Assisted Dying
Debate between Danny Kruger and Pauline Latham(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Danny Kruger
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. These things are very contentious, and there are issues around definition. But I stand on the principle that there is implicit expansion in the scope of any law. [Interruption.] Am I being given extra time for the interventions I am taking?
Danny Kruger
Then I will not take one now.
Baroness Campbell, herself a wheelchair user, said that:
“The existing law…rests on a natural frontier”,
namely that we do not kill people. She asked:
“What the proponents of 'assisted dying' want is to replace that clear and bright line with an arbitrary and permeable one…If terminal illness, why not chronic and progressive conditions? And, if chronic and progressive conditions, why not seriously disabled people?”
It is impossible to make distinctions between those terms. That is why the law always has the scope for its own expansion within it. That is why we should oppose the change.