Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Friday 16th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Paul]

I am sorry, but I do not have much time and I wish to get through my points.

How can we be happy with a process that does not exclude such reasons? Instead of providing the support that is actually needed, the state is content to put them on a pathway that leads to their death. I hope that the House will recognise that, whether one supports assisted dying in principle or not, it is morally bankrupt not to have some kind of best interests test to protect those who are not seeking death to alleviate pain from a terminal illness.

Another group that is particularly vulnerable is those with eating disorders. In Chelsea Roff’s oral evidence, she set out that

“at least 60 people around the world have been euthanised or assisted in suicide”

with

“anorexia nervosa listed by name as a terminal condition.”––[Official Report, Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Public Bill Committee, 29 January 2025; c. 139, Q175.]

To paraphrase her, these were young women who were not terminally ill and had decades of life ahead of them. It is important to make the point that someone suffering—

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

rose—

[Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

rose—

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[Dame Meg Hillier]

I thank the hon. Lady.

[Christine Jardine]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I need to get into the arguments for my two new clauses, so I will not take any more interventions for the time being.

I believe that there is a serious risk that terminally ill patients, who are already vulnerable, could feel pressured into ending their lives sooner than they would wish to. We know of examples of patients who felt suicidal and low at the point of diagnosis, and at that point they are vulnerable—this is not the debate in which to make points about that—but often, with good care and pain relief, they can move away from that decision. There is also the issue about the burden on family.

[Christine Jardine]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I must make progress.

I also want to talk about how the teenage brain works. The Bill would apply to a young person at the age of 18. A month or so after they reach that age, they could undertake an assisted death. Let me highlight some of the good conversations that I have had with people who have generously given their time to speak with me about these important issues, which I am worried have not been addressed at any point in the Bill’s passage, except for a short and important discussion in Committee.

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[Dame Meg Hillier]

I have said no—I need to explain the issues, and give due credit to the people who have assisted me in raising them.

Adolescents’ brains develop differently. From the age of puberty, there is a rapid change in how young people make decisions. As adults, we have the experience to imagine what the future might look like, but younger people, up to about the age of 25, often cannot plan or predict their future because that part of the brain has not developed well, and they are not good at understanding regret. The comparisons are different for adults. Role models and social groups matter a great deal.

[Christine Jardine]

I appreciate the hon. Lady giving way, given the time constraints. Does she acknowledge the concern that many of us have about not telling patients all the options, particularly young people who are now so social-media literate? Their automatic reaction is to Google everything; in fact, we all do it. The danger is that, if they are not told all the options and given the guidance that is available, they will go to Google and see yet more of the dangerous suicide attempts that we see at the moment.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I do not have time to completely unpick the hon. Lady’s points, but to have something positively suggested is a big issue for young people, so the social media aspect is important.

The social network matters. At the point of puberty, teenagers will look to their social group, which will massively influence their behaviour in a way that their families will not. Adolescents are more likely to take risks: their neurodevelopmental underpinnings are different, and pathways between the rational and the emotional parts of the brain are not fully developed. In “a hot situation”, where there is a lot of emotion, they take more risks, particularly because they do not have the ability to think about the counterfactual. In this case, the counterfactual is not being here anymore; that is a very difficult thing for a lot people to understand, particularly young people.

The ability of young people to think flexibly and change their minds is in the front of the brain, which does not always react to the—

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[Tom Gordon]

I will make a little progress, as I was in the middle of a quotation. It continues:

“Unless you are actually affected by something as desperate as MND, you cannot understand what it really means to have such an option.”

My constituent is right. We can debate legal safeguards, ethics and precedents all day in this Chamber, but for those who are living with devastating diseases, this is not theoretical; it is personal, it is urgent and it is real.

[Christine Jardine]

This is a very personal one for me, because much of my motivation for supporting the Bill comes from having watched a member of my family die of motor neurone disease. Although perhaps it would have been preferable if motor neurone disease and other degenerative diseases could have been included, I accept that we do not want to go down the slippery slope. However, there is a difference between extending the Bill to degenerative diseases such as motor neurone disease and extending it to other conditions. Perhaps we could consider supporting that, because I would not want anyone to go through what I witnessed, without the choice to end it without going through more pain.