Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Kim Leadbeater and Rachel Taylor

2nd reading
Friday 29th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kim Leadbeater]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The courts have repeatedly put this issue back to Parliament. This is not their domain. This is the legislation. There are strict criteria.

Coming back to palliative care, in situations where pain simply cannot be managed, the result is deaths that are so horrific that the person themselves can spend hours, and in some cases days, in unimaginable pain as they die. I want to bring the debate back to the issue that we are trying to solve. For their loved ones, no matter how many joyful and happy memories they have, they also have the trauma that comes from watching someone you love die in unbearable agony and fear. That memory stays with them forever.

Rebecca’s mum Fiona developed metastatic brain cancer at the age of 69. She had very good palliative care, but her pain could not be managed, and she died begging and screaming for assistance to end her suffering. Her family and the medical team treating her cried beside her bedside as it took her 10 days to die.

Lucy’s husband Tom was 47, a music teacher with a young son. He had bile duct cancer which obstructed his bowel, resulting in an agonising death. Tom vomited faecal matter for five hours before he ultimately inhaled the faeces and died. He was vomiting so violently that he could not be sedated and was conscious throughout. Lucy pleaded with the doctors to help. The doctor treating him said there was nothing he could do. His family say that the look of horror on his face as he died will never leave them. Lucy now has post-traumatic stress disorder, which is quite common for families who lose loved ones in such harrowing circumstances.

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for the powerful and moving stories she is telling. A constituent of mine watched her mum suffer from pancreatic cancer. Unable to keep any food down, she basically starved to death. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is no way to see a loved one die? Does she also agree that we did not come into this place to shy away from difficult choices, but to listen to our constituents and make better laws for everyone?

[Kim Leadbeater]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and I am so sorry to hear that story from her constituency. We all have stories from all our constituencies, and she is absolutely right that we are here to make difficult decisions. On her example there, I have been astonished by the number of people who have been in touch with me to tell me about the terminally ill loved ones who have starved themselves to death out of desperation—something that takes far longer than we may imagine and is just horrific for everyone involved. That is currently legal, and doctors are required to assist the patient through this agonising process. How can we allow that, but not a compassionate and humane assisted death?