Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 29th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

I asked the ear, nose and throat nurse I have worked with for 20 years about assisted dying, and she said it is an essential change. There is no doubt in her mind. Like me, she has seen the unbearable distress that some head and neck cancers cause, and she knows of the very difficult deaths of some of our patients, despite excellent palliative care. It is this experience that has changed my mind. When I was a young doctor, I thought it unconscionable, but now I am an old doctor and I feel sure it is the right change.

I have seen uncontrollable pain, choking and, I am sorry to say, the frightful sight of a man bleeding to death while conscious, as a cancer had eaten away at the carotid artery. It is called a carotid blowout. I know the terrifying loss of dignity and control in the last days of life. I am speaking here of people who are dying, not people living well who have chronic or terminal diseases. We are talking about people at the end of their lives wishing to choose the time and place to die. This is not some slippery slope. We are shortening death, not life, for our patients. This is not life or death; this is death or death.

Coercion and manipulation have been spoken about and are no doubt feared, but the danger of no change to the law is a greater fear for those who are dying and wish to have choice. The very real fear of loss of dignity and control are at the heart of it. Do not underestimate that. There are strict safeguards in this tightly written Bill, and I fervently hope there will be the opportunity to refine them as it progresses.

[Steve Witherden (Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr) (Lab)]

Assisted dying is already occurring in unregulated ways, with up to 650 terminally ill people taking their own lives each year, often in traumatic circumstances, causing additional pain for their loved ones. The Bill promotes freedom of choice at the end of life in a controlled and regulated manner. Does my hon. Friend agree that legal assisted dying would provide essential safeguards where there currently are none?

[Peter Prinsley]

I thank my hon. Friend for that timely intervention. Some may say that we do not have the resources to introduce this change, and many may say that we must invest in palliative care, which of course we must. But I see assisted dying as complementary to, not an alternative to, palliative care.

[Melanie Ward]

My hon. Friend briefly mentioned coercion, and the well-held fears of many of us in the House about the risk of coercion, particularly for vulnerable people. What does he make of the fact that in Washington state, where the relevant law is restricted to terminally ill people like this Bill, last year 59% of those who went through with an assisted death did so because they feared being “a burden” to “family, friends or care givers”? In Oregon, the proportion last year was 43%.

[Peter Prinsley]

I respect my hon. Friend’s report of the statistics, about which I have no further information.

Colleagues know the gravity of the law that we are discussing and might feel that the moral weight of such a change is simply too great to bear; they may fear that our wisdom is insufficient. But I urge us to be brave today and allow the Bill to progress in this new Parliament.

Finally, a prison chaplain told me only this week of a gentle old man he met in prison, serving life for agreeing against every instinct in a last act of love to suffocate his wife, who was dying in uncontrollable agony. We are a compassionate people and we can do much better than that.

[Several hon. Members rose—]