Sarah Champion MP: speeches

Speeches

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

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  I have watched the assisted dying debate for many years, since it started in Oregon. Many countries across the world now have assisted dying, including some of our Crown dependencies, and I am pleased that this Bill builds on the good and rejects the bad that can be seen. I am also reassured that there have been hundreds of hours of debate and scrutiny, which has built the Bill in front of us, so I am very comfortable supporting it. I know that people have extremely strong views on this Bill, and I respect them for that. I want to speak to the people who are undecided, because a lot of myths have attached themselves to this Bill, and I hope to knock some of them out. I am not sure if Members are aware that I ran a children’s hospice before coming to this place. I can say that the palliative care system is amazing. The end-of-life care it provides is absolutely incredible, but everything everybody has said about it being a postcode lottery is true. It depends on whether a facility is in your area, has space, and has funding. We need more funding, and we need universal palliative care, but that is not what this debate is about. When the subject was first debated, I was deeply shocked by the number of disability groups and disabled people who thought that the Bill was targeted at them. I had not realised how vulnerable they felt in our society, and that they could believe that the Bill might be an attack on them.

• 6 Jul 2026 · National Security (State Threats) Bill · Hansard source

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  I rise to welcome Lords amendments 1 to 6 and to support the progress being made regarding the implications of this Bill on the vital work of the humanitarian sector. I place on record my thanks to Baroness Northover, Lord Alton, Lord Anderson, Baroness Helic and Baroness D’Souza for all their work in the other place. I would also like to pay credit to the courageous NGOs operating on the frontlines of global crises, who I know are following the progress of this Bill carefully to understand how it might impact on their work. With them in mind, I would like to express my regret that measures covering the humanitarian sector do not go further to provide robust, full legal protections. As Chair of the International Development Committee, I wrote to the Home Office on this matter on 17 June as the sector was facing a terrifying landscape of legal uncertainty. Under the original drafting of the new offences, particularly on assisting or obtaining material benefit from a designated body, humanitarian actors were at risk. In conflict zones, where state-linked or designated actors hold territorial control, neutral humanitarian organisations are often required to engage in dangerous circumstances. That sometimes means that they must negotiate access, pay routine local utilities or permits, or provide medical care to all sides working in accordance with international humanitarian law. Under the Bill, humanitarian workers could have been prosecuted.