Assisted Dying Law Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Daisy Cooper
Main Page: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)Department Debates - View all Daisy Cooper's debates with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Assisted Dying Law
Daisy Cooper Excerpts(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) for securing this important and sensitive debate. Like, I am sure, other MPs, I have received a good number of emails on this subject. Many asked me to speak in favour of assisted dying, and many asked me to speak against it.
It is of huge regret to me that previous debates on such a sensitive and, for many people, deeply personal issue have become such polarised “for and against” discussions. Those who are for it refer almost exclusively to the need for people to be empowered while they still have the capacity to take the decision, so that they do not have to suffer an undignified and painful death. Those against raise concerns about the safeguards.
During the election campaign, I met a couple who pleaded with me not to vote for assisted dying. They told me about their disabled child, a child born disabled and with a life-limiting disease. She was predicted to live only a few years, but despite medical predictions, she has lived for many years and become a happy and joyous little girl. They told me about their fears that a permissive law on assisted dying could have been used to end her life even before she had had a real chance to start it. As a disability rights campaigner myself, I know that those living with a disability, or with experience of disability in their family, must be heard.
Both sides quote polls and “evidence”. One side says that it has the medical community on its side; the other says that it has police enforcement representatives on its side. For my part, I agree that the current state of the law is letting some people down, but everything that I have read over the years and recent representations from particular constituents mean that I say this with caution. As a new MP, I honestly do not know which way I would vote if there were a vote tomorrow, and I believe that scores of other MPs are in the same position as I am. And it is precisely because I do not know which way I would vote that I am in total agreement with this motion. For all of us as MPs and for the House as a whole to take an informed view, there must be an independent inquiry, so that we can take an evidence-based approach to the impact of the current law and enable those who would be most affected to be properly heard.