Assisted Dying (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Stuart Andrew and Andrew Bridgen

Friday 11th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Andrew]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Andrew Bridgen]

I will not, if my hon. Friend does not mind.

Supporters of the Bill have said that 80% of the public favour medically assisted suicide. I am not sure how much understanding those respondents had at that time, but when participants are exposed to the counter-arguments to legalisation, support wavers, in one poll dropping from 73% to only 43%, and among palliative care doctors 90% oppose the Bill.

I am a trustee of a local hospice charity, Hospice Hope, in Ashby de la Zouch. I am a great supporter of and believer in the hospice movement and palliative care sector. I would like to quote Dr Robert Twycross, a retired palliative care specialist, who recently stated that

“despite upsetting ‘horror stories’…palliative care does not…leave patients to suffer unbearably. In extreme situations, increasing the dose of symptom relief and sedative drugs is already permissible as a ‘last resort option’. The most appropriate response to horror stories is to increase the availability of specialist palliative care”—

not to kill people.

As has been said, many people are desperate when first diagnosed with a terminal illness. It is completely understandable, and it is easy to make a rash decision. Many feel a burden on their family and wish to die to alleviate that burden, when actually that family love them, want to care for them and do not want them to die. The way to alleviate distress in dying people and their families is to care for them properly with good palliative care, not to murder them.

I am aware of time pressures. I would ask hon. Members to bear it in mind that we fund, to a huge extent, the national health service. It is not the national death service. In a recent survey in May of 1,000 GPs, only one in seven was willing to get involved with this Bill. I feel that for vulnerable people the right to die will quickly become the obligation to die. The only thing that deserves a quick death is this Bill and I shall vote against it.