Matt Hancock
Main Page: Matt Hancock (Conservative - West Suffolk)Department Debates - View all Matt Hancock's debates with the Home Office
(7 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Matt Hancock (West Suffolk) (Ind)
We need an informed debate on this subject, and I believe we are starting to have the level of engagement and interest that means that now is the time to bring a vote to the Floor of the House. As Health Secretary asking questions about policy, I was surprised by the paucity of information and data on this question. I asked the Office for National Statistics to start collecting some of the data. One of the things it found is that the suicide rate among those who have a terminal illness is double the suicide rate in the rest of the population. So we know that suicide happens and is more prevalent—twice as prevalent—among those with a terminal illness. Of course, we also know that many of those suicides are lonely and earlier than they would have been if we had changed the law.
I have also been informed in this debate and in coming to a view on the subject myself by engagement with others. I pay tribute to the Health and Social Care Committee for its excellent report. I was influenced significantly by Sir Paul Cosford, the late medical director of Public Health England, who was a great man. He asked to speak to me while he was emeritus medical director, and he called to tell me that he had a terminal illness—it was cancer. He knew that there was a likelihood of a painful end, and he said, “As a medical doctor, I can of course prescribe myself morphine and I know what to do with it, but you and others do not have that choice.”
I was also deeply affected and persuaded by my constituent David Minns. Today I had the honour of meeting his son, Matt Minns. David, who has now died, was in the awful situation of having a disease that he had watched his own daughter die an incredibly painful death from. To those who say that palliative care needs to be better and can be enough, my response is: of course it needs to be better, and of course people give their careers to amazing palliative care, but the best palliative care in the world cannot prevent hugely painful deaths for some.
Yes, the safeguards are vital. Internationally, we can now see many countries, such as Australia, that have brought in a narrow and clear set of rules, but the people I want to have a choice are those facing a painful death when they know that death is coming. Of course there should be protections for people with disabilities and mental ill health, but we should ensure that all of us, when we know for certain that we are facing such pain at the end, have the choice to instead have a dignified and good death. I know that I would want that choice for myself.