Claire Hazelgrove

Today I am going to share the most personal of stories publicly for the first time, and I ask for the kindness of colleagues in not intervening so that I can. Last October, my mum, Ruth Hazelgrove, chose to bring her late-stage terminal illness to an end, on her terms, at home, with dignity and with a strength that I can only try to imagine. Mum had just turned 61. She had endured significant health challenges for almost half her life. When mum was 32, she was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer, polycythaemia vera. Thankfully, she was able to see us grow up and meet her grandchildren. Mum loved life and laughter, and our family will remember her this way. In early 2024, mum was told that her condition had taken a significant turn. That autumn, while we debated the initial version of this Bill, her pain was excruciating. She had access to good palliative care, but what we learned the hardest of ways is that not all pain can be palliated. I will never forget seeing her writhing and screaming in pain, at points for weeks. None of us will. I know of no deity that would want that. Eventually, some medication helped her leave hospital, but it then became less effective over time. For mum, it was not a choice of life or death; it was a question of what kind of death she would have. She was clear that she did not want a painful or undignified death. She wanted peace. For us, it will always be a tremendous personal sadness that the current law meant that she could not tell us her plan, and we could not say goodbye to her—but more importantly than that, that she could not say goodbye at the end of her life, or be surrounded by her loved ones, which is what she would have wanted for her death. Instead, the harmful status quo meant that mum died alone, with photos of us around her. This was 11 months ago either today or tomorrow—we will never know whether she died late one evening or early the next morning, or whether we are ever marking the anniversary on the right day. This is the status quo. This needs to change. That is why our vote today and our work on this issue is so important now. People with terminal illnesses, and those who will be diagnosed with them soon, matter greatly. If we were again to leave this issue to another Parliament, it would be too late for other people with terminal illnesses who want this provision, but instead face the same impossible bind as my mum; they would continue to face it well into the 2030s, at best. An excruciating death or dying alone is simply not an acceptable bind for a human being. To allow choice does not impose an outcome, but to continue to restrict it does. In part of mum’s last note to us, which is why I am speaking today, she wrote, “I wish the Assisted Dying Bill would have come into force in my lifetime…Maybe there will be hope for others in the future.” Ultimately, is it not what Parliament is for to provide safeguards and freedom? I believe that we are here not to dictate how people live their lives and their deaths, but to enable safe individual choice. Today’s vote is on whether we should continue to work on this, or not at all. I ask right hon. and hon. Members to ask themselves if they feel that this impact of the status quo is right, is just. My hope, and I know my mum’s hope, is that her story can help us choose to end this harmful status quo and see terminally ill adults finally have true choice over their lives and their deaths.