Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lloyd Hatton Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 29th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kim Leadbeater]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and I will come on to some of those points later in my speech. Let us be very clear: the title of the Bill refers to terminally ill adults, not disabled people or elderly people, as another hon. Member referred to. The criteria are very clear.

I come back to the status quo, which is the problem we are trying to address. If people want to avoid the trauma of some of the harrowing circumstances I have described, they can have an assisted death—just not in this country. If they have £10,000 or £15,000, they can make the trip to Switzerland or elsewhere but, because of the current legal position, it is often a deeply distressing and very lonely experience, shrouded in secrecy, with people feeling like criminals as the fear of prosecution hangs over them.

Ilana’s husband Crispin had late-stage motor neurone disease. He was paralysed, and Ilana is a wheelchair user, but at his request she took him on a traumatic and difficult journey to Switzerland. She describes the intense stress and anxiety she felt due to the total secrecy of their plan—and we can only imagine what the journey home was like, on her own, with an empty seat beside her.

There are also those terminally ill people who take matters into their own hands. Gareth’s father Norman served in the Welsh Guards. He was a strong man, but his final five years were full of pain and discomfort. He had prostate cancer, which he lived with for 15 years. He was given good initial hormone therapy and chemo, but the cancer spread everywhere and the pain could not be eased. One day, when it all became too much, he went into his garden with the gun he owned and shot himself. Gareth’s sister rushed to his house and found him. Gareth said his father just wanted the pain to stop.

Then there is Peter, from Mirfield in my own constituency, who stopped me in a car park a couple of weeks ago to tell me the harrowing story of his beloved wife, who was diagnosed with metastatic cancer aged 52. The treatment was ineffective and her symptoms were unbearable. She took an overdose of her medication, and Peter found her and took her to hospital. She recovered and he brought her home, but the following day she made another attempt to take her own life, in a way that is too awful to describe. Peter found her dead, and he spent the next eight hours being questioned by the police.

It is estimated that more than 600 terminally ill people take their own lives every year. Often patients will store up medication. Josh, a 33-year-old from Huddersfield went to coach his local kids’ rugby team one Saturday and came back to tell his mum all about it. He found her dead. Lisa, who was terminally ill, had stored up her medication and taken her own life.

Our former colleague Paul Blomfield, the previous MP for Sheffield Central, has campaigned tirelessly on this issue since his dad Harry took his own life in 2014, alone in his garage, after being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. Language matters: Harry was not suicidal; he loved life, but he had watched too many of his friends have lingering, degrading deaths and he did not want that for himself. But, like the others, he could not tell Paul and his family of his plan, as they would have been complicit and could have faced prosecution. How many precious days and weeks did Harry miss out on as a result of having to take action while he was still physically able to do so? Hearing these stories is not easy, but it is important.

[Lloyd Hatton (South Dorset) (Lab)]

What I have been struck by in recent weeks as I have listened to Members from across the House is the clear agreement that the current situation is neither sustainable nor dignified. Almost everyone in this House agrees that the status quo is unacceptable in terms of dignity, palliative care and end of life. Given that, does my hon. Friend agree that today’s debate is about how we depart from the unacceptable situation that we currently face? Is today’s vote not the first stage of an important discussion about we improve the end of life for hundreds and hundreds of people across this country?

[Kim Leadbeater]

I wholeheartedly agree. I am setting out what we are dealing with now. This cannot be right, and surely we have a duty to do something about it.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lloyd Hatton Excerpts

Report stage
Friday 13th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Munira Wilson]

I note that the Health and Social Care Committee and the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) have undertaken a report, so they will advise us on that issue. [Interruption.] I am aware that I need to finish, so I urge hon. Members to support the amendments of my hon. Friends the Members for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) and for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) to ensure that we do not allow the Bill to implement sweeping Henry VIII powers on such a sensitive and important issue, and to ensure that we collect, through new schedule 2, important monitoring data on how any assisted dying or death service will operate. We need transparency.

[Lloyd Hatton (South Dorset) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in support of new clause 15 and amendment 54, and against new clause 5. As right hon. and hon. Members will be aware, new clause 15 would not classify a death under the Bill as suspicious or unexpected, so a full coroner’s inquest would not be needed.

If the Bill becomes law, assisted dying would be a legal, strictly regulated and well monitored choice made freely by the individual concerned. To be absolutely clear to hon. Members, it is not assisted suicide. The Bill concerns people who want to live but who, faced with an inevitable, irreversible and terminal diagnosis, want choice over the manner of their death. That is an important choice that removes some of the trauma and anxiety for not only the patients but their family and loved ones. New clause 15 and its consequential amendment 54 will ensure that families who are naturally grieving the loss of their loved one are not needlessly subjected to an invasive coroner’s investigation.

[Dr Opher]

It is important to realise that if there are any suspicions around an assisted death, a coroner can still be involved. The new clause does not exclude that, but it stops the automatic referral to a coroner.

[Lloyd Hatton]

I share my hon. Friend’s sentiment. I firmly believe that we should protect bereaved families against such a distressing ordeal happening automatically, particularly when the process, as set out in the Bill, will already be legal and transparent.

With that in mind, it makes practical sense to support new clause 15. If we pass legislation to permit assisted dying with the full weight of the law behind it, we must also respect that choice in the way that we classify and record such deaths. Those deaths would not be in any way unexpected or suspicious, so to classify them as such would simply be inaccurate.

As has already been touched on in great detail today, if the Bill is passed, it would implement the most robust assisted dying framework anywhere in the world. It already includes multiple layers of oversight. In my view, the process is cautious, thorough and robustly safeguarded. A retrospective investigation would be to duplicate the process, and risks suggesting wrongdoing when none has occurred.

[Anna Dixon]

I wonder what my hon. Friend’s view is of the opinion of the Royal College of Pathologists—the body responsible for medical examiners—which is that:

“deaths following assisted dying should be notified to the coroner, just as other deaths following the administration of drugs, prescribed or not, must be.”

[Lloyd Hatton]

I respectfully disagree with that position. I believe that there are already levels of safeguarding in the legislation.

New clause 15 is a compassionate and practical clause that would ensure the law works not only with the individual making the choice, but for the family they leave behind.

I move now to speak briefly on new clause 5, which I would strongly encourage Members to vote against. Tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall and Bloxwich (Valerie Vaz), the new clause would require the Government to publish a report on any impact the Bill might have on civil procedure rules and probate proceedings. As has already been pointed out, the chief medical officer has warned that we are at serious risk of creating a “bureaucratic thicket” with this legislation. In my view, new clause 5 would do just that: requiring the Government to publish such a report would create unnecessary bureaucracy and divert resources without adding any material value.

As Members will be aware, the Government have already published an impact assessment on the relevant impacts that they deem the Bill could have. There is nothing in the Bill likely to result in any changes to civil procedure rules, so there is no obvious justification for producing a formal report on that issue. It is important that we remain focused on practical and meaningful safeguards, rather than procedural requirements based on immaterial impacts. Introducing extra reporting requirements based on speculative impacts risks creating unnecessary red tape without delivering any practical benefits. I therefore urge Members to reject new clause 5 and accept that no additional reporting in that area is needed.

As we rightly scrutinise the Bill today, on top of nearly 97 hours of scrutiny so far, which is more than many Government Bills receive, we must keep dying people at the centre of the debate. I speak today in support of new clause 15 and its consequential amendment 54 and in opposition to new clause 5 for exactly that reason—to keep terminally ill people at the centre of this discussion, and at the centre of this piece of legislation. No matter where we stand on this pressing matter—whether Members support it or have reservations—it is crucial that we collectively ensure that the Bill is workable, compassionate and truly centred on the dying person. As legislators, that must always be our chief concern.

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I rise to support and speak briefly to amendment (a) to amendment 77, tabled by the hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann), and I will speak to new clause 13, amendment 96 and other amendments if time permits.

I was rather confused when I looked at the amendment paper a few days ago and noticed that amendments that would directly impact on Northern Ireland had been tabled. When last I checked, the Bill as a whole extended only to England and Wales, so I find amendments 76 and 77 perplexing. To be clear, health and criminal justice are devolved matters. The people of Northern Ireland elect their own Assembly to make precisely these sensitive decisions, including whether to legislate for assisted suicide, which is an issue of profound moral weight and cultural consequence.