Assisted Dying

Debate between Steve McCabe and Edward Leigh

Monday 4th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Lucy Allan]

My right hon. Friend says that this debate is about suicide, but I wonder whether he has a family member, as I have, who took their own life through suicide, and whether he understands the difference between that and what we are talking about today?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I have not had a family member do that, but we have all encountered friends and relatives who have been under intolerable pressure. Hon. Members have cited examples, and I can do so too.

I simply take a very pro-life point of view. It is not from my religious conviction or my belief that everybody is beautiful and wonderful, however small, however tiny in the womb, however old or frail, how much of a burden they are, whether they are a convicted murder or whether they are one of our military enemies. I take a pro-life view, and I think so much of the misery in the world in the last 100 years has been because people are casual about taking life. Many of the arguments that we hear in favour of assisted dying are based on very appalling, horrible and extreme cases. They are similar arguments to what we heard when we had the initial debates on abortion, with foetal abnormality, rape and all the other things. Then we had abortion on demand, and now we are going to get death on demand. That is what it is all about. All the pressure, particularly on the frail and vulnerable, will be about that.

I want to make a theological point. A friend of mine died in the first months of covid. He died in agony. He died in a part of the country where he was sent out of hospital because the medical profession was panicking. He was not given adequate palliative care and he died in agony. It was appalling. We are all agreed that we are still not doing enough about palliative care. We have to do much more. We have to tell everybody that they have the right to go into a hospice—a right that so many people are not given—and receive the full benefit of modern medical technology to die peacefully and painlessly. For the overwhelming majority of people, if they are given palliative care, it is an option they can enjoy.

I actually watched another friend of mine die. He was my best friend and former colleague in this House. He was dying of terminal cancer; I was sitting beside him and I could see the morphine pumping through his wrists. He died peacefully and painlessly, but I have no doubt that it was the morphine that killed him. Theologically, morally and legally, there is nothing against a doctor helping me to die by pumping morphine into me, even if that is the immediate cause of my death. [Interruption.] I can see people shaking their heads, but I have actually seen it happen. Is there anyone in this room who would blame a doctor who helped someone to die if they were in agony? The doctor was not trying to kill them—they were trying to ease the pain. And in easing the pain by delivering that amount of morphine, that might have hastened their demise.

Let us be realistic about it. Let us try to take a pro-life view, and let us remember—

[Steve McCabe (in the Chair)]

Order. I call Wera Hobhouse.

Neighbourhood Policing: West Midlands

Debate between Steve McCabe and Edward Leigh

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Westminster Hall

[Steve McCabe]

Does it say in the hon. Gentleman’s speech whether he will give way at any point?

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. Calm down. The hon. Gentleman does not have to give way if he does not want to.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve McCabe]

On a point of order, Sir Edward. Is it in order—or, indeed, the custom—for the Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary to read someone else’s speech during a debate?

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Would the hon. Gentleman like to reply to that?

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

There you are.

[Steve McCabe]

I apologise to the hon. Member for Dudley North (Marco Longhi). Can I ask who wrote his speech?

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Are we having a little debate now?

Health and Social Care

Debate between Steve McCabe and Edward Leigh

Monday 13th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve McCabe]

If the coalition survives longer than the hon. Gentleman suggests, does he think that next time round it might be an idea for the Government to have a debate and then produce a Queen’s Speech, rather than producing a Queen’s Speech and then having a debate about what should not be in it?

[Mr Leigh]

That is an interesting argument. I have appended my name to the important amendment to the Queen’s Speech, and we should have a serious debate on the issue. This is not Conservative Members of Parliament obsessing about Europe; this is a real issue for people. It is no longer a dry as dust issue.

In Boston, a seat with a 12,000 Conservative majority, UKIP won nearly every council seat two weeks ago. Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), the people there are not particularly worried about all the details of European legislation, but they are worried about immigration. I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) said in his very measured speech: people in Lincolnshire are not closet racists. They welcome Polish, Lithuanian and Latvian people, but they want their public services to be supported, when, on the coast of Lincolnshire, public services are overwhelmed. Since 2004, 1.1 million have arrived in this country from eastern Europe, and we have to address that issue.