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Assisted Dying Bill Passes: How Did We Get Here? || SLP552 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_16: Let today not be a vote for despair, but the start of a proper debate about dying well, in which we have a better idea than a state suicide service, in which we remember that we have intrinsic value, that real choice and autonomy means having access to the best care possible and the fullest control over what happens to you while you live.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_16: That true dignity consists in being cared for to the end.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_16: Thank you.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_12: But that argument did not hold sway, and 330 were in favour of this legislation, 275 against.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_12: I'm surprised that we held out against this pagan practice for so long.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_12: We've been doing you do you for decades, and really assisted dying is just you do you done to death.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_12: Hi, I'm Glenn from Speak Life.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_12: We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_12: Well, it has passed.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_12: The terminally ill adult's end-of-life bill has passed, with a majority of 330 voting in favor of it in this free vote in Parliament versus 275 against.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_12: What does it mean?
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_12: I think it means the overturning of an ethic of love in favor of an ethic of autonomy.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_12: It's a preference of the right to choose over the sanctity of life.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_12: It means a regressive step towards pagan societies rather than an affirmation of our Christian heritage.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_12: And it means that the most vulnerable among us are exposed to a cruel world in which autonomy, choice, sovereignty, competence, strength rule, and the protections of the right to life are eroded.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_12: How did we get here?
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_12: Well, we're going to have a look at the debate in particular.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_12: We're going to have a look at Kim Ledbeater and her speech in proposing the legislation.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_12: We're going to see Danny Kruger and his speech in opposing the legislation.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_12: We're going to see Tim Farron and his speech.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_12: And then at the end, I'm just going to reflect for a minute on where we go from here.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_12: But let's see how things unfolded today in Westminster.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_12: We're not going to watch all of the speeches in their entirety, but I'm going to pull out some of the salient features of both speeches, Kim Leadbeater and then Danny Kruger.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_12: But here is how Kim Leadbeater introduces the Terminally Ill Adult's End of Life Bill.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_09: Thank you, Mr.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_09: Speaker.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_09: And thank you to everyone who is attending this hugely significant debate today.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_09: It is a privilege to open the debate on the Terminally Ill Adults End of Life Bill.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_09: A piece of legislation which would give dying people under very stringent criteria choice, autonomy, and dignity at the end of their lives.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_09: I welcome this debate on this hugely important issue, and I beg to move that the bill be read a second time.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_09: And let me say to colleagues across the House, particularly new colleagues, I know that this is not easy.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_09: It certainly hasn't been easy for me.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_09: But if any of us wanted an easy life, I'm afraid we're in the wrong place.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_12: Later on in her speech, she says this.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_12: Stories are the first thing that Kim Ledbeater wants us to consider, and there's something good about that, and there's something that might skew the debate at that point.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_12: What's good about it is that we are story-driven creatures.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_12: We're often saying that here at Speak Life.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_12: We are creatures of the imagination, and our imagination is captivated by a world that is presented to us through narratives.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_12: Stories rule as we assess this world.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_12: We have to look at the world through the grid of a narrative that orients us to what is highest and what is lowest and what the hero's journey might be for each one of us.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_12: Stories are absolutely crucial.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_12: Stories are also helpful in shining a spotlight on the end of life, and I'm very grateful actually to both sides thinking hard about the end of life because we are a culture that does not see death.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_12: Usually the end of life is a medicalized and institutionalized process in modern 21st century life in which people die out of sight and out of mind.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_12: Grandad does not die at home, and his body is not laid out on the dining table so that we can all have a wake.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_12: In 2024, grandad dies in an institution and the body is not really seen, and the funeral is often a celebration far away from the coffin.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_12: We certainly don't have open coffins, open caskets nowadays.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_12: That's not a very common thing, at least not in England in the year 2024.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_12: And quite often, even the crematorium service, and notice crematorium over burial, even the crematorium service is often held to one side for just a small coterie of friends and family, while the rest have a celebration of the life rather than a facing of death.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_12: And so actually, this debate, whether someone is speaking in favor of this bill or against this bill, having us think about death is a really good thing.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_12: As Moses says in Psalm 90, teach us to number our days so that we might get a heart of wisdom.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_12: We need to be wise.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_12: And unless we're facing our own mortality, we cannot be wise.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_12: And so it's a very good thing that we're being told these stories as really uncomfortable as they are.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_12: The next question is what do we do with those stories?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_12: We're about to hear some very painful stories, some very distressing stories about the end of life.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_12: What do we do about that?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_12: Well, in a culture that is not used to death, we want to have a bespoke death.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_12: We want to have a death that is painless.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_12: We want to have a death that is clean and simple and straightforward and suffering free.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_12: Unfortunately, death is not like that.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_12: Even a sister dying is not like that.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_12: We'll see that in a second.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_12: Our response generally to the fear of the unknown, because we are not staring at death very often, is to take back control.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_12: That is always the anxious response.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_12: If you're not ready for something, you want to take back control and do it on your own terms.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_12: But that is not always the wise decision.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_12: The wiser course is to stare these stories square in the face and to understand them and to understand that we too will walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_12: But wisdom requires facing that reality and putting our hand into the hand of the good shepherd who knows the way through.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_12: Wisdom is not trying to avoid the valley, trying to be beamed up out of the valley.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_12: No one gets to be beamed up out of the valley.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_12: Even Jesus went through, and in fact, he went through at its darkest point.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_12: Living wisely is not about avoiding death or even avoiding the uncertainties and the pain of death.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_12: Real wisdom means learning how to walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_12: But I'm very glad for these stories, whether they're told by someone in favor of this bill or against this bill, let us as a nation learn wisdom by numbering our days rightly.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_12: That's what's good about stories.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_12: What is distorting about stories is if the only stories that are heard are stories of the individual on their deathbed, and not about society more generally, not about invisible victims, not about invisible vulnerable people out there for whom stories are more difficult to tell.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_12: And that's why having only one story to tell, the story of the individual in pain on their deathbed, that story will distort our view of the whole if we're not telling society-wide stories, if we're not telling the story of the vulnerable who are invisible.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_12: But let's hear these stories.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_12: They are important to hear.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_09: Warwick was married to his wife Anne for nearly 40 years.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_09: She had terminal peritoneal cancer, which meant she couldn't breathe properly.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_09: She spent four days gasping and choking, remaining awake throughout, despite being given the maximum dose of sedatives, and eventually died of suffocation.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_09: She had begged Warwick to end her life, but as he stood over her with a pillow, he could not do what she asked, because he didn't want that to be her final memory of him.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_09: Anne had excellent palliative care, but it simply could not ease her suffering.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_09: Tim fell in love at first sight when he met his wife Louise.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_09: He proposed after just three days, but Louise got cancer twice, and at the end, the morphine simply could not control her pain.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_09: In desperation, she smashed, she managed to smash a small glass bottle and tried to take her own life, not realizing that her toddler daughter had got into bed with her.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_09: Tim found her.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_09: He says, You get to a point where you stop praying for a miracle and start praying for mercy.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_12: I've been there with loved ones.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_12: I've been there with loved ones where I've prayed for a miracle, prayed for a miracle, prayed for a miracle, and then prayed, Father, just take them, just take them, just take them.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_12: That's an incredibly human situation to be in.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_12: I'm very glad in the case that I'm thinking of with a loved one that the Lord did not take my loved one at that time.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_12: But if the principle becomes enshrined in law, that someone has gotten to an intolerable state and everyone around them doesn't know what to do and just thinks death would be better.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_12: If the principle is enshrined in law, then it's not just adults at the end of life who have a right to access that.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_12: Innumerable people become eligible for suicide at that point.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_12: And what I'm unclear about in all these stories that Kim Ledbeater reads out is whether each of these people qualify under the conditions of her bill, and if any of them fail to meet the conditions of her bill, then what she is making an argument for is not her bill.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_12: What she's making an argument for is suicide rolled out more generally to the population.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_12: And that's deeply, deeply concerning.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_12: But it's also really important to hear these stories.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_12: We need to hear these stories, we need to face death as the enemy that it is.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_12: One Corinthians chapter 15 calls death the last enemy.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_12: It is a dragon.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_12: And it is horrible.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_12: And we should all be deeply troubled by these stories and rage against that dragon called death.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_12: It's just that the answer to that dragon death is not suicide.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_12: The answer to that dragon death is a dragon slayer who, having risen again from the dead, becomes a shepherd to shepherd you through a lot of pain and darkness and suffering in that valley of the shadow.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_12: But he is the way through.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_12: Taking back control is not the way through.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_12: Surrendering to one who knows the way, that is the way through.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_09: Former police officer James waved his mum off as she embarked on her final trip to Dignitas.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_09: She had terminal vasculitis.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_09: James desperately wanted to accompany his mum and hold her hands during her final moments.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_09: But he knew because of his job as a police officer it was just not possible.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_09: Indeed, she insisted he must not go with her.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_09: So she went alone.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_09: No one to hold her hand, no proper goodbye or funeral.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_09: These are just a few examples of the heartbreaking reality and human suffering which far too many people are experiencing as a result of the status quo.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_09: And the public know this.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_09: Mr.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_09: Speaker, I've always been keen to ensure that my politics stays rooted in the world beyond Westminster.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_09: And it's clear that public opinion is very much in favour of a change in the law.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_09: Polling shows consistently that around 75% of people would like to see the legalization of assisted dying for terminally ill, mentally competent adults.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_12: So she's moved on from stories to statistics, and as Danny Kruger will say, um, though those statistics are very contested.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_12: The majority of people, when asked about assisted dying, aren't then able to explain what assisted dying is.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_12: A great number of people just think it means ceasing life-saving care, and they're not really aware that it's the doctor giving the patient the means by which they commit suicide.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_12: And I use that word, even though it will not do well in the algorithm, and YouTube might well suppress this video because I use that word.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_12: But the suppression of that word is a problem because it means we are not staring full in the face of what this bill is proposing.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_12: It's an assisted dying bill, actually it's a physician-assisted suicide bill.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_12: We don't want to use that term, but that is what it is.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_12: And the use of words, whether it's in the bill or whether it's in surveys, really matters, and people's support or otherwise of this measure goes up and down depending on what language is used.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_12: And I think it's important to tell stories and to face the end of life, which can be intolerable suffering for people.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_12: I think it's also important to face what is the alternative, which is physician-assisted suicide.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_12: So even though surveys speak of a majority of people who absolutely are in favour of assisted dying, when it is explained, those figures are very different.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_12: And a majority of palliative care doctors are against such legislation, and a coalition of 350 disability groups have come out against this legislation.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_12: There is not one UK-based disability group that has come out in favour of this bill.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_12: Not one.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_12: Those statistics are also important.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_12: Kim Ledbeater goes on.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_09: These findings are significant, but it may not be that surprising that most people believe, as I do, that we should all have the right to make the choices and decisions we want about our own bodies.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_09: And let's be clear, we are not talking about a choice between life or death.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_09: We are talking about giving dying people a choice of how to die.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_12: It's a choice that changes things for everyone, such that it is not just the person who chooses assisted dying who is making a choice.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_12: If you refuse to commit suicide at that point, this legislation means you have also just made a choice.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_12: You have chosen your suffering.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_12: And you have chosen to extend your life, and therefore you have chosen perhaps to be a bed blocker in an NHS that really needs beds to be freed up, and you have chosen to cling on to life when there are others who might inherit your estate who are out there, and this is all now a choice.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_12: This legislation does not just mean that a choice for death is given to the few, it is that a choice for life or death is now the obligation of all.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_12: It's a massive change.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_09: So, Mr.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_09: Speaker, let us examine what that choice currently looks like.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_09: I do not have a legal background, but I've always been driven by a strong sense of injustice.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_09: If I see a problem, I will do everything I can to try and solve it.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_09: Indeed, in this job, we all do that every week and every day, whether here in Parliament or in our constituencies.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_09: And when four former directors of public prosecutions, including the Prime Minister, and two former presidents of the Supreme Court, and many lawyers, all agree that the law needs to change.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_09: Surely, Mr.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_09: Speaker, we have a duty to do something about it.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_09: Intentionally helping another person to end their life is currently illegal under the Suicide Act 1961 and carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_09: This includes family and friends helping someone who is terminally ill to die, both in the UK and overseas.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_12: And what the law is trying to do there is to preserve the sanctity of life and to say to every distressed person, no matter who they are and what circumstances they find themselves in, please do not despair, and please do not make decisions based in despair.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_12: You belong to us, you are ours, we want you.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_12: Even if you do not want to live.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_12: That is what that legislation is all about.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_12: This would overturn that legislation, it would also overturn that message to society, that every single member of society is ours, and we want them no matter what.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_12: Even if they don't want themselves, we want every member of this society.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_12: This legislation would overturn that message.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_12: Kim Ledbeater then addresses the issue of a coercion, which is something that opponents of the bill are very much concerned about.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_12: I think this question frames things really interestingly.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_12: Not just the coercion that a family member might place on the terminally ill person, but a societal kind of coercion.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_12: It's put well.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_14: I really appreciate my honourable friend giving way and have the deepest respect for my honourable friend, but one thing that really concerns me is societal or systemic coercion.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_14: Elderly people in our society pay thousands of pounds per month at the moment to be in care homes.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_14: What reassurances can my honourable friend give me that a person, an elderly person in a care home was being given six months to live, won't privately feel themselves, I'm a burden, I've been given six months to live.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_14: If I'm in my life now, I can save my family between£25,000 and£55,000.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_14: It really concerns me.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_09: Well, again, as I've said already, at the moment we have no idea whether that person would take action because we're not having those conversations.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_09: We're putting this out into the open, getting two medical professionals involved, getting a high court judge involved.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_09: And actually, evidence from other jurisdictions shows very clearly that coercion tends to happen the other way.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_09: What tends to happen is families are saying to the person who might really, really feel that they want to take the choice of an assisted death, they try to stop them from doing it.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_12: Apparently, we don't know whether vulnerable people will feel so much of a burden that they will um take their own lives against their own better judgment.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_12: Apparently, we don't know this.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_12: But we should apparently proceed with this legislation and bring that out into the open and see what happens.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_12: That doesn't sound to me uh very safe.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_12: Kim Lebeda then addresses the issue of whether assisted suicide is an alternative to palliative care, and she says, no, that's a false dilemma.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_09: And of course, assisted dying is not a substitute for palliative care.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_09: It is not an either-or.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_09: We have some of the best palliative care in the world in this country, and when it can meet the norms of to uh the needs of terminally ill people, it is second to none.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_09: But surely, when it cannot, the choice of an assisted death should be one component of a holistic approach to end-of-life care.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_12: One component of a holistic approach means that a medical practitioner will say to a terminally ill person, as a therapeutic option, would you like to kill yourself?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_12: We can help.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_12: That that's actually what's being said there.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_12: What's actually being said is as part of a holistic offering to the terminally ill, we should say, here is here here are your three options.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_12: We've now got a fourth option, you could kill yourself and we could help.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_12: What do you think?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_12: Is that holistic or is that opening a door where we do not want to go?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_12: At this point, an MP raises the issue of Belgium.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_12: And isn't Belgium an example of a jurisdiction in which there's a tightly delimited space in which assisted dying can happen?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_12: That tightly delimited space gets elastically expanded and elastically expanded.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_05: Can I remind the Honourable Lady in particular of Belgium?
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_05: Where it started off with a simple project like the Honourable Gentleman Lady is referring to today, but then deteriorated to and expanded to dementia and under 18 children.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_05: So what guarantees have we that this legislation today will not end up as it will in Belgium, in which case anything goes?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_05: Is that the Honourable Lady?
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_05: Is that what the Honourable Lady really wants?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_05: I don't want it, does she?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_09: The Honourable Member for his intervention.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_09: But look, let's be very, very clear.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_09: Uh huge amount of research has been done by the Health and Social Care Select Committee, and indeed by myself and others.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_09: The model that has been proposed here is nothing like happens in Belgium.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_09: It is nothing like happens in Canada.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_09: It is strict, stringent criteria.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_09: And if the House chooses to pass this bill, that criteria cannot be changed.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_12: Perhaps the criteria of this bill cannot be changed, but once you've enshrined in law the right to suicides, then everyone else has a human rights case to make that's, well, why can't I qualify?
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_12: If if I've got twelve months to live rather than six months to live?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_12: And why do I have to be terminally ill in order to access this?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_12: Do I not have a human right to suicide?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_12: If this group has it, why cannot I have it?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_12: She might be right that this bill cannot be changed, but this bill introduces into law a new state of affairs that means there will be human rights challenges in order to expand the circle, expand the circle, expand the circle.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_12: And why wouldn't Belgium happen here?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_12: So more questions happen along the way, and then Kim Ledbeater gets back to her speech here.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_09: So coming back to palliative care, Mr.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_09: Speaker.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_09: In those situations where pain simply cannot be managed, the result is deaths which are so horrific that the person themselves can spend hours and in some cases days in unimaginable pain as they die.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_12: It's worth saying that that is also the case even with physician-assisted suicide.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_12: So in the US, in states like Oregon, where physician-assisted suicide happens, it can sometimes take hours and days for the same medication to end life to take effect.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_12: The National Library of Medicine in the US has published a document called The Efficacy and Safety of Drugs Used for Assisted Dying, and it is sobering reading.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_12: It says, of cases with available data in Oregon since 2001, time from drug ingestion to death has ranged from one minute, too short for the cause to have been oral drugs, to 108 hours.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_12: We want to take back control of the dying process, but even when we try our best to do that, we are simply not in control of these things.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_12: It turns out we are not actually in control, and there is no legislation on planet Earth that can make us in control of this journey through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_12: Kim Ledbeater continues.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_09: And for their loved ones, no matter how many joyful and happy memories they have, they also have the trauma which comes from watching someone you love die in unbearable agony and fear.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_09: And that memory stays with them forever.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_12: Is that trauma lessened or Increased when it is at your own hand that your loved one then dies.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_09: Rebecca's mum, Fiona, developed metastatic brain cancer at the age of 69.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_09: She had very good palliative care.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_09: But her pain could not be managed, and she died begging and screaming for assistance to end her suffering.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_09: Her family and the medical team treating her cried beside her bedside as it took her 10 days to die.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_09: Lucy's husband Tom was 47, a music teacher with a young son.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_09: He had bile duct cancer, which obstructed his bowel, resulting in an agonizing death.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_09: Tom vomited fecal matter for five hours before he ultimately inhaled the feces and died.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_09: He was vomiting so violently that he could not be sedated and was conscious throughout.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_09: Lucy pleaded with the doctors to help.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_09: The doctor treating him said there was nothing he could do.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_09: His family say the look of horror on his face as he died will never leave them.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_09: Lucy now has PTSD, which is quite common for families who lose loved ones in such harrowing circumstances.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_12: These are such tragic stories.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_12: Really, really hard to listen to, but important for everybody to listen to.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_12: As Danny Kruger will say, there are such stories that must rest on the consciences of those who vote no to this legislation.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_12: There are other stories that must rest on the consciences of those who would vote yes.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_12: But it is important to hear these stories.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_12: And I do not want to censor them for a second.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_09: I have been astonished by the number of people who have been in touch with me to tell me about their terminal ill loved ones who have starved themselves to death out of desperation.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_09: Something which takes far longer than you may imagine and is just horrific for everyone involved.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_09: And this is currently legal, and doctors are required to assist the patient through this agonizing process.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_09: How can we allow this but not a compassionate and humane assisted death?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_12: Certainly the law needs to be looked at, but um, is killing the answer to these questions?
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_13: I started the debate where she is just now, and she mentioned stories.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_13: The things that have moved me in this debate to opposing this bill today is that I've also heard stories of disabled people who have had do not resuscitate put onto their medical records without their permission, of them being stopped by strangers in the street and being told you would be better off dead.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_13: And I know she will say that we are dealing and voting today on the specifics of our bill, but we're also voting on a principle.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_13: And would she agree with me that um there should be a precautionary approach to this?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_13: And does she honestly believe that the process of this is giving us the time to be sure that we would be making the right decision?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_13: Great question.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_09: The Honourable Member for his intervention, and um I will come on to some of those points further in my speech.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_09: But let's be very clear the title of the bill is Terminally Ill Advertising.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_09: It is not disabled people, it is not elderly people, as someone else referenced.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_09: The criteria are very, very clear.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_12: The criteria are clear for this bill, but this bill, if brought into law, becomes the case by which other cases then get judged and there then becomes a precedent that others make claims upon.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_09: And I come back to the status quo, which is the problem that we're trying to address.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_09: If you want to avoid the trauma of some of the harrowing circumstances I've described, you can have an assisted death, just not in this country.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_09: If you have 10 or 15,000 pounds, you can make the trip to Switzerland or elsewhere.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_09: But because of the current legal position, it is often a deeply distressing and very lonely experience, shrouded in secrecy, with people feeling like criminals as the fear of prosecution hangs over them.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_09: Ilana's husband Crispin had late-stage MND.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_09: He was paralysed, and Ilana is a wheelchair user herself.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_09: But at his request, she took him on what was a traumatic and difficult journey to Switzerland.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_09: She describes the intense stress and anxiety she felt due to the total secrecy of their plan.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_09: And we can only imagine what the journey home was like.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_09: On her own, with an empty seat beside her.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_09: And of course, Mr.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_09: Speaker, there are those terminally ill people who take matters into their own hands.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_09: Gareth's father Norman served in the Welsh Guards.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_09: He was a strong man, but his final five years were full of pain and discomfort.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_09: He had prostate cancer, which he lived with for 15 years.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_09: He was given good initial hormone therapy and chemo, but the cancer spread everywhere, and the pain could not be eased.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_09: And one day, when it all became too much, he went into his garden with the gun he owned and shot himself.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_09: Gareth's sister rushed to his house and found him.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_09: Gareth said his father just wanted the pain to stop.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_12: That is a truly tragic story.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_12: But if that man for fifteen years had had a terminal diagnosis, it seems like that on the legislation that Kim Leadbeater is proposing, that he would be in the vulnerable position of being a man with a terminal condition who was also suicidal.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_12: Are we saying that for those fifteen years he's in the position of feeling understandably suicidal?
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_12: And yet he's in a category of person for whom the answer to that question is, how can I help you commit suicide?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_12: Because if he did not have a terminal diagnosis, then he would be in a different category in society, in which if somebody is feeling suicidal, we just do everything in our power to help that person to have hope.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_12: And we disagree with their assessment that they would be better off dead.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_12: We disagree with them because of love, and love does not allow them to make that choice.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_12: But if he is in the category of someone with a terminal illness, then suddenly his suicidality means that one of the options that we offer him on the menu are, well, if you are feeling suicidal, here are some drugs, how can I help?
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_12: Which is not the way we treat the suicidal in the rest of society, and thank God for that.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_12: Thank God we have.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_12: Beachy Head Chaplaincy, you know, here in Eastbourne, there is a suicide prevention charity staffed entirely by Christians.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_12: They are giving care 365 days a year, and for the last 20 years, they have offered 15,000 interventions for people who go up to this very popular spot for suicide.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_12: And in all of those 15,000 encounters, never do you approach someone seeking to end it all and say, Well, have you considered maybe that we could help you with that decision?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_12: This legislation means that anyone who is both suicidal and has a terminal diagnosis, they are outside of the category of help.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_12: We place them in an even more vulnerable position.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_12: Because currently our posture towards the suicidal person is to do everything in our power to tell them your life is worth it even if you don't think your life is worth it.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_12: And we must say that to the suicidal.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_12: That is the position of compassion.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_12: But if on top of their suicidality they have a terminal illness, we take them out of that sphere of compassion and we listen to the suicidal tendency within them and we honour that choice in a way that we wouldn't honour the person on top of a clifftop.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_12: A terminal illness with this legislation puts somebody in a doubly precarious position.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_12: It takes away from them the protections that we've given to the suicidal.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_12: Kim Ledbeater continues.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_09: And there is Peter from Murfield in my own constituency.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_09: Peter stopped me in a car park a couple of weeks ago to tell me the harrowing story of his beloved wife, who was diagnosed with metastatic cancer, aged 52.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_09: The treatment was ineffective and her symptoms were unbearable.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_09: She took an overdose of her medication and Peter found her and took her to the hospital.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_09: She recovered and he brought her home.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_09: But the following day, she made another attempt to take her own life, in a way which is too awful to describe.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_09: Peter found her dead, and he spent the next eight hours being questioned by the police.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_09: It's estimated that over 600 terminally ill people take their own lives every year.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_09: Often patients will store up medication.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_12: Around 6,000 people in England and Wales tragically take their own lives every year, if this figure is correct, then 10% of that number have a terminal diagnosis.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_12: Do we want to live in a society where 90% of those who are suicidal we talk out of and 10% of such people we facilitate?
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_12: Does that make any logical sense?
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_12: Would that make any pastoral and practical sense?
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_12: I don't think so.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_09: 33-year-old Josh from Huddersfield went to coach his local kids' rugby team one Saturday and came back to tell his mum all about it.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_09: He found her dead.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_09: Lisa, who was terminally ill, had stored up her medication and taken her own life.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_09: And of course, there is our former colleague Paul Blomfield, the previous MP for Sheffield Central, who has campaigned tirelessly on this issue since his dad, Harry, took his own life alone in his garage in 2014 after being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_09: And language matters.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_09: Harry was not suicidal.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_09: He loved life.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_09: But he had watched too many of his friends have lingering, degrading deaths, and he did not want that for himself.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_09: But like the others, he couldn't tell Paul and his family of his plan, as they would have been complicit and could face prosecution.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_09: And how many precious days and weeks did Harry miss out on as a result of having to take action while he was still physically able to do so?
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_12: Making others complicit is a really interesting question because even if you take legal prosecution out of the equation, there is still complicity, even if it's just moral and social complicity.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_12: The doctor is complicit in the death, and family members who are arranging for this are also complicit in it.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_12: You might take out legal prosecution in these cases, but other hands are at play in the intentional killing of another human being.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_12: I don't think you eliminate complicity by simply eliminating the possibility of legal prosecution.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_12: There are still people who have to live with the decisions that they've made.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_12: We don't live alone and we don't die alone.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_12: And that's one of the problems with these arguments is that they are incredibly individualistic when actually they involve others in the family, others in the medical profession, and others in society more broadly.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_09: If this bill were to become law, it contains the most robust and strongest set of safeguards and protections in the world.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_09: There are very strict eligibility criteria and multiple layers of checks and safeguards embedded in the bill, none of which exists at the moment, as we have seen.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_09: I made a very conscious decision to name the bill Terminally Ill Adults End of Life rather than anything else.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_09: That title can never be changed, and it ensures it is only adults who are dying that would ever come within its scope.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_09: As such, this bill is not about people who are choosing between life and death.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_09: It is about giving dying people who have got six months or less to live autonomy about how they die and the choice to shorten their death.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_09: The bill does not apply to people with mental health conditions, it does not apply to the elderly, it does not apply to people with chronic health conditions, and it does not apply to disabled people.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_09: Unless, of course, they have a terminal illness, in which case they would and should be entitled to the same rights as anyone else.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_12: Except that terminally ill is a phrase that is elastic and could be applied to, for instance, a 20-year-old with anorexia.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_12: And on top of that, admitting this into law makes this a precedent which can be used by others who want further access to this right, this right to be able to take your own life.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_09: There are different views within the disabled community.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_09: As Professor of Disability Research Sir Tom Shakespeare says, it's unacceptable that people with disabilities continue to face social stigma and inequalities.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_09: However, it would be a mistake to conclude that we should oppose legalizing assisted dying for terminally ill people until those wider problems are fixed.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_09: It is paternalistic and wrong to imply that inequalities will be resolved by reducing choices.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_09: A clear, transparent legal framework for end-of-life choice is better for everyone.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_09: He is right.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_12: A coalition of 350 disability groups have come out against this bill.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_12: I'm not aware of any UK-based disability group who is in favour of this bill.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_12: That should be weighed in the balance.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_12: At this point, an interjection is made about whether we are thinking far too individualistically and should not think uh of more society-wide implications.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_03: My concern is that she has focused today on the individual and the individual choice.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_03: But we are here to legislate for society as a whole.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: And in legislating, what we are saying if we pass this bill is that this is okay to take that choice.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_03: And there will be some people.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_03: There will be some people who are in that situation with six months of their life to go, who actually will then feel, ought I to do this?
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_03: Is this something that I now should do?
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_03: And it brings into play a whole set of considerations, which are about is it better for my family?
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_03: Is it financially better for my family?
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um in ways that at the moment are out of scope.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_03: So I think rather than simply focusing on the individual suffering, which we all recognize is acute, we must actually broaden it out to the impact that the legislation will have on society as a whole.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_12: I can can very quickly become I should.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_12: Kim Ledbeater talks about the experience of assisted dying in other countries, and then she addresses the question of does this open the door to a slippery slope?
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_09: People talk about a slippery slope, but the Health and Social Care Select Committee found that not one jurisdiction which passed laws on the basis of terminal illness has expanded its scope.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_09: And none of the jurisdictions which have introduced it's absolutely true.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_09: That is absolutely true.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_12: That will become a contested point uh through the debate, but uh let's cut to the conclusion.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_09: This will quite rightly take time, and I've included in the bill a commencement period of up to two years.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_09: This is not going to happen overnight.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_09: But that time frame can be explored at committee stage, as it's more important to get this right than to do it quickly.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_09: So, Mr.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_09: Speaker, in conclusion, for the reasons I have set out, I am very clear that the law needs to change to give terminally ill people choice at the end of life and to protect their loved ones from fear of prosecution.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_09: And Mr.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_09: Speaker, for those of us here today who are lucky enough not to have personal experience of this issue, sadly, we know that any one of us could end up in this heartbreaking situation.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_09: We are all living longer, which is brilliant.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_09: And I've campaigned inside and outside Parliament for a greater focus on prevention and early intervention in terms of illness and disease to keep us fit and healthy for as long as possible.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_09: But any one of us or our loved ones could be unfortunate or unlucky enough to receive a terminal diagnosis.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_09: And I struggle to see how it is fair or just to deny anyone the autonomy, dignity, and personal choice that we might want to take control of our final weeks.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_12: Autonomy, dignity, personal choice.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_12: That's the foundations of the argument.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_09: And the right to choose does not take away the right not to choose.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_09: Giving the choice of an assisted death to those who want it would, of course, not stop anyone who is terminally ill from choosing not to do so.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_12: No, you're right, the right to choose does not stop the right not to choose, but we cannot now choose not to choose, right?
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_12: Now it is a choice to keep on living.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_12: If you receive a terminal diagnosis, if you have six months to live, you have now chosen to live, if you indeed do live, rather than that being the default option that of course you live because you live.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_12: Choice is not just being offered to the person who wants to die, choice is being forced upon the person who wants to live.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_09: Mr.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_09: Speaker, whatever happens today, I'm incredibly proud of the work my fantastic team and the many campaigners have done on this hugely significant, emotional, and sensitive subject.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_09: But we need to be clear.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_09: A vote to take this bill forward today is not a vote to implement the law tomorrow.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_09: It is a vote to continue the debate.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_09: It is a vote to subject the bill to line-by-line scrutiny in bill committee at report stage and at further reading.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_09: And then, of course, the bill will go to the laws for what I have no doubt will be further robust debate and scrutiny.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_09: Mr.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_09: Speaker, this will be a thorough process focused on one of the most significant issues of our time.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_09: An issue that people across the country clearly want us to address, none more so than the many families who are facing the brutal and cruel reality of the status quo.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_09: Today is the beginning, not the end of that process.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_09: But the debate can only continue if colleagues join me in the I lobby today, and I wholeheartedly encourage them to do so.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_09: I beg to move that this bill be submitted.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_12: There we go.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_12: Let's now go to Danny Kruger as he brings the case against the bill.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_16: Thank you very much, Mr.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_16: Speaker.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_16: Thank you very much.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_16: I just don't want to have too much grumbling at the eight-minute moment.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_16: I'll take about 15 minutes and time for intervention.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_16: So may I start by paying tribute to the to the honourable lady for her very powerful speech and indeed for the way that she's led this campaign with great respect and sensitivity, and to use the contested words with great dignity.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_16: And she and I knew each other before we were MPs when we both worked in the charity sector, and I like and admire her greatly, and I know that we have more in common than might appear today.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_16: And Mr.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_16: Speaker, we all have this in common in this House.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_16: We all share a deep concern about the experience of people dying or fearing death, fearing pain and suffering.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_16: And I wear heavily on my conscience the people whose lives will be prolonged beyond their wishes if I get my way and this bill is defeated today.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_16: I will not disregard those people or minimise their anxiety.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_16: And we will hear those voices in today's debate, and we've heard many of them already spoken through honourable members in what I know will be very moving speeches.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_16: But, Mr.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_16: Speaker, if I voted for this bill, I would have on my conscience many more people whose voices we cannot hear.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_16: The people who would be vulnerable in consequence of the huge changes that this bill would induce in our society and in the NHS.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_12: That's the point about stories.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_12: There are some stories that you can tell that are intensely personal.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_12: It's more difficult to tell stories about society-wide implications.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_12: War does not break out in East Asia is not a headline.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_12: War breaks out in East Asia is a headline.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_12: Some stories are more immediately gripping, some stories are more difficult to tell.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_12: Let's make sure we tell every story.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_16: And my view is that if we get our broken palliative care system right and our wonderful hospices properly funded, we can do so much more for all the people that we'll hear about today, using modern pain relief and therapies to help everybody die with a minimum of suffering when the time comes.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_16: But we won't be able to do that if we introduce this new option.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_16: Instead, we will expose many more people to harm.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_12: Assisted dying is really cheap compared to good palliative care.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_12: It's really cheap to offer a one-off drug.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_12: Assisted dying is cheap, love is expensive, life is invaluable.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_16: Mr.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_16: Speaker, I want to go through the bill in a moment, but first a word about process in response to the point made by the honourable lady there.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_16: This bill is simply too big for the time that it's been given.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_16: And I implore honourable members not to hide behind the fiction that it can be amended substantially in committee and in its later stages.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_16: The remaining stages of a private member's bill are for minor tweaks, not the kind of wholesale restructuring that we will need if we're ever to make this bill safe.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_16: And so members who vote for the bill today must be prepared to see it become law largely unamended.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_16: And I suggest that if they do have any doubts, the only responsible choice is to vote no and let the advocates of assisted dying bring back a better bill at another time.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_12: Moving on in the speech, Danid Kruger will say why he thinks that this is unsafe legislation.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_16: Now I recognise how hard the Honourable Lady has worked to uh to try and ensure that it is safe, and I and I don't believe it is for these reasons.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_16: So let's start at the beginning.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_16: The process begins starts with a conversation uh between a patient and a medical practitioner, and not a doctor necessarily, just a medic of some sort, unspecified at this stage.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_16: If the patient tells their ordinary family doctor that uh that they want an assisted death, the doctor is obliged to either explain how it works or to pass them on to someone who'll do it.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_16: Um, which is probably what will happen, by the way, I think, Mr.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_16: Speaker.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_16: The likelihood is that we would see this new branch of medicine spring up, like the medics I met in I met in Canada, one I will in a moment, uh these medics I met in Canada, specialists in assisted death, who personally kill hundreds of patients a year in their special clinics.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_16: And if or moments have a difficulty with the language, then I wonder what they're doing here.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_16: This is the this is what we are talking about, and I met doctors for for whom this is their profession and their job, which they're proud to do.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_12: He said the word kill, he said that doctors kill people, and did you hear the murmur within the chamber?
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_12: Um people cannot actually discuss what this actually is.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_12: They cannot handle simple English language about what is being discussed.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_12: The murmur in the chamber, as Danny Kruger rightly says, is totally inappropriate for those who are legislators.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_12: If you cannot name the thing that you are bringing into law, you have no right to vote on it.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_12: This is about doctors killing people.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_12: Patients, or currently doctors providing patients with the drugs that they can kill themselves, in other words, suicide.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_12: He'll name the word suicide later, and there will be another murmur and protest.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_12: But if we can't name what's going on, why on earth are we voting on it?
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_12: We'll skip on.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_12: Here's another interjection by uh another MP.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_11: Thank the honourable gentleman and uh commend him for the way in which he is engaging in this discussion in the same spirit as the honourable lady uh from Spen Valley.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_11: We often hear that one of the safeguards associated with this bill is that there are medical practitioners involved and that somebody requires a diagnosis of six months or less with a terminal illness.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_11: But does he accept that medicine is not an exact science?
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_11: It is the science of uncertainty blended with the art of probability.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_11: That there is no exactitude in this, and no court will second guess medical opinion, though simply look at process.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_16: I agree with my honourable gentleman.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_16: He's absolutely right, and I'm afraid the definition of terminal illness we'll come to is that is in a sense the essential flaw in this bill.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_16: But I'll I'll come on to that.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_16: Going back to this conversation that the uh patient has with the medical uh practitioner, the crucial thing is that the conversation doesn't need to be started by the patient, according to this bill.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_16: It can be started by the medic, by any medic, perhaps in hospital, who can make the suggestion of an assisted death to a patient who's never raised the issue themselves, whose family haven't suggested it, whose own doctor doesn't think it's the right thing to do.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_16: And so the idea is planted.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_16: And then for whatever reason, and by the way, there's no need ever to give a reason, uh, the patient says they want to proceed with the assisted death, and so they sign a declaration, or rather, somebody else can sign it for them, any professional, uh, someone they don't know, maybe a new medical practitioner, anyway, a total stranger can do all the paperwork on their behalf.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_16: That's what the section about the proxy entails.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_16: And then these two medical practitioners do their assessment.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_16: Happy to give away.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very grateful to the honourable member for the I'm very grateful to the honourable member for giving way.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: I would urge the honourable member to check the wording of the bill because actually, if somebody signs as a proxy, they have to know the individual for two years, and they are simply signing to say that they agree with uh the patient who wishes to go forward with the assisted dying.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_12: A matter of procedure here.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_12: Can this document be signed by someone else other than the patient?
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_12: This will be very, very important, especially for the terminally ill.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_12: Can somebody else sign the paperwork?
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_12: Because very often people on their deathbeds are not able to do this.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_12: Well, the proxy is somebody who apparently needs to know the patient and have known the patient for two years, and that's the contention for those who are in favour of this legislation.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_12: Danny Kruger, though, remembers the legislation saying something different.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_16: Um no time to check the bill, but my memory is that it says someone who someone who knows the patient two years, or someone of good standing in the community, which is some sort of some sort of professional not known to them at all.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_16: Anyway, let's someone could quickly check the bill.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_16: But my understanding is it could be a total stranger to them.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_12: Danny Krueger is indeed correct, as one of his other colleagues points out.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_10: Isn't the matter very clear?
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_10: Uh clause 15, subsection five, in this section, proxy means a person who has known the person making the declaration personally for at least two years, or a person who is of good standing in the community.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_10: So there is no protection, such as pretended by the supporters of this bill.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_10: Well done, Daniel.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_12: Very well said.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_16: Right.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_16: So the the assessments have to uh determine whether the patient is terminally ill, uh whether they have mental capacity to make the decision and then whether they've been coerced or pressured into this uh into the decision.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_16: So let's look at terminally ill.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_16: As I said, this in many ways the whole question turns on this.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_16: I'm afraid this is a term of great elasticity, almost to the point of meaninglessness.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_16: It is well known, as the honourable gentleman said earlier, that it is impossible for doctors to predict with any accuracy that somebody will die within six months.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_16: It is a purely subjective judgment made in this case by a doctor whose job is approving assisted death.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_16: They simply have to determine for themselves, not that it's reasonably certain that death will occur, but it can be reasonably expected.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_16: So basically, it's possible.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_02: I'm grateful to my honourable friend for giving way.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_02: The process of the bill, as I understand it, is to ease suffering and pain with a patient who has a diagnosis who is going to die of the condition which has been diagnosed.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_02: But that right could only be exercised within a six-month period.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_02: The pain could be a lot longer than that, the discomfort could be a lot longer than that.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_02: Has he heard, because I haven't, what is the importance of six months?
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_02: Why not eight?
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_02: Why not ten?
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_02: Why not twelve?
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_02: And what would stop people challenging it on the grounds of the dam has been breached, the six months is entirely arbitrary, and therefore it could and indeed should be extended by negative resolution of a statutory instrument.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_12: Very good question.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_16: It is completely arbitrary, the six months cut off.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_16: It's impossible to determine.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_16: It's simple it's it's a it's a line in the sand.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_16: Uh, and of course it could be challenged, as so much of this bill could be challenged on human rights grounds, because every one of the safeguards, every one of the safeguards that has been introduced by the honourable lady is in fact, in practice, will be a barrier of discrimination against the new human right that has been awarded to one group that should of course be awarded to all, if it's if it's been conceded in this way.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_12: An absolutely key point about the slippery slope.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_12: Let me make three points about the slippery slope.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_12: Um, this legislation is a slippery slope already because we are coming off a paradigm that is a sanctity of life paradigm and onto a quality of life paradigm.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_12: We are moving from a paradigm in which every single member of the human family, while ever they have breath in them, is in the on position and has full rights with their sanctity of life.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_12: We're moving from that position to a dimmer switch position.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_12: It's on or off over here with sanctity of life.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_12: It's dimmer switch with quality of life.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_12: It is already a slippery slope to switch to this paradigm that the legislation opens up to us.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_12: That's the logical point.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_12: The legal point is that as soon as suicide is allowed in this situation, then there is a human rights case to be made that other people who fall outside this particular bill have the same right to be able to take their own lives.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_12: And legally, that is what will happen as more and more people want to claim what is now thought to be a human right to end your own life.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_12: So logically, legally, and then practically, it does indeed seem to be the case in places like Belgium and the Netherlands and Oregon and Canada, that having opened this door, having breached this dam, there is only one way in which the legislation moves.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_12: There's only one way in which society moves once you do this.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_12: Practically speaking, the slippery slope seems to take effect whenever this dam is breached.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_12: Let's continue.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_16: The whole question about the six-month uh cutoff is very important.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_16: Acknowledge all the points that have been made.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_16: But the fact is there's another problem with this definition about terminal illness.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_16: The fact is that almost anybody with a serious illness or disability could fit this definition.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_16: And I recognise that these are not the cases that the honourable lady has in mind for this bill.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_16: Of course they're not, but that's the problem with the bill.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_16: Because all you need to do to qualify for an assisted death for the definition of terminal illness under this bill is to refuse treatment, like insulin if you're diabetic.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_16: Or in the case of eating disorders, and I ref bring in my my honourable lady and I have worked on this, honourable lady and I have worked on this topic together.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_16: In the case of eating disorders, you just need to refuse food, and the evidence is in jurisdictions around the world and our own jurisprudence that that would be enough to qualify you for an assisted death.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_04: Does he accept that every day in the NHS patients refuse treatment and indeed food, and that there is currently oversight legally around coercion, around other things in that?
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_04: And wouldn't, by bringing this legislation in, we'd actually strengthen protections around those areas?
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_04: I'm perplexed by this argument.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_16: The suggestion that there may be coercion, of course there will be, and abuse and all sorts of injustice that go on in the current system does not mean to strike me as an argument for regulating and licensing assisted suicide.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_16: If there is a concern that we have about practice in the NHS, let's deal with that.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_16: Let's not license suicide, which, by the way, again, evidence from around the world, shows increases suicide in the general population.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_16: So suicide is contagious.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_16: And Oregon, which is often pointed to, as an example in this debate.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_16: Suicide outside assisted suicide in order rose by a third since assisted suicide was legalised.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_16: So there's enormous contagious effects if we if we were to regulate and license it in this way.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_12: Suicide is contagious, and the suicides that will happen outside of this legislation will probably increase if this legislation goes through.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_12: But Danny Krueger has used the word suicide earlier.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_12: He used the word kill, and that caused much consternation in the House.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_12: The word suicide will cause much consternation in the House.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_12: Here's how it unfolds.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_16: So um I I explained that pretty much anybody with a serious illness or disability could could could work out how to qualify for this bill uh for for an assisted death under this bill.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_16: And if members think that it's far-fetched, that's what happens everywhere else, that assisted suicide is legal, including in Oregon.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_07: He's using the incorrect language.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_07: It's not suicide, that's offensive.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_07: Please correct your language specifically.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_03: That's not a point of order, don't it?
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_16: I'm grateful for I'm I'm afraid to say, and I'm sorry if offence is given.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_16: The fact is that the value of actually having a bill in black and white is that we do need to see what the law really is.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_16: And that what this bill would do, it would amend the Suicide Act of 1961.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_16: It will allow people to assist with the suicide for the first time.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_16: So I'm afraid that is I mean, I I I respect the Honourable Lady's concerns there, but I'm afraid we do have to use the proper language here.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_12: We have to use the proper language.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_12: If you cannot name what you are legislating, do not legislate it.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_16: Just quickly on this point about the uh the the broad scope.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_16: If you think that people with anorexia or other conditions that we would not regard as terminal couldn't happen here, consider the young people in the UK today who are given a diagnosis of terminal anorexia and put on a palliative care pathway, essentially assigned to death.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_16: And of course these are extreme cases, Mr.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_16: Speaker, but there are a lot I'm not going to give way again.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_16: Um there are a lot of these cases, I'm afraid, and I mention them to show how wide open this bill is.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_12: Extreme cases are relevant.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_12: If we were to think of capital punishment, and we'll see how Diane Abbott raises that question of capital punishment.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_12: One of the key arguments against capital punishment is even if it is effective in preventing murders, even if it is effective in preventing more deaths and more pain in the general population, we tend to think I don't want to put criminals to death because we might have a miscarriage of justice.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_12: And what if we executed someone who's actually innocent?
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_12: And that extreme case makes us incredibly cautious about putting people to death when it comes to capital punishment.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_12: I think extreme cases are absolutely morally salient when we're discussing assisted suicide.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_16: Right.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_16: So that's the medical stage.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_16: I'll just jump jump jump straight to the judicial stage.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_16: The medical practitioners sign it off, and the judge has to confirm all these same tests as well.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_16: And of course, uh many eminent judges have made the point that this would overwhelm the family courts if the if this test was applied properly.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_16: But it won't be, because the bill assumes that judges will fulfil this sort of new inquisitorial role, actually look into cases as investigators, which is entirely unknown in the English common law.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_16: But it won't require any actual investigation.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_16: There's no requirement for the judge to even meet the applicant.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_16: They simply have to have a phone call, or maybe it'll be an email from one of these medics.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_16: That's it.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_16: That's their inquiry.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_16: And on that basis, they must decide if it is more likely or not there's been external pressure.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_16: So the judge approves it, they're required to approve it unless they can find evidence of external coercion.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_16: And so we go to the final act, as the bill says, which is when a junior colleague as a medical practitioner oversees your death by pills or a lethal injection.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_16: And here's the last thing that the bill does or doesn't do.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_16: There is no requirement at any stage of this process, the medical or the judicial stage, for anyone to tell the patient's next of kin or their wider family, or even their GP what is happening, that the NHS and the judicial system are working in secret to bring about the death of their loved one, maybe their father or their daughter.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_16: Now, I say again, these aren't the cases the bill was designed for, but they are directly in scope, and it's going to take more than a tweak in committee to get them out.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_16: Now, is this what is meant by having choice at the end of life?
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_16: Now, let's talk about choice.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_16: I'm often accused of one of the point was made earlier, accused of wanting to impose my view on others.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_16: People say if you don't approve of assisted death, you'll don't have one, but don't deprive me of the choice.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_16: In fact, the evidence is that with this new option and the comparative loss of investment and innovation in palliative care, real choice narrows.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_12: Choice narrows in effect when you offer the very cheapest option, which is assisted dying.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_12: Once that is offered, then that becomes the quick and easy option, and the other options seem less and less like options.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_12: But then also our choices involve other people.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_12: We are social beings.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_16: There is a broader choice point to make about choice, which is that no man or woman is an island.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_16: And just as every person's death, even a good death, diminishes us all.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_16: So we will all be involved and affected if we make this change.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_16: The bill will not just create a new option for a few, but it will uh and leave everyone else unaffected.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_16: It will impose on every person towards the end of their life, on everyone who could be thought to be near death and on their family.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_16: This new reality, the option of assisted suicide, the obligation to have the conversation around the bedside, in whispers in the corridor, is it time?
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_16: And it will change life and death for everyone.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_12: It becomes not an option, it becomes an obligation to have a conversation.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_12: It changes everything for everyone.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_12: The option becomes an obligation.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_12: You must have the conversation about whether you choose to die, but also whether you choose to live, because now just living is a choice that you and your loved ones are making together.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_12: This is changing everything.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_16: Now, coming to the end, Mr.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_16: Speaker, I am very aware of the terrible plight of people begging us for this new law.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_16: I think we can do better for them than they fear.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_16: But we also need to think in real human terms what the effect would be on the choices of other people.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_16: And I don't mean the people who get their who are used to getting their way.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_16: I'm talking about the people who lack agency, the people who know what it is to be excluded from power, have decisions made for them by bigwigs in distant offices speaking a language they don't understand.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_16: The sort of people the Honourable Lady and I both know from our previous charity work, and who we all know from our constituency work.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_16: Not the ones who write to us campaigning for a change in the law, but the people who come to our surgeries with their lives in tatters, or who the police or social workers tell us about, the people with complex needs.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_12: It is one thing to be a capable, competent person agitating for the right to end your own life on your terms.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_12: That is that is one kind of victim in this horrible situation.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_12: But there are so many more invisible victims in this situation who are not competent people who are wisely making choices for the end of their own life.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_12: They're not these autonomous, sovereign individuals.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_12: They are vulnerable.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_12: And when a doctor offers them a therapeutic option that's actually to end their own lives, and when they feel pressure from others and pressure from within themselves, there is all sorts of coercion that is happening on people to end their own lives.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_12: How do we tell their stories?
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_16: What are the safeguards for them?
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_16: And I'll tell you, we are the safeguard.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_16: This place, this parliament.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_16: You and me.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_16: We are the people who protect the most vulnerable in society from harm, and yet we stand on the brink of abandoning that role.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_16: The Rubicon was a very small stream, Mr.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_16: Speaker, but on the other side lies a very different world, a worse world with a very different idea of human value.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_16: The idea that our individual worth lies in our utility, valuable only for so long as we are useful, not a burden, not a cost, not making a mess.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_16: Let's not be the Parliament that authorises that idea.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_16: And I mentioned at the start the voices of those we cannot hear, frail and elderly and the disabled.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_16: And since we are surrounded by such a cloud of witnesses, let us do better than this bill.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_16: Let today not be a vote for despair, but the start of a proper debate about dying well, in which we have a better idea than a state suicide service, in which we remember that we have intrinsic value, that real choice and autonomy means having access to the best care possible and the fullest control over what happens to you while you live.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_16: That true dignity consists in being cared for to the end.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_16: Thank you.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_12: Now, just before I conclude, let's just hear uh Tim Farron's speech.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_12: He's a friend of the show, he's been on the on the channel before, and I've been on his channel.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_12: And uh let's hear what he says into this situation.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_15: The motives of those proposing this bill are grounded in compassion.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_15: And in the heat of this debate, I want to seriously acknowledge this, particularly in the person of the honourable member for Spen Valley, who has conducted herself with great dignity throughout this.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_15: Neither side has a monopoly on compassion.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_15: I personally will always be affected by watching my mum suffer at her death at the age I am now.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_15: So let us not think badly of one another's motives, let us instead be courteous and let us be curious.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_15: My opposition to this bill is grounded in compassion.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_15: To legalise assisted dying is to create the space for coercion.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_15: That will undoubtedly see people die who would not otherwise have chosen to do so.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_15: There are no safeguards in this bill that will prevent this.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_15: Indeed, to be fair, I better I better know.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_15: To be fair, none would be possible, even if we weren't going through this hasty process.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_15: First, there is the risk of self-coercion.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_15: Many of us will have had older relatives who've uttered words similar to, I am a burden to you, you'd be better off without me.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_15: So we know, don't we, all of us, reasonably, instinctively, that people will present as making a sovereign choice, but it will be a choice born out of coercion.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_15: Unless there is a clause in this bill that I've missed to employ mind readers, then of course, no amount of doctors, safeguards, or bureaucratic mechanisms will prevent those who self-coerce from opting to die simply because they assume that no matter what their loved ones say, everyone will be better off if they were dead.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_15: To add to the stats that we just heard from the honourable member just a moment ago, in Canada, we know that more than one in three people opting for assisted dying gave the reason for choosing to die that they felt they were a burden on others.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_15: Honestly, I don't see we need any other discussion to push us into the no-lobby than that clear evidence from where it's legal elsewhere.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_15: Secondly, there is coercive control, also being touched upon.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_15: In this parliament, in the last parliament, I should say, we passed groundbreaking and long overdue legislation on domestic violence.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_15: As society's understanding of this often hidden evil has developed, our eyes have been opened to one horrific factor in particular, that of insidious, manipulative, coercive control.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_15: Thousands of people have been and are today victims of those who seek to manipulate their will, take over their lives, and coerce them into believing that the perpetrator's will is actually their will.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_15: We know, all of us, through our constituency casework of people who have been victims.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_15: One common theme is that victims often did not realise that they were being controlled until long, long afterwards.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_15: It can take years for the penny to drop.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_15: I do not need to spell it out then, do I, that those coerced into choosing assisted dying, for them, that penny will never drop.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_15: They will no longer be with us.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_15: And third, people will choose assisted dying because of their pain when they wouldn't do if their pain was properly managed.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_15: Here is where the evidence from other countries becomes truly disturbing.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_15: In fact, terrifying.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_15: The countries in Europe without assisted dying increased palliative care investment in the last decade by more than three times more than those who had legalised it.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_15: In the United States, those states without assisted dying saw an increase in the size of their palliative care teams that was also three times greater than the increase in those US states that had legalised it.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_15: This is clearly no accident, no coincidence.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_15: Indeed, the group that has contacted me most vociferously against this bill have been palliative care doctors.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_15: I'm happy to give away.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_08: I thank the honourable member for giving way.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_15: To divert resources away from palliative care.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_15: That is the evidence.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_15: I spoke to one of those palliative care doctors this week.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_15: She works in a hospice.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_15: She said the only patients I care for are those who are dying.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_15: All of us know what's coming.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_15: Assisted dying means a shift of focus away from helping people to live in dignity and comfort towards simply helping people to die.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_15: And then, Madam Deputy Speaker, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_15: Because let's not kid ourselves, palliative care is a postcode lottery in this country, especially for the poor, especially for the old.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_15: If the motivation of those who choose assisted dying is to end their pain, you can be certain, and I mean absolutely certain, that those NHS trusts with the weakest palliative care offer will be those with the highest incidence of people choosing to die.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_15: In other words, it was not really their choice at all.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_15: An observation made to me by one senior oncologist just last week was that there are fewer, more stressful situations in a person's life than to be given a terminal diagnosis.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_15: I remember being with my mum as she was given hers.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_15: To be told you are going to die.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_15: She then, the oncologist in question, explained that amongst terminally ill people, there is a vast amount of severe but undiagnosed depression and psychological illness, similar but distinct, from the danger of self-coercion.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_15: There is nothing in this bill, nothing in this bill to safeguard against people who suffer like this from choosing to die before their time.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_15: Yet, in so many cases, it will actually be people's mental health leading them to choose to die and not mainly their physical condition.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_15: We simply cannot be alright with this because here we are on the precipice of agreeing to sanction and support the deaths of people in despair.
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_15: A society has chosen a dystopian and contagious path if it chooses to facilitate the death of those who have a terminal illness rather than standing with them, weeping with them, valuing them and loving them against the desolation that any of us would feel if we were given a diagnosis of that sort.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_15: No wonder that the government's own suicide prevention adviser is strongly opposed to this bill.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_15: So finally, while I while I totally respect many of my colleagues in our corner of the House, my fellow Liberals, will take a different view.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_15: I am opposed to this bill because I am a Liberal.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_15: Libertarians believe that personal liberty is so important that there can be no fetters upon it.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_15: But I'm a Liberal, not a Libertarian.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_15: I believe that freedom is essential that the rights of individuals underpin a decent society, but that my rights must be held in check if they nullify your rights.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_15: Since we know, and we really do know, that to legalise assisted dying is to permit people to die who will self-coerce, to permit people to die as a consequence of manipulative, coercive control, to permit people to die outrageously, not because of a real sovereign choice, but because of a heartbreaking Hobson's choice due to inadequate palliative care, then I have no right to impose that ultimate and most appalling constraint on the freedom of the most vulnerable people in our society.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_15: So I urge all of us to stand in defence of those most vulnerable people, to defiantly defend their liberty, to make a renewed commitment to world-class palliative care and to human dignity, and to reject this bill.
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_12: And so there is Tim Farron's argument.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_12: Very interestingly, he went in on compassion and he went in on freedom because I guess those are the two values that are spoken most by those who are in favor of the legislation.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_12: It is a profoundly Christian conversation to have when both sides are foregrounding compassion, both sides are foregrounding choice.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_12: Neither of those things were the concern for uh Roman culture, let's say.
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_12: Our belief in compassion and freedom, and equality and consent and enlightenment and science and progress.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_12: Um, these are all profoundly Christian ideals, as I go through in my book The Air We Breathe, which is actually given a commendation by Tim Farron.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_12: Thank you very much, Tim Farron.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_12: But he's very much wanting to use the secular liberal language of compassion and freedom and say, those things find their true home in a Christian ethic that is founded on the sanctity of life, actually.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_12: But that argument did not hold sway.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_12: And 330 were in favor of this legislation, 275 against.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_12: And what does that make me think?
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_12: I actually think I'm surprised that we held out against this pagan practice for so long, when you think about it.
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_12: For about sixty years, my body, my choice has been a slogan applied to the beginning of life and has led to a culture in which abortion is far from safe, legal, and rare.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_12: It ends the lives of over 600,000 human persons in this country every year.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_12: And I guess if my body, my choice applies at that end of the lifespan, uh how much more does it apply, really, when a choosing individual at the end of their lives gets to have their say?
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_12: My body, my choice, my life, my choice.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_12: We've been doing you do you for decades, and really assisted dying is just you do you done to death.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_12: But as I finish, let me just point to the cruelty of a choice-based worldview as opposed to a love-based worldview.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_12: And I'll do it by talking about Christmas, okay?
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_12: We're we're coming up to Christmas.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_12: And a few years ago, we did Meet in the Nativity, which is our four-part time traveling rom-com, in which Will, the boyfriend, is visiting his girlfriend's family for Christmas, and he's a total outsider.
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_12: He gets absolutely everything wrong.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_12: But when the family goes off to midnight mass, Will is left all by himself and following a star, and through the magic of time travel, he manages to find a porthole in the pool house, opens the door, and there he enters the first century nativity.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_12: He is all out of sorts, and next to the shepherds and wise men, he realizes that he has not brought a gift.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_11: What did you bring?
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_15: And where are you from?
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_15: I'm from Finchley.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_12: But actually, Will, being empty-handed, is precisely the person who can receive the ultimate Christmas present.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_12: He is the one who gets given the baby Jesus, not because he has anything in his hand to bring, but because he is empty-handed and he receives the Christ child.
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_12: It's a beautiful moment.
• 1:12:17
  SPEAKER_10: Got a name?
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_12: Episode two begins, and Claire, his girlfriend, realizes that she's pregnant.
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_12: She is shocked by this information, but she, through the magic of time travel, ends up in the pool house and ends up having another conversation with somebody from the first century nativity.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_12: This time it's Mary.
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_12: The conversation unfolds like this.
• 1:12:37
  SPEAKER_07: I got a present I wasn't quite expecting.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_11: Presents are like that.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, no, but this one really wasn't what I was expecting.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_07: Planning.
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_07: We make our plans.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_07: But in the end, life is.
• 1:12:53
  SPEAKER_07: Life is what we're given.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_12: And that's the point I want to make.
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_12: We make our plans, but life is what is given to us.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_12: Given to us.
• 1:13:03
  SPEAKER_12: And that that is what Christmas is all about.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_12: There is Mary, she had all sorts of other plans.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_12: Okay, she did not expect to get pregnant out of wedlock.
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_12: And this was a life-altering thing.
• 1:13:13
  SPEAKER_12: It was a life-threatening thing for her to find herself pregnant out of wedlock.
• 1:13:17
  SPEAKER_12: But she receives life as a gift, no matter how inconvenient, no matter how painful.
• 1:13:24
  SPEAKER_12: Life with a capital L comes from beyond.
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_12: Life, the Lord Jesus, is given to Mary, and it is really inconvenient, and it is not what she planned for.
• 1:13:35
  SPEAKER_12: But we make our plans, then life happens to us.
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_12: It's actually something that John Lennon said of the Beatles.
• 1:13:41
  SPEAKER_12: He he said, Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.
• 1:13:46
  SPEAKER_12: Life is not planned.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_12: Life is not about autonomy and sovereign choice.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_12: Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_12: We make our plans, but life is what's given to us.
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_12: Christmas is the time when we figure out that life is not in our own control.
• 1:14:03
  SPEAKER_12: We can't take back control of life or death.
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_12: Life is what's given to us.
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_12: And we don't become more free by pretending that we are in charge of this thing.
• 1:14:13
  SPEAKER_12: We don't make ourselves more free by making ever more plans.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_12: Life continually comes at us like an asteroid falling from on high, or like God the Son, becoming a single cell in Mary's womb.
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_12: And growing as our brother to come into our family that we might come into his family, so that bonds of love and care are what constitute true life, not the plans that we had made all by ourselves.
• 1:14:43
  SPEAKER_12: And Christmas is the ultimate story in which life trumps choice.
• 1:14:49
  SPEAKER_12: We've been thinking all about the speeches today, and all about Danny Kruger's speech and Kim Ledager's speech, and how we're just trying to find the story that frames everything else, the story of this suffering person and this suffering person and this suffering person.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_12: What we really need is the greatest story ever told.
• 1:15:06
  SPEAKER_12: And it's the story not of choice, it's the story of life showing up unexpectedly, unbidden.
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_12: And yet you receive that life as a gift, no matter how inconvenient it is to you.
• 1:15:19
  SPEAKER_12: And you have to repent.
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_12: You have to turn your life around to accommodate that life and to receive the Lord Jesus.
• 1:15:26
  SPEAKER_12: What Mary had to do, every single person has to do.
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_12: We have to give up on our choices, give up on our plans, give up on being the sovereign individual.
• 1:15:38
  SPEAKER_12: And the government will be upon his shoulders, says Isaiah Chapter 9.
• 1:15:43
  SPEAKER_12: The government is not on my shoulders, the government is not on your shoulders, the government is on the shoulders of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the great shepherd, who walks through that valley for you in your name and on your behalf, who accepts your death on himself, and comes through to the other side to become your shepherd and to become someone who can walk you through that same valley.
• 1:16:07
  SPEAKER_12: You cannot avoid the valley.
• 1:16:10
  SPEAKER_12: You cannot wisely choose your way around this valley.
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_12: You must go through the valley.
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_12: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, says Psalm 23.
• 1:16:24
  SPEAKER_12: Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
• 1:16:28
  SPEAKER_12: Do we want real compassion?
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_12: We need his rod, his staff, to lead us through the valley of the shadow of death.
• 1:16:36
  SPEAKER_12: Kim Ledbeater is absolutely right that this debate is focusing us on our mortality, and I pray that we take a long, hard look at our mortality, at our frailty, at our weakness, at our need.
• 1:16:48
  SPEAKER_12: But I pray that our response to that is not to take back control out of anxiety, but to surrender control to somebody who can handle the valley of deep shadow.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_12: Now the terminally ill adults end of life bill is still a bill, and it now has parliamentary assent in the elected house, but it will go through various committee stages.
• 1:17:08
  SPEAKER_12: It is not yet the law of the land.
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_12: Those sorts of decisions won't be made until the spring of next year.
• 1:17:14
  SPEAKER_12: So in one sense, the change is still future.
• 1:17:17
  SPEAKER_12: In another sense, we have been living in this reality for quite some time now.
• 1:17:21
  SPEAKER_12: My body, my choice, has determined life at the beginning of our timeline.
• 1:17:27
  SPEAKER_12: And now my body, my choice is defining life at the end of our timeline.
• 1:17:33
  SPEAKER_12: We've been living in this world for quite some time now, actually.
• 1:17:36
  SPEAKER_12: What is the Church of Jesus Christ?
• 1:17:38
  SPEAKER_12: The Church of Jesus Christ is a refuge from the cruelty of a pagan world that lives according to choice, and it's an invitation to receive the unpredictable, unbidden, unimprovably good Lord Jesus to come into our lives, to receive Him the way Mary received him, to orient our lives around him and to allow him to carry us through the Valley of the Shadow, rather than for us to climb up a side wall and choose our way out of this thing.
• 1:18:11
  SPEAKER_12: Keep praying for this legislation.
• 1:18:13
  SPEAKER_12: There are other twists and turns in this story to come, no doubt.
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_12: Pray for Christian medics, because their profession has just been changed quite significantly.
• 1:18:23
  SPEAKER_12: And pray for the witness of the church because by contrast with the cruelty of a world of choice, we get to proclaim a counterculture, a world of love where we let go of our plans and receive Christ instead.
• 1:18:38
  SPEAKER_12: If you want to be reminded of this beautiful story, the story of Christ, we've got a great way that you can do it.
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_12: It's called 321.
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_12: You can go to 321course.com and discover life according to Jesus.
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_12: You might be a Christian and you really want to see life again according to Jesus and take hope from the fact that he speaks of God's threeness, the world's two-ness, your oneness.
• 1:18:58
  SPEAKER_12: If you want to know what those numbers mean, then go to 321course.com.
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_12: If you are a believer, I think you'll be really blessed by it and you can pass it on to others.
• 1:19:06
  SPEAKER_12: If you're not yet a Christian, this might be a great way of being introduced to the good news of Jesus.
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_12: It's a somber one, this one, but if this video has benefited you, why don't you give it a like and share it around the place?
• 1:19:16
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• 1:19:19
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• 1:19:21
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• 1:19:26
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• 1:19:33
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• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Churches like Hey, I'm Seth, I'm a pastor in Arizona, and we just ran our first 3-2-1 course, and we're gonna do it again.
• 1:19:43
  SPEAKER_00: We saw it really valuable for a few reasons.
• 1:19:46
  SPEAKER_00: One, the hospitality of the course.
• 1:19:48
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• 1:19:54
  SPEAKER_00: They felt seen and understood by the material.
• 1:19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, it really enabled us to create an environment where volunteers who are maybe not skilled public speakers, but they're really hospitable, naturally curious evangelists, are able to play a video and then facilitate a conversation round tables.
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_00: We promoted it as an exploring Christianity course and put it into our pipeline of classes that we offered.
• 1:20:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we thought it was really helpful to people who were kicking the tires on church, sitting on the fringes, but weren't yet committed or even sure what commitment would look like to the Christ of the Bible.
• 1:20:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so I highly encourage you to check out the material and use it in your environments.
• 1:20:30
  SPEAKER_00: We saw seven people come to faith, and we're excited to run the course again this next semester.
• 1:20:35
  SPEAKER_12: Hundreds more churches have been blessed like this, and by 2030, we hope to see more than a hundred thousand Christians captivated by Jesus and confidently sharing him with their friends.
• 1:20:44
  SPEAKER_12: And you can join the joy and be a vital part of this kingdom growth.
• 1:20:48
  SPEAKER_12: 321 is completely free to use, which would be impossible if not for the generosity of people like you.
• 1:20:53
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• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_12: We love to create gospel seed that you can scatter.
• 1:21:01
  SPEAKER_12: And we can't wait for you to join the joy as we love Jesus and share him with the world together.
• 1:21:06
  SPEAKER_12: For more encouraging stories and to join the joy, head over to speaklife.org.uk slash joy.
• 1:21:12
  SPEAKER_12: That's speaklife.org.uk slash joy, and have your generosity doubled.