Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
Daisy Cooper Excerpts(2 days, 15 hours ago)
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Sarah Olney
I will not give way, sorry. Assisted dying under this legislation cannot be implemented without psychiatrists, but they would be acting outside the advice and guidance of their professional body.
Sarah Olney
I am not giving way. Will there be sufficient psychiatrists prepared to implement the provisions of this legislation, against the advice of their professional body, to ensure that enough panels can be convened for the purpose of facilitating assisted dying? It is hard to see how there could be.
Sarah Olney
I am not giving way. By contrast, many decisions are expressly reserved for politicians. Should the limited resources of the NHS be used to deliver an assisted dying service, or should it be possible to offer the service as a profit-making enterprise? What information should be collected and reported about assisted dying? Who should oversee and regulate its practitioners? Members of Parliament are to have no say over any of those matters at all. Those are all powers to be reserved to the Secretary of State, to be decided behind closed doors. Once again, this legislation grants these responsibilities to people who do not want them.
Neither the current Health Secretary nor the current Justice Secretary are supporters of this Bill. After today, the House of Commons will be shut out of further decision making on this Bill, even though many of the decisions still to be made are rightfully ours to make. The lack of professional consensus or acceptance of the requirements of this legislation, coupled with a lack of political scrutiny of many of its more important provisions, creates an unstable foundation upon which to build an assisted dying service. For such a service to succeed, it needs professionals willing to deliver it, who can have confidence that they are acting within the law and will be supported by their professional peers and by society at large. I do not see how this legislation can deliver that.
It is instructive to compare this piece of legislation with the Abortion Act 1967. That, too, was a private Member’s Bill, brought to this House by the Liberal MP David Steel, but it was preceded by a medical advisory committee chaired by the president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which approved the Bill. The professionals who would be needed to enact the legislation had indicated their support for the Bill before it reached the Commons. The Bill only delegated one power to the Secretary of State. The legislation was hotly debated then as now, but once it was passed, it came into force within six months.
Remarkably, with the exception of amendments required to bring it into line with successive Human Fertilisation and Embryology Acts and to extend its provisions to Northern Ireland, the provisions that the Abortion Act brought into law have remained almost entirely unchanged in 58 years—until just this week, in fact. The careful consideration of the issues that took place before the legislation came to the Commons, combined with the fact that all its provisions were included within the primary legislation to be debated and voted on in one go, has enabled a settled consensus to develop around abortion provision in this country, in contrast to other jurisdictions. It has enabled vulnerable women to seek the help they need and given healthcare workers the confidence and support they require to meet those needs. That is what we need, if we want to deliver a successful assisted dying service, and this legislation cannot deliver that.
If Members want assisted dying, vote against this Bill and make the most of the moment to press for a better approach that can deliver a sustainable framework, accepted and supported by the medical profession, and in which the public can have confidence. If people’s lives are going to be ended prematurely as a result of this legislation that we pass, we cannot take risks. We cannot afford to pass this Bill.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
I have not spoken so far in these debates, but I have listened and attended on pretty much all occasions. I am moved to speak today because I am concerned. This is the point that the hon. Member for Lewisham North (Vicky Foxcroft) made, but what is this debate today about? This debate is not about the principle of what we believe in when it comes to assisted dying—whether we are opposed to it or in favour of it. We had that debate on Second Reading. As the Mother of the House, the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), made very clear—in what I must say was an excellent speech—and as others have too, today’s Third Reading debate is about what we are about to pass on to the House of Lords, which will become law. And the single question we have to ask ourselves is: is this genuinely workable now?
The hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater), who moved the motion, knows that I have a high regard for her—I have worked with her on other things—but I honestly have to say that I simply cannot see how we in this House can pass this piece of legislation through to the other House, in the vague hope that somehow it will do better than us and make changes such that it will become a workable piece of legislation, and that is because this is a private Member’s Bill. If a Government were to introduce a Bill like this, we would see a great deal more input and a huge amount more checking with all those bodies. For example, we were told on Second Reading that the safeguards and protections we were sending to Committee would somehow become the most robust and strongest in the world. In fact, in Committee they got weakened, not strengthened, and that is the problem in all this.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I understand that many others want to speak, so I am going make a bit of progress if she does not mind.
The other important point, when we think about what our vote today is all about, is the behaviour of the professional bodies that have been consulted on this, which have come out for the most part very strongly opposed to this legislation.
Daisy Cooper
Every medical college has retained a neutral position. By my count—[Interruption.] I will go on. By my count, two or three medical colleges have said expressly that they welcome specific amendments to the Bill, and all MPs will have received the letter from senior psychiatrists, who include a former president of the college, who said:
“We believe the draft legislation is workable, safe and compassionate.”
A number of safeguards have been included in the Bill. Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise that additional safeguards have been included and have been welcomed by various royal colleges?
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
I simply do not agree with the hon. Lady on that reading. The professional bodies are completely divided, and most have come out in opposition to the nature of this legislation. It is all very well for her to say that, and I appreciate her right to say it, and I hope she gets to speak later, but I just do not agree with it.
As was said earlier in the debate, the whole issue of mental capacity is not dealt with properly in the structure of this Bill. The hon. Member for Spen Valley talked about this earlier, and she was absolutely right. Even the amendments that were proposed were not always accepted, and we are left now with some areas that will be deeply troubling. We simply cannot accept that the Lords must make these changes for us, for we have to make them first. That is the key.
The one big important area here—I absolutely agree with my constituency neighbour the Health Secretary on this—is that we talk a lot about choice in dying, but how is that choice informed if palliative care in the UK is simply not good enough? Again, the Mother of the House spoke about this, and there are so many people affected: the most vulnerable; the people furthest away from institutions; and the ones who understand least how to work the health service or their local authority, and who rely mostly on us to try and break through. They will be faced with this problem more than almost anybody else, because they look in fear on these institutions.
I helped to set up a children’s hospice, which I think was the first in London. There have been many more since, but children’s hospices, as we know, are really badly treated by Government spending, pretty much no matter who is in power. They have less than anybody else. Haven House, which I helped to set up and raise money for, has given a very strong quote, which I think represents much of what most of those hospices have said:
“We would fully agree that a change in the law would have very significant consequences for the delivery of palliative care services and would be challenging given the existing resource pressures that we face. The hospice sector is experiencing significant financial pressures and the exceptional palliative care services we provide are not financially sustainable. The introduction of assisted dying would create new and demanding requirements for palliative care services and hospices in particular. It is therefore vital, whether or not the current legislation is passed, that the government takes urgent action to resolve”
this matter.
That is the case today. We cannot just say, “Well, that’s not our problem. Palliative care can be changed.” The trouble is that we have been unable to make the necessary changes to palliative care because we take such parti pris positions. That is the problem we face.
I will end with this. I will vote against the Bill, mostly because I believe it is fundamentally unworkable and will lead to huge problems. We have seen what has happened elsewhere internationally—Canada, Oregon and various other places—where legislation slides and slides again as more and more amendments have to be made because these things are not workable. To those who have any doubt, I simply say this. This is Third Reading; it is not Second Reading—it is not an “in principle” debate. We had that debate, and now we have to decide whether we should send this unworkable piece of legislation to another place, which is unelected, to make the decision for us because we cannot come to a conclusion. We cannot let this go through.
Mike Wood
No, I must continue—the hon. Lady has intervened multiple times.
The promoter of the Bill, the hon. Member for Spen Valley, has done well with some of the safeguards around coercion, but the arguments around coercion as we normally understand them from a legal point of view miss the point. We are talking not about where someone with improper aims and motives sets out to cause someone to take a course of action that they would not otherwise take but something much more subliminal. It may be the wish to avoid being a burden, or reading too much into the doctor’s suggestion when they raised assisted death as something to consider.
A few years ago I was seriously ill; at my most ill, the doctors said that I had a 90% chance of dying within weeks. When I regained consciousness, there was nothing that the doctors suggested to me that I argued over, whether it was a test, an angiogram or any other procedure. In my circumstances, if I had been in a position where assisted dying was a possibility, and the doctor had raised it entirely neutrally, I do not know how I would have interpreted it.
Some Members have spoken of placing a high value on life as if it is some preoccupation of the religiously obsessed. I am a Christian; I am a very middle-of-the-road Anglican. Although I do not take my faith lightly, my Church has never told me how to vote on an issue, and it will certainly not tell me how to vote on this one. I do appreciate, particularly with my own experience, that life is precious. But one does not need to believe in an omniscient and omnipresent God to hold the view that life is precious and that we should take measures to shorten it only very carefully.
As I said at the start, I do not believe that the Bill has got better. There are serious concerns about it. I genuinely do not know whether it is possible to put in adequate safeguards to ensure that assisted dying can be available for the cases where we would like to see it, but that would safeguard those difficult cases—the ones that the Mother of the House, the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), spoke so powerfully about in her very impressive and meaningful speech. What I do know is that if there is a way, this Bill does not do it. That is why I will be voting against it.
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
Daisy Cooper ExcerptsFriday 29th November 2024
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill 2024-26 View all Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Kim Leadbeater
I will make some progress, if I may. I hope that I have set out the problem that clearly exists. Now allow me to set out how the Bill can address that problem and, most importantly, do so safely and effectively.
If the Bill were to become law, it would contain the most robust and strongest set of safeguards and protections in the world. Very strict eligibility criteria and multiple layers of checks and safeguards are embedded in the Bill, none of which, as we have seen, exist at the moment. I made a conscious decision to name it the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, rather than anything else. That title can never be changed and ensures that only adults who were dying would ever come within its scope. As such, the Bill is not about people choosing between life and death; it is about giving dying people with six months or less to live autonomy about how they die and the choice to shorten their deaths.
The Bill does not apply to people with mental health conditions. It does not apply to the elderly. It does not apply to people with chronic health conditions, and it does not apply to disabled people, unless, of course, they have a terminal illness, in which case they would and should be entitled to the same rights as anyone else.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
One group of people who are not often talked about are the learning disabled. Clause 9(3)(b) says that if an assessing doctor has any doubt as to the capacity of the person, they may refer them for a further psychiatric assessment. If the Bill is voted through today, will the hon. Member engage in a debate about whether that language should be strengthened from “may” to “must” and whether the training and experience required of the assessor should be strengthened as well?
Kim Leadbeater
The hon. Lady makes an excellent point and highlights a community who we must consider in light of the Bill. I would absolutely be open to that conversation in Committee; it is a very valid point.
There are different views within the disabled community. As Professor of Disability Research, Sir Tom Shakespeare says that it is unacceptable that people with disabilities continue to face social stigma and inequalities, but that it would be a mistake to conclude that we should oppose legalising assisted dying for terminally ill people until those wider problems are fixed. He says that it is paternalistic and wrong to imply that inequalities will be resolved by reducing choices, and that a clear, transparent legal framework for end-of-life choice is better for everyone. He is right. There is, of course, still work to do in the fight for equality for people with disabilities, but once again it is not an either/or. I will campaign alongside many others in this place for those rights, but I will also campaign for the rights of terminally ill people, because their rights are as important as anybody else’s rights.
Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Bill
Daisy Cooper ExcerptsWednesday 12th February 2020
(5 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 12 February 2020 (revised) - (12 Feb 2020)
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
I, too, put on record my thanks to the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), who has kept me updated in recent days.
In the wake of the two recent terrorist attacks, it is absolutely right that the Government look at the legal framework to decide whether it is adequate. Like the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Paul Holmes), I was caught up in the 7/7 bombing. I was on one of the tube trains behind the one that was blown up at Russell Square, and I remember the unbearable heat that came from the blast. I was also in this place during the Westminster lockdown. The hon. Gentleman is right that many of us have been affected by acts of terrorism, but with respect, many of us nevertheless come to this debate with slightly different views.
This Bill does three things. First, it brings about an end to automatic release and applies that retrospectively. That is overdue, but very welcome. Liberal Democrats have said before, and we say again, that this part of the law is currently wrong, and it is right that this House seeks to change it. The Government are rushing this Bill through to get to Royal Assent before the end of the month and before the scheduled release of other terrorists. However, this part of the Bill alone, on ending automatic release and applying that retrospectively, would achieve the Government’s goal—and, indeed, the priority of all of us to keep the public safe. This part of the Bill alone would stop the release of terrorists without Parole Board agreement. It would be possible to adopt just that part of the Bill for it to be a change in the administration of a sentence in a way that is compatible with the rule of law.
However, the Bill tries to do two other things that, I think it is fair to say, are problematic. The second thing it tries to do is move the point of release from the halfway point to the two-thirds point for future offences. Of course, it is the natural instinct of all of us to have bad people locked up for longer, but who would want somebody locked up for longer if there was evidence that that could in fact make them more radicalised and more dangerous at the point that they are released?
Sir John Hayes
That is not an argument about the length of the sentence; that is an argument about how people are dealt with when they are incarcerated.
Daisy Cooper
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that point. Much of the evidence suggests that what helps the deradicalisation process is not only how people are treated when they are incarcerated, but the amount of time they have on licence in order to find a home, rebuild family connections and do all the activity outside prison. There is evidence to suggest that the time on licence can make more of a difference to reducing reoffending rates and deradicalising people.
Dr Julian Lewis
Can we think about specifics? The last two attacks were very different. As I said in an earlier intervention, the second of the two attacks was by someone who was clearly mentally deranged. The earlier attack was by someone who appeared to have taken all the deradicalisation on board and to be a model prisoner. We have to recognise that we are dealing with a kaleidoscope of personalities, not necessarily people who have been fooled by something and who can reasonably be brought out of that situation.
Daisy Cooper
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that point, which relates to both capacity and what can be done in prisons and while prisoners are on licence to ensure that they are deradicalised and to assess their behaviours.
As I was saying, there is currently no evidence that longer periods in prison have any rehabilitative effect, and there is some evidence to suggest that they might be counterproductive. For all of us who put national and public safety first, that should be very worrying.
The third element of the Bill is retrospectivity. Retrospectively applying the first part of the Bill, to end automatic release, is fine, but retrospectively moving the release point is problematic. The Government and some Members today have pointed to individual parts of case law, but there is a long-established principle against the retrospectivity of criminal laws. The Government have suggested that this is only about changing the administration of a sentence, whereas legal commentators have pointed out that the Bill arguably also changes the scope of the penalty. The Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law said in its briefing circulated to Members this morning:
“By effectively overturning judicial decisions about sentencing the Bill also comes uncomfortably close to legislative interference with the judicial function.”
The last point that I wish to address is the speed with which the Bill moves forward and the reasons for it. As I said, nobody wants these prisoners to be automatically released, and the first part of the Bill would tackle that and keep the public safe, but there is a reason why we debate and scrutinise laws in both Houses and have specialist Committees to look at our laws. We know that fast law can make bad law, and there is an even greater risk of that happening when four of the parliamentary Committees that would have scrutinised the Bill—the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Home Affairs Committee, the Justice Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee—have not yet been appointed.
Imran Ahmad Khan (Wakefield) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady recognise that, although policy should be based on evidence and research, that is not necessarily a good thing in the context of terrorism, where we have an evolving set of threats? With evidence-based research, it can be four years before we formulate and implement policy, by which time the threat has invariably moved on. We therefore need to employ a broader range of measures, including the use of specialists in interrogation of those who deceive, to bolster the ability of the Parole Board, and training material for prison officers and those involved in deradicalisation. Speed is required in order to adapt, so I support the Government’s position, because an evidence-based approach is not appropriate in this context.
Daisy Cooper
The hon. Gentleman will recall that, in my opening remarks, I made the point that this was a very overdue change. In fact, we have had many years where we have seen the effects of increased radicalisation in prison simply because of a lack of resources both for our prisons and for our parole service, so he is right to point to that element.
That leads me very nicely to my next point: because of the speed of the passage of the Bill, there is not sufficient opportunity for pre-legislative scrutiny. I would argue that, in the absence of adequate pre-legislative scrutiny, hon. Members should all sign up to a system of post-legislative scrutiny. Others in this debate have called for a review mechanism. The Government say there is other legislation coming down the line, but we know that legislation can slip, so I will finish by asking the Government to think again about this particular point to make sure that we have sufficient post-legislative scrutiny and that this law—
Sir John Hayes
I waited to intervene until a point at which I agreed with the hon. Lady, because I thought that was in the spirit of this debate. She is right about the need to review these provisions, but as she said a moment ago, any number of Committees will be able to do that in the course of time. We can move ahead with rapidity to defend the public, and then look at these matters in the round through the processes she has set out.
Daisy Cooper
The right hon. Gentleman is right that this legislation will of course be scrutinised in due course, but it is vital and right, because we are moving on with it so quickly, that we write into law a statutory review in one year’s time.
I conclude by saying that there is a danger that Bill will become a law of unintended consequences. In summary, we welcome the end to automatic release and doing so retrospectively—that is a good move—but we have concerns about changing the release point, particularly if that ends up allowing people to be released who are more dangerous than before. There are also questions to answer about the impact on the rule of law in applying retrospectivity to the release point.
Prisoners (Disclosure of Information About Victims) Bill
Daisy Cooper ExcerptsTuesday 11th February 2020
(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) and his excellent campaign, and echo many of the sentiments that he expressed in the superb speech that he just delivered to the House. I also express my gratitude to my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor for all his work and efforts, since his appointment, to focus on victims and to put their rights front and centre. I am also extremely grateful to the Home Secretary for her work that focuses on the rights of victims, which traditionally we perhaps have not put so much centre stage. The Government do themselves proud by making such a commitment to victims, and the Bill is an example of that desire to put victims front and centre.
I of course welcome the Bill, understand the rationale behind it and support it, but I wish to make some remarks that I should be most grateful if Ministers considered. Those remarks relate to the Parole Board’s role, which the hon. Member for St Helens North alluded to just a short moment ago. The placing of a statutory duty on the Parole Board to ensure that the issue of non-disclosure is properly considered is a positive step and a very welcome gesture, but the Bill will not fundamentally change the Parole Board’s current practice. The families in such cases will still have to rely on the Parole Board’s discretion, and that raises some questions about the Parole Board’s role when it comes to victims’ interests.
We have already heard about concerns relating to the Parole Board’s accountability and transparency, and there are clearly some gaps in its duties relating to responsibilities to victims. In the light of recent high-profile cases—for example, the Worboys case—there has clearly been a loss of public confidence in the Parole Board. There is a real need for the law to be seen to be on the side of victims. Yes, that is exactly what the Bill seeks to achieve, but in relying solely on the Parole Board’s discretion, it does not quite achieve that.
In the Worboys case, the Parole Board decided in January 2018 to release this serial offender early, after only eight years. The then Lord Chancellor was unable to intervene—in fact, he backed the Parole Board’s decision—leaving it to victims to mount a judicial review, which fortunately found that there had been shortcomings in the decision-making process. The courts were therefore able to require the Parole Board to revisit the decision, more information then came to light, and Worboys was sentenced further for additional attacks.
A feature in the Worboys case was the Parole Board’s failure to notify victims of Worboys’s forthcoming release. Another feature was that the Government felt completely powerless to intervene on behalf of victims. The case was not a one-off. The Parole Board is, of course, bound to balance the need to keep the public safe against the human rights law that prevents the arbitrary detention of offenders—that is the Parole Board’s job and its duty, and that is what it does—and the Bill will still allow the Parole Board to release an offender who has failed to disclose the known whereabouts of a victim’s body or failed to disclose the identity of a child victim. The Parole Board is not bound, by this Bill or by any other requirement, to take into consideration the rights of victims. I would very much like Ministers to consider how in future they can look at the Parole Board’s role and augment it to ensure that victims’ rights are up there with the rights of offenders. Clearly, this Bill will still allow a killer, sentenced to life, to be released, even if he has failed to disclose the whereabouts of a victim’s body. Most people would say that such a person may not be properly rehabilitated if he is refusing to co-operate on something as basic as the location of a victim’s remains, or the identity of a child.
The Bill raises issues about the Parole Board that were out there and being discussed, but that were not satisfactorily addressed in the previous Parliament under previous Lord Chancellors. Perhaps this new Government, with the new approach that has been so much on display with the current Lord Chancellor, could consider how the role of the Parole Board could be looked at in more depth. I know that there was a review of the Parole Board in 2018. One recommendation was that there should be a further, more in-depth review of the Parole Board’s activity to see how legislation might actually make it a more transparent and accountable body. I would very much welcome such a review, especially if we could pursue it in a little more depth. We must continue to ensure that the rights of victims are equal to those of the offenders.
I also wish to touch on another issue around the Parole Board. In Telford, I have been trying to find out whether a serious perpetrator of child sexual exploitation, who was sentenced to a 26-year extended sentence in 2012, has been released. He was eligible for parole seven years later, in December 2019, and I cannot get an answer on whether that has happened. I cannot get an answer because I do not know his prisoner number. If I am unable to learn whether he has been released, the community I represent is also unable to know. The victims and their families also want to know. We do not want a Parole Board that does not feel that it has any duty to the victims. That is something that this new Government, with their commitment to victims and their families, can do so much about. I know that victims’ families and the wider community would truly appreciate such a step.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker, for being late for the start of this debate. The Liberal Democrats also welcome this Bill. It is a good move and we are glad to see it here today. I am pleased that the hon. Member has been talking about the rights of victims in particular. The Bill responds to a number of cases, including that of Vanessa George, a nursery worker who was convicted of multiple counts of sexual abuse and of taking and distributing indecent images of children. She then refused to name those victims. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need the Government to take many more steps to provide support and advice to victims of sexual abuse, including by providing sustainable grant funding for specialist independent support services in relation to those who are survivors of violence against women and girls?
Lucy Allan
I am grateful to the hon. Member for raising the rights of victims, particularly of women and girls, in this place.
Streatham Incident
Daisy Cooper Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Robert Buckland
My right hon. Friend, as a former Security Minister, is indeed very familiar with these issues, and he and I worked together on them during the passage of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. I reassure him that a mandatory minimum sentence of 14 years for serious terrorist offences will be part of our proposals in the counter-terrorism Bill, and I am sure that he will vigorously support that legislation when it comes to be debated in the House.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
The fact is that this attacker should not have been released from prison automatically. The law requiring automatic release is wrong, and it is right that we are now going to fix it, but that in itself is not enough. Whether people are locked up for two years, five years, 10 years or more, there is a very grave risk that people will come out of prison more dangerous than when they went in because our prisons are in crisis. What actions will the Minister take to ensure that all criminals, but especially high-risk terrorists, do not come out of prison more dangerous than when they went in?
Robert Buckland
I welcome the hon. Lady’s support for the measures that we are going to introduce. She is absolutely right about the need to end automatic early release. I assure her that we use a range of engagement programmes to deal with this violent and dangerous cohort of people. These engagement programmes are of various natures, and are designed to meet the particular demands that such individuals can pose. However, the programmes do require engagement. Where there is engagement, we can achieve results, but we also need to be mindful of the dangers of superficial compliance. That is why this particular cohort is difficult, challenging and tough, and requires an unprecedented response.