Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Paul Waugh Excerpts

Report stage
Friday 13th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

May I informally suggest that we aim for speeches of around six minutes? I call Paul Waugh to provide a good example.

[Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)]

I rise to speak in support of the amendment in my name, which seeks to strengthen new clause 14 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater). Why do we want to restrict advertising about assisted dying? It is not just because such adverts could appear crass or insensitive, or because we worry that private companies could profiteer from death, but because advertisers know that they influence choices. The issue of choice, whether it is informed choice, skewed choice, self-coercion or coercive control, as has already been mentioned, is, in many ways, at the heart of the Bill and whether its safeguards are sufficient.

My brother works in advertising and he knows its power. It is why companies spend billions of pounds on it, why Google is the giant that it is, why we see lots of adverts at Westminster tube station trying to influence every single one of us, and why X is full of ads. Advertising works because we human beings are suggestible, and prone to messaging, visual cues and hints. Older people are bombarded with adverts for everything from stairlifts to care homes. One person’s advert, though, is another person’s public information campaign. It is not impossible to imagine a future Secretary of State, who passionately believes in the merits of assisted dying, authorising such a campaign. It could be a Government-approved plotline in a soap opera, or an ad read out by a podcaster that ever so subtly sounds like a news item, or even their own opinion. Many in this House rightly try to protect teenagers from online harms, but the online harm of an ad for a website about assisted dying shared on TikTok could be a reality without the tighter safeguards in my amendment.

[Anna Dixon]

I thank my hon. Friend for speaking so clearly about the issue of advertising. Does he recognise that this country has banned pharmaceutical advertising because we do not want to have the situation that exists in America where people are popping pills all the time? There is a reason that we are protecting patients and we need to do the same with assisted dying.

[Paul Waugh]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. The dangers of what is happening in America provide a real lesson for us here.

As the hon. Member for Reigate (Rebecca Paul) put it, conversations about assisted dying should happen in person—between the relevant doctor and the patient. They should not be prompted by a TV ad, or something seen on a bus. My hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis) spoke very movingly about the way that IVF services have been commercialised, leaving people who are, as he says, “already on their knees” vulnerable to exploitation, so that someone else can profit.

I am certain that nobody in this House believes that passing this Bill into law should mean the rise of a similarly aggressive market for assisted death, but it is our role—indeed our responsibility—to deal not only in intended consequences, but in unintended ones, too. The real risk in the drafting of new clause 14 is that it allows exceptions that are not specified in the Bill. A future Secretary of State will be empowered not only to make the necessary regulations, but to amend them at any time; and a future Secretary of State, who does not share the concerns of this House, would have the ability to draw the exceptions so widely as to make the ban worthless. There are a number of similar advertising bans already in place on tobacco products, surrogacy and the latest cancer drugs being marketed to the public. In every case, the legislation sets out the exceptions, leaving no room for doubt as to how Parliament intended to protect the public.

Why should the services that this Bill would legalise not be subject to that same legal clarity? Do people who have less time to live not deserve all the protection we have the power to give them from a death they do not truly want? I cannot believe that this Parliament would be content to have that power taken out of its hands, and the rights of our most vulnerable constituents left for someone else to decide on some other day.

My amendment therefore sets out that exceptions to the advertising ban should be limited to cases where a person has requested information and where the materials are intended for health professionals and not for their patients. New clause 14 would allow a future Secretary of State to make provisions that would usually have to go through the House in legislation. It is not at all clear to me why that power is needed to introduce a ban on advertising.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman and I entirely support his argument and his amendment. This is the difference between, in his estimation, accepting a request and promoting a service. Advertising is about the promotion of a service to doubtful, fearful and vulnerable people, and that is precisely what his amendment addresses.

[Paul Waugh]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman, and there is a wider point here about the Henry VIII powers in the Bill. This would be the third such power added to the Bill since Second Reading. At that stage, it had none. The Attorney General, Lord Hermer, has said that “excessive reliance” on Henry VIII powers

“upsets the proper balance between Parliament and the executive”,

and he is right.

Away from matters of constitutional principle, I am especially concerned about the practical impact of such a power, which would allow a future Secretary of State to change the law as set out in the Suicide Act 1961. This is the Act that contains the offence of encouraging or assisting a suicide. Ministers have confirmed that the Bill leaves the offence in place in all cases except where a medical practitioner assists a person to die under its provisions. We must surely therefore not hand the power to a future Secretary of State to weaken or even abolish that offence without the need for primary legislation. My amendment specifies that the Suicide Act cannot be amended in that way.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley recognises that my amendment does not seek to undo or undermine her new clause, but rather to build on it and to ensure that the ban she intends to deliver does not collapse around the loophole at its heart.

[Kim Leadbeater]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point, and there is consensus across the House about banning the advertising of assisted dying services. His amendment, though, would be slightly limited in that it makes just two exceptions. There would probably need to be a broader piece of work on that, but I commit to working with him if he is interested.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Waugh]

The point of my amendment is to make sure that a future Secretary of State would have to come before the House with primary legislation.

Report stage is not about the principles of the Bill. It is not about whether a Member may, in principle, support the idea of assisted dying, as Mr Speaker will point out to everybody who strays from the amendments. It is about the individual Bill before us today. We have to ask: what will it mean in the real world for our very real constituents?

[Danny Kruger]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Paul Waugh]

I will not; I am short of time.

Just how strong are the Bill’s safeguards? We are not commentators; we are legislators. Our job is to scrutinise, to test and to test again the Bills that come to this place. I spent 26 years up there in the Press Gallery writing about politics, but the big difference between them and us is that we have a vote in this place. With that vote, particularly a free vote, comes responsibility, and there is no greater responsibility than protecting the vulnerable from feeling they have to end their life. That is why I tabled the amendment.

I am not driven by religion, though I do not believe that those with religious faiths should be denigrated or patronised, as they have been during the passage of the Bill. It is worth saying that some of those who passionately support assisted dying have a faith—a devout faith—that their world view is the right one. I am driven instead by my duty as a legislator to get this Bill right, and by what I see as my moral duty to protect the most vulnerable in society.

I believe that my duty is to protect those who do not have celebrity names or campaign groups behind them—the people who do not get heard, who do not want to be a bother, who do not want to make a fuss, and who feel at the end of their lives that they are a burden on their family but may never say so. I worry about the unheard, the unseen, the ignored and the marginalised. Most of all, I worry about the heartbreaking modesty of that phrase we often hear from older people: “I don’t want to be any trouble, love.” We need, for their sakes, to make sure that the safeguards in the Bill are the strongest they can possibly be.

[Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

I intend to speak only briefly. We have to be really honest about where we are, and the current situation under the legal status quo is not working. It is failing terminally ill people who want choice, compassion and control at the end of their lives.

Right now, those with the means are travelling abroad to die, often alone, away from their loved ones, without medical support, and when they can physically make it rather than at a time of their choosing. Those without the means face suffering they do not want, or try to take matters into their own hands here in the UK unsafely and illegally. It is not humane, it is not fair and it is not sustainable.

I spent two years as a Minister in the Department of Health, with palliative care and end-of-life care as part of my portfolio, so this matter came across my desk on a regular basis. I have had a lot of time to think about it. It is not easy to find an answer and a solution, but we owe it to people to try to do that. That is why I support the Bill: it brings the issue out of the shadows and into a framework of regulation with safety and dignity.