Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Andrew Lewin and Rachael Maskell

2nd reading
Friday 11th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[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.