Assisted Dying

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I, too, have had many emails from my constituents, all of which I have read carefully. I fully respect the strong feelings on both sides of this issue, and this has been a respectful debate today in the main.

One of my constituents, an ex-police officer, writes:

“I have an elderly mother who sometimes worries about being a burden and once said it would be better if she died and I didn’t have to look after her…As an ex-police officer I have dealt with people who have been manipulated into doing completely awful things…I do not think you can legislate against the very real possibility of some people being manipulated into that death is their only option.”

She is not alone in that view. I understand from polling that twice as many people feel concerned about people being pressured to end their own life so as not to be a burden as are not concerned about it.

I do not think, amazingly, that we have had reference so far in today’s debate to the fact that under the Health and Care Act 2022, for the first time ever, palliative care will be a core service in the NHS. We have only just done that, and everyone here welcomes it, whatever their view. We should perhaps just give that a little time to bed in and see what it actually means.

My experience is that my dear mother-in-law died at the end of March. I was very close to her, and I thought the provision of morphine was slow and it was difficult to get hold of. I drove to a number of GPs at weekends to get the paperwork signed for her. We always seemed to be chasing the tail a little bit. If we could have been ahead of the curve and got it more easily—perhaps some people do not have families that are as engaged to help them—that would have been better. Perhaps that is something we can do that we would all be supportive of.

Our hospices do an amazing job. We have Keech Cottage Hospice, which the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) will also have supported, and my children have volunteered at local hospices. Hospices are struggling and we need to support them properly, as they do absolutely amazing work. I do not think there is anyone here who would disagree with Dame Cicely Saunders, who really founded the modern hospice movement and said:

“You matter because you are you, and you matter to the end of your life. We will do all we can not only to help you die peacefully, but also to live until you die.”

I think probably all of us could unite around that quotation.

I worry about disabled people. My mother was in a wheelchair her whole life, and I understand their vulnerabilities. Baroness Campbell in the other place has said:

“I am fearful that any change to the current law prohibiting assisted suicide may adversely affect how I, other disabled friends and the wider community of disabled people are treated in the future”.

Whatever our views on this, we need to respect the very real worries of disabled people, who think somehow that they will matter less.

I will provide a few facts on the CPS. I understand the horror of being prosecuted. I do not minimise that at all, but I looked at the figures on the CPS website this morning. Of the 174 cases between April 2009 and this year, 150 were not proceeded with, 33 were withdrawn, four were successfully prosecuted and eight were referred for prosecution for homicide or another serious crime. I do not know the details of the last eight, but it might be worth looking at that further with the CPS.

I want to make two brief final points. We have not talked a lot about mental health today, but there is no health without mental health. Are we going to get a psychiatrist to certify whether people are medically competent to do this? That is a pretty awful job to ask a psychiatrist to do, as was raised with me at the weekend, so we need to think about the pressures we are putting on clinicians. However, there is probably some progress we could make that we would all agree on.