Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-eighth sitting)

Daniel Francis Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

The second principle is equally critical: NHS funding must not be diverted to external organisations that profit from, or are sustained by, the business of ending lives. Every pound spent on healthcare is a pound fought for by taxpayers, by clinicians and by patients. To direct that money into the coffers of private providers, whose incentives might lean towards efficiency over compassion, risks betraying the NHS’s founding ethos. We cannot allow a system where the end of life becomes a revenue stream and where the decision to die is shaped, however subtly, by a balance sheet rather than a patient’s free will.

[Daniel Francis (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South and South Bedfordshire referred to IVF. My wife and I have been through IVF, and what exists is exactly what the hon. Member for Richmond Park described. There is an annual show at Olympia where it has been commercialised and it is put to people, “Why not go down this route? Why not go down that route?” Does the hon. Member agree that that is really not a route we want to go down?

[Sarah Olney]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that point, because it provides a comparison. We are talking about there potentially being a market for end-of-life services. I do not think that is the way we should be going.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I appreciate the hon. Lady’s comments. I think there is a lesson to be learned. I understand that the legislation is unprecedented in coming through the private Member’s Bill route. After this, we will have to think about how we deal with such legislation because we are feeling our way. I appreciate the opportunity to work with the co-operation of colleagues on something for which there is no road map, but I fear, although I also appreciate, that we are making the road map as we go.

[Daniel Francis]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I genuinely did not intend to speak today, but the debate, particularly the speech by the hon. Member for Richmond Park and the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South and South Bedfordshire, has brought me to my feet.

It was 13 or 14 years ago that my wife and I embarked on the IVF road. It never worked—our children came naturally in the end—but I know the pain and despair of that process. Although I do not call into question the efficacy of any doctor, some companies, looking to their profit margins, will always prey on people.

We have had discussions today about the regulations to be made under new clause 36, but we need some clarity on Report. I referred to the annual fertility show at the Kensington Olympia; I have checked, and it is still held. I visited it about 13 years ago. Frankly, it is complete marketisation. People who are already on their knees and really depressed are left feeling that companies are simply trying to make a profit out of them. People can already book their tickets for the event in May and navigate a path through it: there are expert-led seminars, real stories, whereby people connect with others who have been through the process, wellbeing workshops and more than 70 exhibitors. Of course, they are all paying a fee to be there, and they all aim to have made a profit by the end.

Our first set of IVF treatment was free on the NHS. We paid £7,000 for our second, which was again through the NHS. We went through several visits to NHS and private providers to assess whether we were willing to pay a top-up for a slightly better service. I really did not intend to speak this morning, but I wonder whether, in the final part of the process that we are considering, there would be the sort of upsetting process that has taken root in the fertility industry in this country. We need more clarity on that by Report.

[Naz Shah]

I stopped myself intervening on my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central; I had lots of questions, and he has confused me even more. He referred to the provision in clause 8(6)(d) about the doctors being different. If I am right, healthcare providers such as Aspire or Ramsay Health Care could be commissioned to deliver the services. If so, does that mean, as the hon. Member for East Wiltshire suggested, that we will need two separate doctors or providers because the co-ordinating doctor and the second doctor cannot be linked? That confuses me even further. After what we have heard this morning, it strikes me that we do not have any proposed model and the measure has not been thought through. It speaks to the idea that this is not right. We are spending hours and hours going through hypotheticals and possibilities—this could happen, that could happen—but there is nothing actually before us.