Danny Kruger

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, especially for promoting me to the status of doctor; I am actually a charity worker and political hack by background. It is good of her to credit me with those skills—perhaps I should set myself up as a medical practitioner. She is right that medics and indeed judges have to make difficult judgments all the time. I think it would be very dangerous and inappropriate to give them the power to do so in this case. The whole question of the six-month cut-off is very important. I acknowledge all the points that have been made, but there is another problem with the definition of terminal illness. Almost anybody with a serious illness or disability could fit the definition. I recognise that these are not the cases that the hon. Member for Spen Valley has in mind—of course they are not—but that is the problem with the Bill. All that someone needs to do to qualify for an assisted death—for the definition of terminal illness—is refuse treatment, such as insulin if the person is diabetic. In the case of eating disorders, a topic on which I have worked with the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), a person just needs to refuse food. The evidence from jurisdictions around the world, and our own jurisprudence, shows that that would be enough to qualify someone for an assisted death.