Dignity in Dying

Rachel Hopkins Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

I thank the hon. Lady very much for her intervention. It must be the case, and I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) will agree, that all Members of Parliament will be following what happens in Scotland with the greatest possible care. It is an issue that, wherever we stand on the debate, greatly exercises Members of the House of Commons.

I wish to draw colleagues’ attention to the process envisaged by the Scottish Parliament for a debate on this issue. A proposal has been lodged in the Parliament and the initial consultation will close in two weeks’ time. In the new year there will be an analysis of the responses to the consultation, which will feed into the drafting of the Bill. Once drafted, the Bill will be examined in detail by Select Committees, calling for evidence from stakeholders across society. Only once that pre-legislative scrutiny has been completed will the legislation be debated on the floor of their Parliament.

Here in this House we lack anything like such a comprehensive system. Our system for considering private Members’ legislation is entirely inadequate when debating such an important issue. The Government have rightly determined that it should be neutral on the principle of assisted dying, but I invite my hon. Friend the Minister to recognise that neutrality on the legislative process, rather than on the principle, has the effect of siding with the status quo. A refusal to facilitate the debate is a de facto opposition to law change.

Finally, I will ask the Minister some questions about specifics of how the laws in neighbouring jurisdictions would work together. As she will no doubt be aware, the General Medical Council, the Nursing and Midwifery Council and other healthcare regulators operate on a UK-wide basis. Can she confirm that if either Jersey or Scotland were to legalise assisted dying, any health and care professional who participated in and followed the requirements of that law would not face prosecution?

The Minister may also be aware that the issue of conscientious objection has previously been treated as a reserved matter by the Scottish Parliament. It should be common ground that, whatever our view on assisted dying, health and care professionals should not have to actively participate in the practice if they believe it contravenes their conscience and beliefs. I understand that the Government’s position is that conscientious objection is in fact already within the competence of the Scottish Parliament: can she confirm to the House that that is the case, and to what extent any legislation on conscientious objection in the Scottish Parliament would contravene the devolution settlement or require the approval of the UK Government?

Finally, I ask the Minister to update the House on the work commissioned by the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), to be undertaken by the Office of National Statistics on the number of terminally ill people who end their own lives by suicide. All of us in this House wish to tackle and reduce the number of suicides, attempted suicides and incidents of self-harm, but in order to do that, it is imperative to understand why many people take that most desperate decision.

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. As a fellow member of the all-party parliamentary group on choice at the end of life, is this not fundamentally about enabling everyone to have a good death—be it through palliative care, if that is their wish, or the choice of an assisted death? It is a matter of choice at the end of life. Does he agree?

[Mr Mitchell]

I very much agree with what the hon. Lady says. She has thought about this very carefully. We all want to see choice extended wherever possible in our daily lives, and she is right in what she says.

Many colleagues and former colleagues, including Lord Field of Birkenhead, have changed their mind on assisted dying, whether informed by their constituents or by their personal experience. This House is in a very different place from when this issue was last voted on, more than six years ago. I am afraid that we as a House will continue to find ourselves running to catch up with the public view on this unless a serious process for consideration of this issue is put in place.