Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Andrew Lewin Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 11th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Lewin (Welwyn Hatfield) (Lab)]

Thank you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker. I mean that sincerely on a day when so many colleagues want to speak. I promise you that my remarks will be brief.

Our debate today is about who has choice and agency in our society both in respect of the authority of this elected House of Commons and what limits should exist on the role of the other place, and, more fundamentally, in respect of the right of a terminally ill person to exercise choice at the end of their life and whether the state should be able to override that. We are back here for a Second Reading of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill not because the question before us has changed since November 2024, but due to the actions of a small number of Members of the other place.

[Sarah Smith (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend confirm how many amendments were accepted in the House of Lords, and that it was about 90 peers who were involved in supporting all the amendments tabled?

[Andrew Lewin]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. I do not have that number; what I do have is the number of amendments that were proposed. There were 1,286 wrecking amendments.

There are many thoughtful and compassionate critics of the Bill who I respect deeply. I want to put on record my admiration for my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton) and for her astonishingly brave speech. However, what I cannot condone is the actions of Members of the other place whose motivation in the last Session of Parliament appeared to be to block the democratic process.

[Dr Ben Spencer]

Is a requirement to ask someone why they want to have a physician-assisted suicide a wrecking amendment?

[Andrew Lewin]

The point I was making, which I believe many colleagues will recognise, was that having over 100 hours of debate and more than 1,000 amendments was not conducive to the idea of making serious progress with the Bill; it was, to all intents and purposes, a filibuster.

Our role today extends beyond debating the Bill. It is also to reaffirm the will and primacy of the House of Commons.

[Jess Asato]

If the primacy of this place is the most important point, why has the Bill’s promoter said that she will not allow amendments in this House at this stage?

[Andrew Lewin]

The right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) made it clear that it is because of the actions of a very small number of peers, and he has no faith—and neither do I—that that would not be repeated this time around.

[David Smith (North Northumberland) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Andrew Lewin]

I am going to make some progress.

This is the first time that I have spoken on this subject, and I want to set out briefly why I have consistently supported choice at the end of life. First, there is the simple principle that, faced with a terminal diagnosis, it should be the right of the individual to choose how they leave this world. If we offer the choice of an assisted death in the circumstances detailed in the Bill, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Dr Prinsley) said in 2024, we will be

“shortening death, not life…This is not life or death; this is death or death.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2024; Vol. 757, c. 1048.]

Our choice is whether we want people to have the choice of a dignified death or to force some people to endure painful and traumatic last moments, as my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Claire Hazelgrove) set out in her astonishing speech.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Andrew Lewin]

I will not at this moment.

My second reason is the medical reality that some conditions are beyond good palliative care. Driving improvements in palliative care should be a moral imperative for all of us in this place, but doing that does not resolve the question before us today. Another doctor, the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans), again speaking in November 2024, said that there are some conditions for which we “cannot provide” good palliative care. He said that for

“the likes of the inoperable neck cancer, eroding away into the carotid artery”,

there is

“no alternative to that terrifying death.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2024; Vol. 757, c. 1070.]

If we fail to pass this Bill, we do so in the knowledge that we are making an active choice to allow people to continue to die in this way, when we know that an alternative is possible.

Finally, I cannot support a status quo in which the state decrees that it knows better than a terminally ill person who has expressed their wish. That is the reality today—people who are dying are denied their wish to end their time on this Earth on their terms. I am voting for this Bill today because I believe in the primacy of the elected House of Commons, and above all because I believe that someone who is terminally ill should not have their last moments dictated to them by the state. Just as in life, in death an individual deserves to choose their own path.