Ms Julie Minns

The last time this matter was debated in this House, I was sitting at the hospital bedside of my dying mother. Consequently, I was unable to speak in that debate and unable to cast a vote. I am therefore grateful for the opportunity to speak and vote today, and I urge colleagues and the promoter of this Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Lauren Edwards), to ensure that this House has the opportunity to scrutinise the Bill, to amend it and to make it safe. Accompanying someone you love through the final days of their life is one of the most profound experiences any of us can have. It confronts us with suffering, vulnerability and fear, and also with the importance of care, compassion and human dignity. That experience did not make me indifferent to the arguments for this Bill—quite the opposite. It made me determined that before we offer people assistance to end their lives, we as individuals and, especially, as legislators have a responsibility—a duty—to ensure that they have access to every possible form of support to live their remaining days well. As the friend to a mother whose child was failed time and again by the inadequacy of our mental health service, whose child by some miracle survived the swallowing of razor blades, anorexia, overdoses and self-harm, I know that access to every form of support was not there for them. As a relative who saw the inadequacy of social care eat away at the self-respect of a once fiercely independent woman, leaving her to conclude that she was a burden and would be better off dead, I know that access to every possible form of support was not there for her. As the daughter who sat at a hospital bedside, having agreed to the withdrawal of invasive treatment, only to watch my semi-conscious mother scream for water that was wrongly withheld and writhe in agony because specialist palliative care was only available nine to five on Monday to Friday, I know that access to every form of support was not there for her. I ask colleagues: how, when we know that every possible form of support is not there for our constituents, when we know that mental healthcare is inadequate, when we know that social care is threadbare and palliative care is an unfunded lottery, and when we know that there is no going back when we vote for this, how can we prioritise and fund the resources, care and support for those choosing an assisted death but deny it to the mentally ill, the elderly and those who wish a pain-free natural death? We hear much of choice in the context of this debate, but choice is only meaningful when people have genuine alternatives. In too many parts of our country, those alternatives simply do not exist. Therefore, before—not after, not over the next four years but before—we vote to facilitate death, we have a duty as legislators to ensure that the resource, funding and support is there for people. We need to know today, before we take this vote, that every possible effort has been made to treat suffering. This Bill does not do that. Once we are over the edge, there is no going back. We know that in every country that has introduced assisted dying, its scope has subsequently expanded, sometimes without further legislative approval.