Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Friday 20th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

As we consider whether to put the Bill into law, we must reflect on our solemn duties, as legislators, to protect the wellbeing of our communities and safeguard them from harm. There has been much debate about giving people choice, about what happens in other jurisdictions, and about matters of faith and principle. I have heard from nearly 1,000 constituents, the vast majority of whom oppose the Bill for a range of reasons.

I, too, opposed the Bill on Second Reading, and I set out my concerns, including those of principle, as well as major concerns about safeguarding. As a former children’s services manager with more than 18 years of frontline experience, I believe that, far from issues of safeguarding being improved in Committee, many of the provisions have actually been weakened.

My concerns are similar to those of the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith): the High Court-stage safeguard was removed from the Bill—fundamentally altering the basis on which Members voted on Second Reading—and the panels that replace the Court’s approval and the voluntary assisted dying commissioner who would oversee them are new and untested concepts. They would not have the powers or functions of a court or tribunal, they would not be required to question witnesses and they could not compel them to attend. The doctors who would assess people’s capacity and freedom to choose an assisted death would not give evidence under oath, and nobody would cross-examine them.

The new assisted dying commissioner would run the assisted dying system and, at the time, be responsible for monitoring, investigating and reporting on its work, replacing the role previously given to the independent chief medical officers. The very definition of “terminal illness” has proved to be seriously flawed, because it would allow people with anorexia to qualify once their physical condition deteriorates.

Amendments were tabled in Committee to introduce an enhanced test of a person’s mental capacity to make the choice to die. On Second Reading, hon. Members were assured that the existing law, in the Mental Capacity Act 2005, was tried and tested, yet in February the chief medical officer wrote to the Committee to clarify that there is no enhanced test for life and death decisions under this Act.

The Committee also voted to allow a future Health Secretary to change at will the Act of Parliament that established the founding principles of our NHS—the language that first passed into law in 1946. The NHS was established

“to secure…the physical and mental health of the people of England…and the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illness.”

However, because that does not include assisting people to take their own lives, the Bill, as amended, now contains a power for those foundational words to be changed by secondary legislation.

Following the Committee stage, I chaired a session titled “Committee of the Unheard” to hear from experts who had not been invited to give oral evidence in Committee. We discussed the impact of excluding family and loved ones, as is this Bill’s position. Importantly, the committee allowed us to explore issues around people with disabilities, people from other jurisdictions—specifically Canada—and black, Asian and minority ethnic communities. Had the Committee received that oral evidence, it may well have come to different conclusions.

Finally, the Bill has highlighted the promise of choice. For choice to be real, there must be genuine options to choose from, but what has been highlighted is that palliative care provision is woefully inadequate, and that the worst served are also the most disadvantaged, from the most deprived communities. Worse, should the Bill come into force, the provision of palliative care is likely to be compromised if hospices have no legal right to opt out of assisted dying. No such opt-out is proposed in the Bill.

That brings me back to our role as legislators. The question for us now is this: after all the consideration, can we be satisfied that our duties to protect people’s wellbeing and safeguard them from harm will be fulfilled if we pass the Bill? From everything that I have seen, heard and read, the answer must be no.