Simon Opher MP: speeches

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Speeches

18 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-fifth sitting) · Hansard source
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I am interested to hear what the Government say about the wording around that amendment and whether it is safe. I would defer to the Minister on that. Amendment 430 from my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford, about a code of practice that must address complications and failures, is quite a strong amendment and I am willing to support it. If as doctors we have a code of practice about how we handle this type of thing, the amendment would potentially help, and perhaps answer some of the questions from my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury. I do not believe that amendment 255 from my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke is necessary. I believe it should be dealt with under clause 21. I believe that the very well put amendments 532 and 533 from my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich could be covered by amendment 430.
18 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-fifth sitting) · Hansard source
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I understand that hon. Members are coming from a good place, but I do not understand how amendment 429 would stop the doctor having to stay with the patient until they die. I agree that it is an important issue, so could the hon. Lady elucidate on that?
18 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-fifth sitting) · Hansard source
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The matter of unlicensed drugs sounds very alarming, but we cannot regulate a drug through the MHRA if it unlicensed, and we would be looking for therapeutic effect, which would not apply in this case. More importantly, many other regulatory bodies, like the pharmacy framework and the General Pharmaceutical Council—
18 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-fifth sitting) · Hansard source
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I think there is some truth in that, to be fair, but I believe we should leave it open to the family’s discretion, with the proviso that the doctor should be close at hand, whether that means outside the door or whatever. We need Government advice on whether amendment 429 is safe. I have nothing further to say.
18 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-fifth sitting) · Hansard source
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I thank my hon. Friend for his experience in a clinical setting. I would remind everybody that in the Bill we are trying to help people die in a comfortable way, and I do not feel it is the Bill’s job to define exactly how we treat nausea or abdominal obstruction and so on. What we would like to do here is ensure that a patient has a pain-free death, and a death that they are in control of.
18 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-fifth sitting) · Hansard source
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Does my hon. Friend accept that there are ways of regulating drugs other than through the MHRA?
18 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-fifth sitting) · Hansard source
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I thank my hon. Friend for his sensitive and clear worry. But it is important to note that we would not in any circumstances try to do something that would finish someone’s life after they had been given their self-take medicine, because that is against the law. In the Bill we have made a clear distinction between the doctor—a euthanasian, if you like—taking the life, and the patient taking medicine that finishes life. What we need to do is simply support the patient. If, as my hon. Friend suggests, they are in pain we would give them a morphine drip, which is in common use in terminal care. I absolutely respect what he says, but the same treatment principles would be in place as in terminal care.
18 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-fifth sitting) · Hansard source
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I will make a little progress and will then take my hon. Friend’s intervention. On amendment 436, all medical practitioners are required under their code of practice to record any event they come across. I feel there should be better data and I agree with the hon. Member for East Wiltshire that we need to collect data. We are actually very good at doing that in the NHS. Under clauses 21 and 22 there are provisions for the Secretary of State to collect data on complications. I am therefore not sure that particular amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central is necessary. I think I have covered amendment 464, from the hon. Member for East Wiltshire. On amendment 429, about the doctor being in the same room, I totally understand the anxieties presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford, but I feel that whether the doctor is there should be the choice of the family and the patient. There may be some confusion about this, but to me, what the Bill implies—I am interested to hear the Government’s opinion—is that the doctor should deliver the medicine to the patient, check that the patient is willing to take the medicine as per amendment 462 from the hon. Member for East Wiltshire, give the medicine to the patient, and then ask the family whether they want them to be there or in the next room. They need to be available, but do they need to be in the same room? I think that should be the choice of the family.
18 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-fifth sitting) · Hansard source
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Yes. I am sorry; I was going to give way to the hon. Member for Reigate at some point too.
18 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-fifth sitting) · Hansard source
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rose—
18 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-fifth sitting) · Hansard source
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I am glad to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. First, I will briefly address the whole area that we are talking about. GPs who are involved in terminal care will go and see a patient as they are slowly dying; we do not know at any point what will happen, and almost anything can happen. I have sat with people who may at any point have a massive pulmonary haemorrhage and drown, for example, or they may just quietly go to sleep—or they may start vomiting. What those of us in terminal care do is react to what is happening with the patient. For example, if they start to be sick, we would give them an anti-emetic; if they start to become very agitated we would then give them midazolam. What I am saying is that this is normal medical care. We have to be very careful not to stipulate in the Bill what is actually normal medical care. I understand that what we are proposing is a new option that has not been there before, and we know that there are complications. But in a terminal situation, there would be no occurrence where we would call an emergency ambulance and take them to hospital, for example.
18 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-fifth sitting) · Hansard source
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The lack of an ability to assist in the final process would put medical professionals in a very difficult position. Would carrying the medicine to the room where the patient is count as assistance? I think we have to have assistance in the Bill, but I also feel that, as the Minister has outlined clearly, someone can help a person to self-administer but cannot administer. That is quite clear to me.
17 Mar 2025 · Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation · Hansard source
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I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I think it sets a dangerous precedent to go against recommendations commissioned from an independent ombudsman. However, those from all parts of Parliament are equally to blame in this, and it is slightly unfair to blame it all on the one Minister sitting on his own over there.
17 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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T9. Pension credit claims, as we have heard, have increased by 64%, and I commend the Minister and the Department for making that happen, as well as Citizens Advice in Stroud and bureaux throughout the country. However, there are 800,000 people who earn just above that limit and live in poverty. I wonder whether, when a fiscal situation arises, the Government will review the cap, and indeed the gradient of this benefit.
13 Mar 2025 · NHS England Update · Hansard source
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I thank my right hon. Friend for his excellent statement. As he knows, I am a working GP in Stroud. We clinicians are simply fed up with the micromanagement of our caring clinical role, and many hospital colleagues feel the same. We want to be free to deliver excellent clinical care. Does he think that the abolition of NHSE will reduce the admin task for doctors?
12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source
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Again, I thank the hon. Member for quoting all this, but does it mean that he supports the original clause 12?
12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source
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indicated dissent.
11 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twentieth sitting) · Hansard source
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The amendment is good practice; I do not in any way deny that. The hon. Member for Reigate is obviously coming from a really good place. However, the amendment is almost like specifying that when someone goes to see a doctor, the doctor has to say, “How can I help? What is wrong?” It is just unnecessary; that is my only feeling about it. If someone came in and said, “I would like to request an assisted death”, the doctor would not just say, “Okay”—they would ask how the patient was feeling. It is normal medical practice to ask what is going on in someone’s mind, so that does not need to be specified in the Bill.
11 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twentieth sitting) · Hansard source
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Actually no, I will not. I will go on, if that is okay. Amendment 459 states that the second-opinion doctor “must produce a report” outlining their reasons for reaching a different opinion, but the whole nature of this is that the doctor is independent. As we have heard, if it is suggested that someone either is or is not allowed to get an assisted death, that might affect the assessment of the independent doctor. It would not be good medical practice to have that assessment in front of the independent doctor—that would lead to poor assessments. We need a right to a second opinion and we should have a truly independent doctor. Amendment 460, which is the last in the group, would allow a patient only one declaration in any part of their lives, even if circumstances change. Although there will be vanishingly few instances where that would be relevant, I do not feel that such a provision would make the Bill any fairer or safer. Amendment 143, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe, would allow a second and a third opinion. It is my opinion, and the opinion of many of us, that we do not want doctor shopping. We want to allow one second opinion from an independent doctor, but not more than that.
11 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twentieth sitting) · Hansard source
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Has it? Okay. I thank my hon. Friend. The amendments in this group all come from a good place, and I understand where hon. Members are coming from, but I do not feel that anything in them would make the Bill any safer or fairer for patients.
11 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twentieth sitting) · Hansard source
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As the amendment states, it is about examining medical records for things that are relevant. If we are talking about coercion or capacity, these sorts of items will be relevant. I do not know if Members have ever seen medical records. Some people have extremely large medical records, and we have summaries for that, but if a part of that summary indicated something that we were suspicious of, we would look into it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central has just said, the complexities of childhood tonsillitis do not really need to be examined in this case. We have to, and we always do, specify what we look into doctors.
11 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twentieth sitting) · Hansard source
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I do not see what that would add to the Bill. The co-ordinating doctor would have a result and the patient would have had the report back. I do not feel the amendment is necessary—it would over-complicate the Bill—but we can see what the Government’s legal position is on that. Amendment 303, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central, suggests that the independent doctor should have to check that there has not already been a second opinion. We need to step back a bit and remember how the Bill will work. Basically, a doctor will refer to a co-ordinating doctor, who will make a full assessment of the patient. If, having carried out the first assessment, the co-ordinating doctor is satisfied that the requirements in the Bill are met, they will refer the person for the independent assessment. That doctor will therefore need to see a report, because he is the co-ordinating doctor. He cannot then get a second opinion from a different doctor; that would not be part of the process under the Bill. I do not feel the amendment would make the Bill any safer.
11 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twentieth sitting) · Hansard source
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I thank the hon. Member for Richmond Park for her considered amendments. I would like to go through all the amendments in the group. Amendment 348 is about the doctor communicating the outcome of the assessment, but I understand that that is already covered in clause 8(5)(b), which states that, having carried out the second assessment, the independent doctor will “provide each of the coordinating doctor and the person who was assessed with a copy of the statement.” I therefore do not think the amendment is necessary—it would be doubling up.
11 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty First sitting) · Hansard source
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We are not doing that in situations of terminal care—we are allowing someone to die. We are very experienced in allowing people to die. I have done it for 25 years. It is not a new skill just because we have the assisted dying element. We deal with the situation as it arises.
11 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty First sitting) · Hansard source
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I had virtually finished, but I give way.

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