Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Ashley Dalton Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 11th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Ashley Dalton (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

The last time this House considered this Bill on Second Reading, I was keeping a secret. While hon. and right hon. Members were debating the issue, I was grappling with my own terminal diagnosis. I was told that I have stage 4 incurable metastatic breast cancer. I was overwhelmed with grief, fear and anxiety; I was scared of what was to come, and fearful of how it would impact my family and my loved ones. I was scared that I was going to get really poorly and thinking, “How will I cope? How will my family cope? How will I be cared for? How will I afford it? How badly will it hurt? How long will it last?”

When you hear those words, depression, anxiety, grief, fear, shame and guilt come in bounds. Suicide risk is highest immediately after diagnosis, and it usually falls quickly, within three to six months. I would be lying if I said that when thinking about all that was to come, I did not consider that it might be fairer and easier on everyone if I just got the dying over with as soon as possible. Having treatable depression, however, will not exclude anyone from an assisted death under this Bill, and depression is common among people with terminal illness, but it is often treatable. Clinicians are trained to prevent suicide in people suffering from depression, but where would the line be drawn? This Bill makes no provision to support this difficult transition, or to create safeguards around it.

A person can also be suicidal and have unmet mental health needs prior to developing a terminal illness, and then ask the state to kill them without any assessment of their psychological health, just an assessment of their mental capacity—because mental capacity and mental health are not the same thing. The Royal College of Psychiatrists recommends a holistic, multidisciplinary assessment of every applicant. The three-person panel at the end of the assessment process provided for by this Bill is not what most NHS clinicians recognise as a multidisciplinary team; it certainly does not allow for meaningful multidisciplinary decision making. The assessment needs to happen at the beginning of the process, not the end, and each team member should be independently assessing the patient in person. That is not what is included in this Bill.

I do not know how long I will live. I will be on treatment for life, however long or short that may be. At the moment, I live between scans, in nine to 12-week blocks of time. The last scan might have shown that the disease is stable, but the next scan might show that it is growing again. If the disease is stable, the drug is working and we can carry on. Eventually, the drug will stop working, the cancer will grow, and we will have to try another drug and see if that works. At some point, we will either run out of drugs to try, or I will be too poorly to tolerate them—then I die. It could be months. It could be years. No one really knows. Prognosis is notoriously difficult to predict. Palliative care professionals and oncologists tell me that while they can more or less give me an indication of when I will die when I am a few days or weeks off, anything beyond that is the flip of a coin. The six-month prognosis in this Bill is something no one can ever be really sure of. What the palliative care professionals have told me is that palliative care can help me when I die.

In the campaign around this Bill, though, it seems to me that it is being implied that a person with a terminal illness will have a dreadful, painful death unless they have access to assisted dying. That is simply not true; palliative care in the UK is excellent. Far too many people do not have access to the palliative care they need, but the idea that it is not possible to alleviate pain and discomfort is false. People have been terrorised—I have been terrorised—with tales of people vomiting up their own faeces, as though this is commonplace during death. It is vanishingly rare. Bowel obstructions are more common, but they are treatable. I know—I have had one. It is nothing short of irresponsible to scaremonger people like me into believing our deaths will be horrific when all the evidence suggests that, with access to good palliative care, deaths are, on the whole, gentle.

The answer is not to terrify people and their families. It is to sort out palliative care and social care first, because none of this takes place in a vacuum. Until we can say that everyone who needs it has access to high-quality palliative care, we are offering nobody a choice. A terrible death or an assisted death is not a choice; it is a threat.

While I speak today from the position of someone with a terminal illness, I am acutely aware that this is not about me. This debate is also not about an abstract concept or a position of principle. The question that will be put at the end of this debate will not be, “That this House has considered the question of assisted dying.” It will not even be, “That this House agrees with the principle of assisted dying.” The question will be, “That the Bill be now read a Second time”—this Bill, not the Bill it might have been, not the Bill that Members might have hoped it would be, and not the Bill it could be. This Bill is the only thing before us today. Incidentally, there is absolutely nothing before us about the House of Lords. That is not the question we are being asked.

Whatever hon. or right hon. Members think about the principle of assisted dying, surely our first and foremost responsibility is to write law that is safe and workable. Not one of the professional bodies that would be tasked with delivering the Bill is willing to attest that it is, as it stands, safe or workable. The Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Association for Palliative Medicine and the Royal College of Physicians all say that the Bill is seriously inadequate. They are not opposed to assisted dying in principle, but they cannot support this Bill.

Instead of bringing a Bill identical to the last, so that the Parliament Acts can be used and the Bill can be forced unamended on to the statute book, why did the proposers not spend the summer working with the royal medical colleges, the professional bodies and organisations to build a Bill that they could support? If they had done that, it would have been difficult for anyone opposed to the principle to argue against the Bill. But they did not do that.

This is not about sides. This House is not a debating society; it is about making the law. While we may be campaigners out there, in here we are all legislators. It is our responsibility not to pick a side and dig in, but to work together to build the best laws that we can, and that is never truer than with a private Member’s Bill on a matter of conscience.

[Imran Hussain]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Ashley Dalton]

No, I will not. This Bill does not protect the most vulnerable. It does not mitigate against the poor, the old, people with disabilities, or black and minority ethnic people being disproportionately affected. It does not protect people who are mentally ill. It does not recognise that not everyone has the same level of agency, control or influence over their decision making. The clinicians we would ask to deliver this Bill are saying that it is not even workable—that there is every expectation that it would not even work for the terminally ill people who want an assisted death either.

And there would be no stopping it. Auto-commencement means that if the Bill is passed by the Commons and pushed through via the Parliament Acts, it has to happen on the stroke of four years after being passed. Even if the Government or the NHS are not ready, even if there is no funding, even if palliative care is still broken, and even if it is known to be dangerous, flawed or unworkable, then it is still happening, ready or not.

This is not a last-chance saloon. This debate has been going on for years. It is not a once-in-a-generation opportunity; it could come back again in the next Parliament. My days may be numbered, but that does not mean that I want this Chamber to rush through bad law, just so I might have a chance to see it or use it. This matter is of huge importance. If hon. and right hon. Members have any doubt that the exact Bill before us today is not the best it could be—if it is anything less than excellent, well thought-out and robustly drafted legislation that protects the vulnerable and recognises the expertise of our world-class clinicians—and that it is not the Bill that I and other terminally ill people deserve, then I urge them to vote no or to abstain.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ashley Dalton Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I gently say to the Justice Secretary, who was saying “you”, that I have no responsibility for any of this.

[Ashley Dalton (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

6. What steps his Department is taking to support women and children who have experienced abuse to access support services.

[Dr Lauren Sullivan (Gravesham) (Lab)]

7. What steps his Department is taking to support women and children who have experienced abuse to access support services.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Catherine Atkinson)]

This Government are supporting victims with more than £1 billion of funding, including £499 million for safe housing for victims of abuse, and the largest ever investment—£550 million—in victim support services, over the next three years. Under the victims code, all victims are entitled to referral to victim support services.

[Ashley Dalton]

I recently visited the Liberty Centre in my constituency, a fantastic charitable organisation that supports individuals and families who have been affected by domestic abuse and violence. It told me that it could fill its refuge places three times over, but it does not have the resources. Will the Minister say what the Government are doing to ensure that voluntary and charitable organisations that do such excellent work in this space continue to be supported and sustained?

[Catherine Atkinson]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising the hugely vital work that the Liberty Centre does. Local authorities in England have a statutory duty to assess and address the need for support, with safe accommodation for all domestic abuse victims, including children who need to flee their home. Lancashire county council has been allocated more than £3.3 million to support important local services, such as those delivered by the Liberty Centre—part of the £499 million the Government have committed to councils to commission lifesaving accommodation support for victims, in our mission to halve violence against women and girls within a decade.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ashley Dalton Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I thank the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for his question. He will know that certain offences are excluded from the SDS40 early release scheme, not the offender. This Government put in strict protections to protect the public, unlike the previous Government, who introduced an end-of-custody supervised licence scheme. Those who are released from sentences for common assault are flagged for domestic abuse markers, and they are given priority for electronic monitoring and risk assessments. I meet the sector regularly to look at what else we can do. We are learning lessons from SDS40, but this Government are committed to halving violence against women and girls.

[Ashley Dalton (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

9. What steps her Department is taking to improve the enforcement of the code of practice for victims of crime in England and Wales.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Davies-Jones)]

We will implement the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024, which lays a good foundation for ensuring that victims know the rights they should receive under the code and that agencies are held accountable for delivering them. We will consult on the revised victims code early next year, and we will go further by increasing the Victims’ Commissioner’s powers so that there is more accountability for delivering the code.

[Ashley Dalton]

My constituent Dr Marie Gerval was a victim of stalking by a man with whom she had had a brief relationship. He even put a tracker on her car without her knowledge. There were needless delays in her case, and she felt that she was not taken seriously. So bad was the stress that her hair fell out. Later, it transpired that the investigating officer on her case was himself convicted of stalking a woman. Will the Minister meet me and Dr Gerval to discuss how the code of practice for victims can make sure that this does not happen to other women like her?

[Alex Davies-Jones]

What Dr Marie Gerval experienced is totally abhorrent, but sadly she is not alone in experiencing these crimes. The Government are committed to treating stalking with the seriousness it deserves by enhancing stalking protection orders, implementing automatic suspensions for officers under investigation for domestic abuse and sexual offences, and introducing mandatory professional standards for individual officers. The Home Office is also looking at the police response to stalking as a part of our work to better protect victims of violence against women and girls. I encourage my hon. Friend to reach out to the Home Office Minister responsible for safeguarding, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), but I will happily meet her.

Violence Reduction, Policing and Criminal Justice

Ashley Dalton Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ashley Dalton (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

Let me begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Michael Shanks), who is no longer in his place, on his excellent maiden speech.

I was excited to witness, for the first time as a Member of this place, His Majesty deliver his first Gracious Speech. I turned up last week eager to hear the Government’s comprehensive and ambitious plans for the parliamentary Session, but what the Government had to offer was nothing short of threadbare. Perhaps if the Prime Minister had spent less time on the phone to his predecessors trying to get them to come and save his skin, he could have drawn up a plan to get our country building again and to help working people get on the housing ladder.

Sadly, there is a complete absence of home building in the Government’s legislative programme. The aspiration to own one’s own home sits strongly in the British people. It is not just an aspiration to own property but an aspiration for security—a roof over their head and those of their family, and a solid foundation on which to build their future. But far too many are locked out of that ambition, watching as the dream of owning their own home is eroded by soaring inflation, record high energy bills and the highest tax burden on the British people since the post-war period. The British people do not lack ambition. They know the potential in their communities. But we must take the decisions here that meet their ambition out there.

Getting the balance right between green space and building what we need is vital, and it can be done. The agricultural industry is so important to my constituents. Our farmland does not just contribute to the local and national economy but keeps the country fed. We can protect our farmers and their land while finding space to build the homes we need for the future. A green belt policy that protects disused car parks while green spaces are handed over to developers simply does not work. The grey belt space is there, often adding nothing and in some cases blighting our communities. We must have the ambition to use it.

I say to the Prime Minister that in West Lancashire we are open for business. Skelmersdale is the most populated area in my constituency, with around 40,000 people making Skem their home. When the spades first entered the ground in Skelmersdale in the 1960s, the new town was intended to provide homes to over 80,000 people, but 60 years later, we have not reached that number. We have the potential to deliver the homes we need to realise the aspirations of a modern Britain, but we cannot do that without the critical infrastructure that sits alongside it and has too often been ignored in recent developments. Human beings need more than just a roof over our heads. We need connectivity, services and community. Skelmersdale has been without a train station since 1958—three years before it was designated a new town. It is one of the largest towns in the entire country without a station, and is the perfect candidate for levelling-up funds, but it has received none. Projects such as a new railway station in Skem would constitute a genuinely new offer for transport regeneration in the north-west.

Claims that the Government are levelling up through investment in the Network North project are also, frankly, laughable. Despite fanfare and promises, there is little on offer for communities like mine. The now Prime Minister once boasted about changing the public funding formulas to divert funding away from deprived urban communities to more prosperous towns. Since then, communities crying out for investment have seen more of the same. Take a cursory glance at some of the projects referenced in the Government’s Network North proposals and you will find that many of them already exist.

It is not just our trains that are not working. Devoid of ideas and vision for this country, the Government sent their own MPs home early on half the parliamentary sitting days in the last Session. There are no signs of that changing with the King’s Speech, which contains the fewest new Bills in almost a decade. The sad reality of the situation is that the Prime Minister has no confidence in his Government to get legislation through Parliament. He does not even trust his own MPs enough to make one of them the Foreign Secretary. Even worse than that, the Prime Minister seemingly has no confidence in himself. Like King Midas on opposite day, everything he touches turns to disaster. It is clear that the Government have given up on governing, so why not let the British people decide at a general election?