Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Marie Tidball Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 11th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I supported this legislation first in 2015 and will do so again as it goes through its processes. I am truly grateful for all the work that so many hon. Members here and in the other House have done on the detail of the Bill. I am confident that it has been improved significantly and that we have learned from the experiences of jurisdictions across the world, many of which have had assisted dying for many years. Let us remember that in most of those jurisdictions only about a third of people who choose the option of assisted dying actually go ahead and need to use it.

My resolve has been strengthened by those I have heard from with direct experience. I will mention just two such experiences, told to me by people I know well. One is a constituent who asked me to support the change in legislation. His brother was diagnosed with cancer, and after an operation that proved unsuccessful, he was admitted to a hospice for end-of-life care. About his brother, he said:

“He was very philosophical about what was going to happen. His one request and hope was that his death was not going to be prolonged and painful. He received excellent care from an amazing team at the hospice. Sadly, when the time came, he suffered in a way no human should have to…We don’t allow our pets to suffer the way he did. His acute suffering and pain lasted 4 days. When he was able he pleaded for help for the pain to stop. The hospice did everything possible to help, but there are legal limits to what they can do. If he could only have received a life-ending intervention 5 days before he died, as he wanted, he would not have had to suffer the indignity and agony of a painful and long, drawn-out, horrific death.”

The second experience is that described on several occasions in the House by Paul Blomfield, the former MP for Sheffield Central, about his father’s death. Paul continues to be a powerful advocate for the right to choose. His full speeches are preserved in Hansard, so I will quote just a small part about his experience.

Paul received a phone call that his father had been found dead in his garage after receiving a terminal diagnosis of inoperable lung cancer. In Paul’s words,

“He had had his share of health problems, but he faced them all positively, until a terminal diagnosis of inoperable lung cancer clearly led to his decision to take his life. He could not talk to me or his partner about it, because he would have made us complicit. The current law forced my father into a lonely decision and a lonely death. And he died prematurely, because I am sure that what drove him to end his life at that point was the fear that if he did not act when he was still able to do so, he would lose the opportunity to act at all.”—[Official Report, 4 July 2022; Vol. 717, c. 231WH.]

Those potentially facing unimaginable pain or suffering after their terminal diagnosis, despite the best palliative care, currently have options that are unbearably lonely—like for Paul’s father—or involve an arduous and costly journey by going to Switzerland; or they have no choice, like my constituent’s brother.

[Dr Marie Tidball (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Ruth Cadbury]

I will not. The many people who have shared their experiences of facing death soon have told us that they want to die on their own terms. We also know, through various credible polls, that the majority of people in this country want that choice for themselves. I do not want to deny them the right to be able to make that choice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Marie Tidball (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

This week, death has felt rather too close to home for me. My dad, John—my constituent, my great political hero and, indeed, my hero in life—had surgery for lung cancer, followed by a cardiac arrest the next day. Thanks to our wonderful NHS and its outstanding care, the CPR and treatment performed on him were successful. He is now in the process of recovery, to such an extent that I was able to have a detailed conversation with him at his bedside, in which he insisted that I come here to this place to speak and vote in this debate. My dad is determined to live. Nevertheless, he told me that if circumstances were different—if his condition was terminal, if he had six months left to live and if he had capacity to make that choice—he would want to have the option to choose an assisted death to give him dignity.

Access to the choice of assisted dying, as tightly drawn in the Bill, enables the terminally ill adult who chooses it to live a good death. On Second Reading of the Bill previously brought forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater), I said that my support was conditional on further safeguards being embedded in it, because too often control is taken away from disabled people.

[Rachel Taylor]

Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?

[Dr Tidball]

I will continue, if my hon. Friend does not mind.

Clause 2(4) of the Bill before us today says:

“For the avoidance of doubt, a person is not to be considered to be terminally ill only because they are a person with a disability or mental disorder (or both).”

As a member of the previous Bill Committee, I worked for over 90 hours to ensure that all the changes that I requested were made, and they are now on the face of the Bill brought forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Lauren Edwards). My amendments, including two new clauses, were unanimously supported by that Committee. The first, clause 48, establishes a disability advisory board made up of disabled people and our organisations in order to embed a long-term and iterative structure in law to report on the Bill’s implementation and its impact on disabled people. The second, clause 22, sets out provisions to put in place independent advocates for people with autism and mental health conditions, enabling them to effectively understand their options around end-of-life care.

Further, I ensured that clause 8 provides for specific, up-to-date training for registered practitioners on reasonable adjustments and safeguards for autistic people and people with learning disabilities. I also secured an expanded duty in clause 28 to collect additional information about whether, immediately before death, the person seeking assistance has a disability—as defined under section 6 of the Equality Act 2010—other than a disability amounting to terminal illness, as defined in this Bill. Together, these measures create a solid foundation to enable disabled people to have a strong voice when advocating for themselves about their choices on end-of-life care and, importantly, to have a seat at the table so that they can scrutinise and monitor the implementation of this Bill.

Spending nearly two years thinking about death in relation to this Bill has been life-changing for me, because the thing about considering choice in death, understanding what dignity in dying involves and what living a good death really means, is that it makes you think deeply about the meaning of living a good life, too: to love ferociously and to live passionately, experiencing every single moment as if suspended like a vignette woven from “Charlotte’s Web”. As E. B. White’s eponymous character points out:

“After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die.”

Each of these stages of human life requires us to treat ourselves and fellow humans with dignity and to value ourselves, to enable us to feel and to perceive our own worth. This Bill not only anchors that dignity at the final stage but, in doing so, compels us to embed dignity in each and every other stage of our lives as well. This Bill lays a counterweight alongside the Government’s plans to improve the quality of and access to palliative care, to drive urgent reform on social care, and to build a new system that gives people the dignity, security and support they deserve. Driving quality in these areas together can and must be done contemporaneously.

My friend, the incredible assisted dying campaigner Nathaniel Dye, passed away this year. He squeezed every single drop of joy out of life and taught me so much about why living a good death matters. In setting the bar high for dignity in death, we set the bar even higher for dignity in life.