Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Jeremy Wright Excerpts

Friday 20th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Maureen Burke) and many others who have given brave testimony of their own personal experience in this matter. I join the tributes to the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater), who I think has conducted herself with decency, dignity and compassion throughout this process. But I have heard her and others say that the decision we have to make today is whether or not we are in favour of the status quo, and I respectfully disagree. Our job as legislators is to consider rigorously the proposed legislation before us, and those who propose it bear the burden of persuading us that this is the right change to make, and not a change that may bring problems as big or bigger than those we are trying to solve.

I have spent nearly 30 years in this place that makes our laws and practising in the courts that administer them. I have had ministerial responsibility for sentencing and for the Crown Prosecution Service. I have faith in our system of laws, but I have also seen the limitations on our ability to avoid the negative consequences of the laws we make, however hard we try.

So very often the legislative decisions we take are about a balance of risks. In this case, the risk of not changing the law is that we leave some of our constituents in pain where it could be avoided, and expose their loved ones to the fear of prosecution for acts of love and mercy. I acknowledge that risk, and I have felt the anguish and desperation of those who want this Bill to pass for the very best of motives. But good people can come to different conclusions on the balance of risks here, and I think that we take a bigger risk in changing the law. That is because of the signal we send in the legislation we pass.

Signals sent by changes in the law matter. When Parliament changes the law, it brings consequences for those who break the new law, but it also intends to change behaviour. Creating new criminal offences, increasing maximum sentences or even strengthening regulations are acts that we hope everyone will take notice of and behave differently as a result, because they recognise that Parliament, on behalf of society as a whole, is signalling its disapproval of certain actions or practices. If that is true for legislation that makes unlawful what was previously lawful, why should the same not be true for legislation that makes lawful something that was previously unlawful? We are sending a signal there too: that society, through Parliament, believes that something we used to think was unacceptable is now acceptable—in this case, that assisting someone to die is now something of which we approve. I believe that is bound to have an impact on those who, in great distress at the end of their lives, may already be thinking that it would be better if they were out of the way.

I do not want to live in a society in which anyone, including the terminally ill, is encouraged in the belief that their life is not valuable and valued to their very last moment. Though it is not its intent, I fear that the Bill brings such a society closer. That is why I cannot support it.