Assisted Dying

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Mr McCabe, you and many of the Members in this room will know Frank Field. We are debating today whether to have a debate, and there was a debate in the House of Lords on 22 October, at which Baroness Meacher spoke for Frank Field, who could not be there because he is in a hospice. In that debate, he said:

“I changed my mind on assisted dying when an MP friend was dying of cancer and wanted to die early before the full horror effects set in, but was denied this opportunity.”

People we all know are changing their mind in the light of real circumstance. Frank Field went on to say:

“It is thought…that people will be pressurised into ending their lives. The number of assisted deaths in the US and Australia remains very low—under 1%—and a former Supreme Court judge in Victoria has concluded about pressure from relatives that ‘it just hasn’t been an issue’.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 22 October 2021; Vol. 815, c. 394-395.]

So there are legitimate fears, but they have not been borne out empirically.

A senior consultant surgeon who has served in Swansea for 30 years wrote to me and said:

“I know that terminal care services here are inadequate”,

which is of course something we need to change. The surgeon went on to say:

“Even in the best areas, several conditions cannot be successfully managed. In all other areas of healthcare, the patient’s wishes are paramount. So it should be here. The new proposals are modest and in line with current national survey reports. Think for a moment of what your personal view might be if you were diagnosed with a condition like motor neurone disease.”

The question is whether the state should be allowed to force people into a condition of escalating physical and mental trauma, and of debilitation and pain, as with motor neurone disease. Should it have that right? I do not think the state should have that right because it is worried about the slippery-slope effect, which has not been borne out empirically in Australia and the United States.

Palliative care must be an option and we need to invest more in it. People may have palliative care and then turn to assisted suicide in a planned way—if they have the money to do so—without being forced by the current system to die prematurely. The truth is that people should not be forced against their will, and against the will of the families who look on in sadness and who want to move forward in the light of what is being said, into growing trauma and indignity. At the minimum, we need to have a proper debate on this issue. My position is clear: there should be safeguards, constraints and adequate palliative care but, ultimately, if somebody is dying in an appalling, debilitating and chronic way that cannot be reversed and if we can avoid that, we have a duty to do so.