Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
Debate between Christine Jardine and Rebecca Paul(3 weeks, 1 day ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Rebecca Paul
I am sorry, but I do not have much time and I wish to get through my points.
How can we be happy with a process that does not exclude such reasons? Instead of providing the support that is actually needed, the state is content to put them on a pathway that leads to their death. I hope that the House will recognise that, whether one supports assisted dying in principle or not, it is morally bankrupt not to have some kind of best interests test to protect those who are not seeking death to alleviate pain from a terminal illness.
Another group that is particularly vulnerable is those with eating disorders. In Chelsea Roff’s oral evidence, she set out that
“at least 60 people around the world have been euthanised or assisted in suicide”
with
“anorexia nervosa listed by name as a terminal condition.”––[Official Report, Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Public Bill Committee, 29 January 2025; c. 139, Q175.]
To paraphrase her, these were young women who were not terminally ill and had decades of life ahead of them. It is important to make the point that someone suffering—
