Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 11th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Lewin]

I am going to make some progress.

This is the first time that I have spoken on this subject, and I want to set out briefly why I have consistently supported choice at the end of life. First, there is the simple principle that, faced with a terminal diagnosis, it should be the right of the individual to choose how they leave this world. If we offer the choice of an assisted death in the circumstances detailed in the Bill, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Dr Prinsley) said in 2024, we will be

“shortening death, not life…This is not life or death; this is death or death.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2024; Vol. 757, c. 1048.]

Our choice is whether we want people to have the choice of a dignified death or to force some people to endure painful and traumatic last moments, as my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Claire Hazelgrove) set out in her astonishing speech.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Andrew Lewin]

I will not at this moment.

My second reason is the medical reality that some conditions are beyond good palliative care. Driving improvements in palliative care should be a moral imperative for all of us in this place, but doing that does not resolve the question before us today. Another doctor, the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans), again speaking in November 2024, said that there are some conditions for which we “cannot provide” good palliative care. He said that for

“the likes of the inoperable neck cancer, eroding away into the carotid artery”,

there is

“no alternative to that terrifying death.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2024; Vol. 757, c. 1070.]

If we fail to pass this Bill, we do so in the knowledge that we are making an active choice to allow people to continue to die in this way, when we know that an alternative is possible.

Finally, I cannot support a status quo in which the state decrees that it knows better than a terminally ill person who has expressed their wish. That is the reality today—people who are dying are denied their wish to end their time on this Earth on their terms. I am voting for this Bill today because I believe in the primacy of the elected House of Commons, and above all because I believe that someone who is terminally ill should not have their last moments dictated to them by the state. Just as in life, in death an individual deserves to choose their own path.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the promoter of the Bill, the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Lauren Edwards). For her, and for the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater), this is a remarkable feat of political endurance; I pay tribute to them for that.

I start by declaring my interest as a registered medical practitioner and an active doctor, but far more importantly, as somebody who has sat by relatives in their final hours and minutes, as many in this Chamber have done. That really has an impact, and is certainly germane to what we are discussing.

Although he is apparently not voting today, the new Prime Minister has said that he wants to improve palliative care before we weigh up this extremely difficult matter, which will affect a relatively small number of people at the end of their life. I do not agree with the Prime Minister on much, but I do agree with him on that. Happily, the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed), who is no longer in his place, agrees with it, too. If I may paraphrase the Prime Minister, I want good palliative care to be available in every postcode. The criticism we have of it in this country right now is that it is not universally available to all. I believe that if it were, many of the considerations that we are deliberating on today would be profoundly altered, and that is one of the reasons why I will not support the Bill today.

[Rachael Maskell]

I led the independent commission on palliative care, and the data shows a worsening of palliative care; 170,000 people do not have access to the care that they need, and even those who are able to access palliative care may not have access to specialist techniques such as neuromodulation and palliative radiotherapy, and to nerve blocks. Does the right hon. Member not recognise that we need to look at the skills available, as well as the access points?

[Dr Murrison]

I certainly do, and I expect that those sort of things were on the mind of the Prime Minister when he made his remarks recently.

The first reason why I will not support the Bill today is that I seriously do not want to live in the kind of society in which the frail, elderly and vulnerable feel coerced into “doing the right thing.” We can set up panels, and involve judges in chambers, social workers and all the rest of it, but as humans, we know how humans work. We know the light side and the dark. Often, the currency that passes between vulnerable adults and their influencers is things that are not said; some of the contributions today have touched on that, and none of it is captured in clause 34.

We know that certain groups particularly like to please, to acquiesce, to oblige. We all know constituents like that, and they are often among the most vulnerable. They are people with Down’s syndrome, and people like the lady who featured in the advert for simple cremations, cited by my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley)—quiet people, if you like. They are among the people who are not adequately protected by this Bill. Can we genuinely say that there would be a level playing field for them? Our first mission in this place must be to protect the most vulnerable.

Speaking of the vulnerable, Canada has seen the most appalling mission creep, particularly into mental health. That is probably why the Royal College of Psychiatrists is so wary of the Bill, and it is in company with the most impressive array of medical, disability and charity groups—count them off! Do not turn a deaf ear to them.

I do not want the tone and texture of my profession, or of any other, to be changed irrevocably by its involvement in termination. Nor do I want others in the NHS or elsewhere in our care system who are unprotected by codes of ethics and opt-outs, and who will not be explicitly protected by the Bill, to feel obliged to be involved in termination. Clause 31 is all very well, but if this Bill passes, the pressure on those in the palliative care sector in particular to facilitate assisted dying will be substantial. Earlier in my career, I considered being an obstetrician; it was a career to which I was attracted, but one of the reasons why I did not take that route was that I did not feel comfortable being involved with a very large part of that practice, which is termination of pregnancy. I feel that this Bill will irrevocably change the nature of palliative services in this country.

The previous Health Secretary pointed out the tedious business of opportunity costs. Five per cent of deaths in Canada, where the law we are debating has been in place for a decade, are now assisted.