our economy and, increasingly, costs lives. On our current trajectory, average summer temperatures in my constituency of South Cambridgeshire could rise by more than 4°C. Days above 30°C are expected to increase six-fold, while summer rainfall could fall by more than a fifth. Those are just statistics, but like others I have heard stories of children struggling to learn in overheated classrooms, older people becoming dangerously ill in care homes, critical incidents in our hospitals, farmers facing drought and water shortages, and communities and wildlife under threat from wildfires, yet despite these growing risks the Climate Change Committee has concluded that the Government’s approach to climate adaptation is clearly not working and we are woefully unprepared. Can the Minister confirm that the Treasury has now accepted the forecast of 2°C warming by 2050, and, if we now have an agreed forecast, whether each Department is doing what it should be doing and setting adaptation goals, given we can now model what that means for every sector? Preparing for increasing climate impacts must be seen as an issue of national security and resilience. The Liberal Democrats are calling for adequate cooling to be installed in all NHS hospitals, care homes and schools in high-risk areas in the next five years, and for work with local authorities and mayors to create a network of air-conditioned cool hubs for vulnerable people. We also agree that we should have maximum workplace temperatures, as many of our European neighbours already have; increase green space and plant more trees to cool our towns and cities; and support households to insulate their homes and install heat pumps that can provide both efficient heating in winter and cooling in summer. Without greater resilience, the foundations needed for our UK security will struggle to function, but we have all the answers in our hands. That is the message of the multiple people’s emergency briefings that the South Cambridgeshire climate and nature group arranged across my constituency and which I have attended, and which have happened across the country. Does the Minister support the call for a Government-backed, televised national emergency briefing? People deserve the facts, and they need and want to be better prepared.