Had assisted dying been available previously, moments with loved ones might have been “lost”, MPs have heard.
Debating the proposal to roll out assisted dying in the UK, Sir James Cleverly described losing his “closest friend earlier this year” and said his opposition did not come from “a position of ignorance”.
The Conservative former minister said he and “the vast majority” of lawmakers were “sympathetic with the underlying motivation of” the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, “which is to ease suffering in others and to try and avoid suffering where possible”.
But he warned MPs not to “sub-contract” scrutiny of the draft new law to peers, if the Bill clears the Commons after Friday’s third reading debate.
Backing the proposal, Conservative MP Mark Garnier said “the time has come where we need to end suffering where suffering can be put aside, and not try to do something which is going to be super perfect and allow too many more people to suffer in the future”.
He told MPs that his mother died after a “huge amount of pain”, following a diagnosis in 2012 of pancreatic cancer.
Sir James, who described himself as an atheist, said: “I’ve had this said to me on a number of occasions, ‘if you had seen someone suffering, you would agree with this Bill’.
“Well, Mr Speaker, I have seen someone suffering – my closest friend earlier this year died painfully of oesophageal cancer and I was with him in the final weeks of his life.
“So I come at this not from a position of faith nor from a position of ignorance.”
Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden Dame Siobhain McDonagh intervened in Sir James’s speech and said: “On Tuesday, it is the second anniversary of my sister’s death.
“Three weeks prior to her death, we took her to hospital because she had a blood infection, and in spite of agreeing to allow her into intensive care to sort out that blood infection, the consultant decided that she shouldn’t go because she had a brain tumour and she was going to die.
“She was going to die, but not at that moment.
“I’m sure Mr Speaker can understand that a very big row ensued. I won that row.
“She was made well, she came home and she died peacefully.”
Asked what might have happened if assisted dying was an option, Sir James replied: “She asks me to speculate into a set of circumstances which are personal and painful, and I suspect she and I both know that the outcome could have been very, very different, and the moments that she had with her sister, just like the moments I had with my dear friend, those moments might have been lost.”
He had earlier said MPs “were promised the gold-standard, a judicially underpinned set of protections and safeguards”, which were removed when a committee scrutinised the Bill.
He added: “I’ve also heard where people are saying, ‘well, there are problems, there are still issues, there are still concerns I have’, well, ‘the Lords will have their work to do’.
“But I don’t think it is right and none of us should think that it is right to sub-contract our job to the other place (the House of Lords).”
Mr Garnier, who is also a former minister, told the Commons he had watched “the start of the decline for something as painful and as difficult as pancreatic cancer” after his mother’s diagnosis.
“My mother wasn’t frightened of dying at all,” he continued.
“My mother would talk about it and she knew that she was going to die, but she was terrified of the pain, and on many occasions she said to me and Caroline my wife, ‘can we make it end?'”
Mr Garnier later added: “Contrary to this, I found myself two or three years ago going to the memorial service of one of my constituents who was a truly wonderful person, and she too had died of pancreatic cancer.
“But because she had been in Spain at the time – she spent quite a lot of time in Spain with her husband – she had the opportunity to go through the state-provided assisted dying programme that they do there.
“And I spoke to her widower – very briefly, but I spoke to him – and he was fascinating about it. He said it was an extraordinary, incredibly sad thing to have gone through, but it was something that made her suffering much less.”
He said he was “yet to be persuaded” that paving the way for assisted dying was “a bad thing to do”, and added: “The only way I can possibly end today is by going through the ‘aye’ lobby.”
Glasgow North East MP Maureen Burke said her brother David was aged 52 when he went to hospital with what he later learned was advanced pancreatic cancer.
The Labour MP said David suffered in “silent pain” with ever stronger painkillers before his death, and added: “One of the last times when he still was able to speak, he called out to me from his bed and told me if there was a pill that he could take to end his life, he would very much like to take that.”
The Bill would apply in England and Wales, not in Scotland where members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) are considering separate legislation, but Ms Burke said she spoke to “ask colleagues to make sure that others don’t go through” what her brother faced.
If MPs back the Bill at third reading, it will face further scrutiny in the Lords at a later date.
