Assisted Dying

Debate between Steve McCabe and Robin Millar

Monday 4th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Robin Millar (Aberconwy) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Mr McCabe. I have been contacted by many constituents eager for me to engage on this matter, but I make my contribution also as someone who has experienced the loss of a loved one through suicide and as someone who has witnessed at first hand his mother wrestle with a chronic degenerative disease, Parkinson’s, which ultimately claimed her life.

It seems to me that already in this debate clear positions are emerging. A summary, which I offer humbly for colleagues to consider, is the saying, “We shape the law and the law shapes us”, because on one side I hear arguments for the former, and on the other for the latter. On one side, I hear story after moving story of suffering—not least from the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), whom I thank for introducing the debate—and on the other, I hear concern for the impact that these laws would have on others.

I want to start by just thinking briefly about the importance of language, because today’s debate is looking at the e-petition relating to “assisted dying”, but that is an undefined term, without clear meaning. It does have the attraction of a blank canvas, in that we can ascribe to it whatever meaning we may desire, but it should also give us cause for caution. The proactive ending of one’s own life, by consent or otherwise, in law is suicide—in this case, presumably, by the self-administration of lethal drugs. The House of Commons Library’s own briefing note adopts the term “assisted suicide” in order to reflect the law. Therefore, another title for this debate, which would reflect where we actually start from, might have been, “Debate on e-petition relating to assisted suicide”. I think that this is an important place to start—not to cause offence or distress and not for any obstacle that it may present, but simply because it is where we are. We cannot start in some place yet to be defined, where some may wish us to be one day.

There are many terminally ill people—those without name and number, as my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) said—who want to live and who need to know that society wants them to live. They want and need to feel valued. They need to feel safe. A move towards an assisted suicide society risks introducing an obligation on an individual who is terminally ill to seek or consider an assisted death through lethal drugs, and suggests that it may even be their moral duty to do so. We cannot simply dismiss that unintended consequence. Assisted suicide legislation has the potential to create exactly that powerful counter-narrative of a duty to society or family and loved ones to remove the inconvenience, the burden and the cost. That is not a message I believe we should send or have bound into the fabric of our society through law; nor is it a duty that should bind those in the caring profession, which is driven by the preservation of life.

I say to my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) that the 2020 survey of BMA members that he referred to showed in fact that the majority of those licensed to practise and closest to terminally ill and dying patients—those in palliative care, geriatric medicine and oncology, and GPs—do not support legalisation. As it stands, the best that can be argued is that the BMA’s position is one of neutrality.

It is worth mentioning, in the context of other countries —for example, Belgium and the Netherlands have been mentioned—that there was in fact no growth in services per 100,000 of population in Holland from 2012 to 2019. That must be a concern for all. It is also important to note the context, and the context must include reference to the fact that Holland has approved plans—

[Steve McCabe (in the Chair)]

Order. I call Joanna Cherry. [Interruption.] Sorry, I mean Christine Jardine. My sincere apologies—I will get these glasses fixed. I call Christine Jardine—my apologies.