Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Christine Jardine Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 29th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler). I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater). The spirit in which this debate has been conducted today is a tribute to her leadership on this issue.

This debate has been harrowing for all of us. However, to us falls the responsibility and the privilege of making this decision on behalf of those who go through experiences so harrowing that I do not think any of us can imagine them, even though we have heard their tales—I know that I cannot.

Until recently, I put it to the back of my mind that I have actually been in the situation of waiting to find out whether I would have a terminal diagnosis. I was lucky, as it went the other way. I do not know what I would have wanted but, as I waited, I thought about all the things I wanted to do and might be denied. People with a terminal diagnosis think about what they planned to do with their life, such as seeing their children and grandchildren grow and marry.

When we came here today, we were all aware of that, and we thought seriously about the implications and the need for palliative care, but it is not our job to say that we should not do this because palliative care needs to be improved and because the NHS cannot cope. Our job is to say that we need to improve palliative care so that the NHS can cope, and so that we can do this.

On the safeguards that are needed and included in the Bill, I believe they are there. For those with religious beliefs that mean they cannot countenance the Bill, I understand and respect their concerns, but I would not be standing here if I was not convinced that in this Bill we have the best opportunity to provide a choice safeguarded by medical and legal professionals and protected from that slippery slope. It happened in Canada because they did not have “terminal diagnosis” in the definition of the Bill from the beginning, but we do. If we vote the Bill through, it will go on to have the further and tougher levels of scrutiny that every piece of legislation in this place and the other place must go through. I respect everyone’s concerns and beliefs, but I also ask them, and all hon. Members, to respect those who have already been denied so much in their lives—those things I said they might want that they might be denied.

We have a choice today: we can lead a national conversation that examines the issue before all of us, dissect the Bill line by line and check its effectiveness, or we can vote to close it down today, and then the country and the families who are suffering will be denied the light they want to see thrown on the issue and the voice they want their loved ones or perhaps themselves to have.

Many of us have watched loved ones die difficult deaths, and we have over the past few weeks, months and years in politics heard harrowing tales and spoken to families who have had no choice but to watch their loved ones pass in the most harrowing of circumstances, or make an expensive—for many, prohibitively expensive—trip to Dignitas alone. I cannot help about those things they have been denied by the cruellest of fates, but surely we cannot deny them choice at end of life.