Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Fourth sitting)

Jack Abbott Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 29th January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Order. I did say one question per person; we have to stick to the timings.

[Jack Abbott (Ipswich) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q Dr Fellingham, given your experience of both the British and the Australian healthcare systems, do you believe there are any fundamental differences that would affect how assisted dying is implemented in this country? If there are, how might we be able to mitigate them?

Dr Fellingham: In the UK you are missing a number of the challenges that we have, such as the geographical challenges in a state as vast as Western Australia. You also have a golden opportunity to look, as you are, across every jurisdiction that already has laws in operation and cherry-pick the best bits of what is working well in those jurisdictions, and so create the very best, most robust and most patient-centred legislation you can.

The healthcare systems are broadly similar. We are both first-world, developed western countries. We are still operating in a context of resource limitation, but not resource limitation that is so prohibitive that it would make it particularly difficult to enact a law in the UK. The United Kingdom would be broadly able to follow any of the laws that exist in Australia and implement them very successfully.

[Kim Leadbeater (Spen Valley) (Lab)]

Q Thank you for joining us this morning. I am interested in following up on what Dr Mewett said about the relationship with palliative care, which has an important role to play in end of life treatment. What is the relationship between assisted dying and the palliative care world like? Also, I would like to hear a bit more about the multidisciplinary board, which I think you set up, Dr McLaren. What does the multidisciplinary approach look like in your jurisdictions?

Dr Mewett: There is no doubt that traditionally palliative care has eschewed any idea of voluntary assisted dying, for a number of historical reasons that I have spoken about in other fora and will not go into now. But it is changing, and there is a general change in attitude, especially among the younger palliative care training doctors and young clinicians, who see this as part of patient-centred care, honouring the patient’s autonomy and choice, while still addressing deeply their concerns and suffering in pain management and so on.

That will see a change. I do understand where it has come from. When one looks at it almost forensically, it does not stack up and will continue not to stack up to have someone saying, “Well, VAD is not part of palliative care.” VAD is part of patient choice and it will be part of palliative care ongoing. That will evolve over time.

I am sorry but I did not quite catch the meaning of the question about the multidisciplinary aspect, Ms Leadbeater.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Thank you. This will have to be the last question.

[Jack Abbott]

Q I have a question for Mr Amin. You worked on the judicial review of Noel Conway in 2018. For the benefit of the Committee and those watching, Mr Conway had terminal motor neurone disease and he looked to bring a judicial review in order to have the option of assisted death, when he was in the final six months of his life. Mr Amin, what were your experiences from that case that may inform the Committee’s learnings when looking at the Bill?

Yogi Amin: Mr Conway was an extremely intelligent and brave individual who campaigned in this area. His strong view about autonomy led him to bring that case, and what he was arguing for in that case forms part of what you have here in the Bill. He was certainly asking for a process in which a decision could be made and some robust safeguards could be provided, which would end up with a court process, and that is what you have within the Bill. I also learned through that case, and others over the years, what the Human Rights Act, the European convention and parliamentary sovereignty mean here. On all three counts, the cases have always said that it is Parliament that makes the decision—so it is you who are deciding. I do not see a court overturning that.

The courts in the Conway case—the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court—were all very clear that it is a matter for Parliament. I really do not see the European Court of Human Rights overturning it in any way at all, and that is from my long experience. The margin of appreciation is very strong with this Parliament to make the decision. I also think, from a drafting perspective, the Bill very carefully defines the individuals—it has drawn the line. Certainly, the courts cannot do it; they cannot extend that line and they will always defer back to Parliament. If you craft the Bill as it is, I am very confident that it will be left here.

[The Chair]

Order. I am terribly sorry but we are out of time.

Mental Health Support

Jack Abbott Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jack Abbott (Ipswich) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Sojan Joseph) for securing this important debate on World Mental Health Day. Sitting in the Chamber are Members from every corner of the country and from all sides of the House—evidence that the mental health crisis is undeniably a national one.

My constituents in Ipswich, under the Norfolk and Suffolk mental health trust, suffer a particularly desperate service in an already broken system. Since its creation in 2012, the Norfolk and Suffolk foundation trust has been—it arguably still is—the worst-performing mental health trust in the whole country. It was the first mental health trust to be put into special measures, in 2015, and it was then put into the NHS recovery support programme when the body was set up in 2021.

We are almost entirely accustomed to the slew of reports that find that the trust “requires improvement” or is “inadequate”, but time does not allow me to give a detailed overview of the litany of failures that have brought us to this point. However, there are two key tenets to the scandal. First, there is the scandal of the perhaps euphemistically named unexpected or avoidable deaths. The 2022 Care Quality Commission report found that there were 155 such deaths in the two years preceding the report, and the NSFT’s own “Learning from Deaths” report admitted to 418 unexpected unnatural deaths in a four-year period. Many of those deaths were entirely avoidable suicides, some while directly in the NSFT’s care. Those numbers, even taken at face value, which is unfortunately hard to do given the trust’s record, are emblematic of what my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) aptly called the “slow-motion disaster” of mental health care.

Secondly, there is the cruel detail of unrecorded or unaccounted deaths, which led to thousands of people falling through the gaps, left off official statistics and totted up retrospectively as if they were a mere glitch in the system—the dead dehumanised, lost and buried in spreadsheets. It is not right that, after facing allegations as serious as the NSFT has faced, it should be allowed to mark its on homework on the matter.

But with a new Government comes an opportunity for a new approach. I therefore ask the Minister to meet me to discuss a pathway to justice and to change Suffolk’s mental health services. This is the crux of the debate. The families who have suffered so much deserve justice, and all my constituents deserve change. Those two things are inseparable—we simply cannot have one without the other—and there is no time to waste in delivering them.