Women’s State Pension Age: Financial Redress

Debate between Danny Kruger and Tom Gordon

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)]

Let me start by giving credit to the hon. Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) for her very powerful speech and for all the work that she has done on this campaign over the years, and to many other Labour Members who have spoken so well today, particularly the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who I always listen to with respect on this topic and, indeed, on some others.

It has been good to hear from Members. I particularly welcome the contribution of the hon. Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman), who is a great new addition to this place. We see here the true voice of the Labour party. It is the Labour movement at its best, and I pay tribute to Labour Members for their campaigning on this topic. They are the heroes of the movement. We also have the heroes of the Conservative party behind me—my good friends the knights of the shires—whom it is an honour to listen to. It is like listening to Edmund Burke when my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) speaks about duty and responsibility.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Salford and my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings on their work together on this campaign, which, a few months ago, secured the very significant Westminster Hall debate that has been mentioned. On that day, as if the product of their work, out popped, fresh and pink, the new Minister, who was appointed to his role on that day, as if for the very purpose of answering the question of what should be done for the WASPI women. There was hope of great things from him, but I am afraid to say that we were disappointed on that day. He could offer no hope at all, yet since then we have seen a whole series of U-turns. They have become fashionable on the Government Front Bench, and who knows what we may hear the from Minister today.

I recognise, and I am sure the Minister will stress, how difficult it is to address the very complicated circumstances of the very many women caught up in the pension age changes. As I am sure he will say, the ombudsman has recognised that there was no direct impact on pensioners’ incomes from the maladministration and the miscommunication of which the DWP was guilty in the 2000s. However, as Members have said— I particularly recognise the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—women made decisions about their future, and about their life, in ignorance of their true circumstances. The failure by the DWP to successfully and appropriately communicate with the women caused them to make decisions that directly disadvantaged them.

It is simply not credible, and I hope the Minister will not advance this argument, to say that correspondence from the Government is essentially pointless and has no value. That would be to suggest that there is no point in any Government communication by post. Of course, women were not advised of the changes in the circumstances, and that was the fault of the Government of the day. As many Members have said, and I acknowledge the powerful point made by the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), women deserve so much more. As she said, our constituents feel that they have been robbed not just of their money, but of their dignity as a consequence of these decisions.

What is to be done? There has been a series of suggestions about how we might go forward. On a point of process, I do not agree with the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon)—and I am concerned that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings seemed to agree with him—that the ombudsman’s report should in effect be binding on the Government. I do not think that is appropriate, because these are sovereign decisions that the Government, accountable to Parliament, should be making. However, I agree with the hon. Member and others that these reports should be respected by the Government, and I feel that simply did not happen in this case.

[Tom Gordon]

It is becoming a habit of mine to intervene on the hon. Member. He says that the report should be respected, but should not be binding, so what does he have in mind, and how would it look?

[Danny Kruger]

It is absolutely essential that the points made in the ombudsman’s report are fully acknowledged by the Government, and it is necessary, as I will explain, that some meaningful redress is made to the victims of the DWP’s maladministration.

The hon. Member for Salford suggested that there could be another review of the system by the Minister for Social Security and Disability, but I do not think that the magic words, “Timms review”, will get the Government out of this hole. He has enough on his hands sorting out the mess they have made on benefits, so this is a job for this Minister, who is a very clever man, and I have great confidence in him.

The suggestion made by some Members of mediation may be usefully taken forward. However, as my right hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) said, it is simply insulting of the Government to make absolutely no redress and no acknowledgement of the injustice that the WASPI women have endured, and it is appropriate for some meaningful acknowledgement to be made.

It is not for me to rescue the Government from the consequences of their own incontinence—their fiscal folly—which has got them into the mess they are in, but they have made several discretionary payments since they came to power. There were the salary increases for train drivers, without any improvement in productivity; the creation of a multibillion-pound energy company that makes no energy; our paying another country billions of pounds to take over sovereign territory belonging to the UK; and, of course, all the U-turns that have imposed significant new costs on the taxpayer, including those costing £5 billion this week alone. Obviously, Government can make discretionary payments if they want to; these are sovereign decisions that they can make.

Crucially, any such decision must be funded. We saw this week that the Government essentially fell apart as a consequence of a whole series of bad decisions made in the Treasury. Parliament rose up against the Treasury and demanded change. The decision making at the heart of the Government has been woeful for the past year since Labour has come to office. I pay tribute to the parliamentarians who resisted that this week. This is a new opportunity for the Government to put right a mistake, and I look forward to hearing how the Minister proposes to do that.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-seventh sitting)

Debate between Danny Kruger and Tom Gordon

Committee stage
Wednesday 19th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Danny Kruger]

Let me come to the question of investigation by the police in due course, but I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman heard me clearly. I was not talking about offences that I think are rightly criminal; I was talking about offences that are not offences at all. Providing hospice care, helping people to relieve symptoms of pain or suffering and withdrawing life support are all perfectly permitted and legal in our system. The issue is that a significant proportion of the public think that those activities are what assisted dying entails. I do, however, recognise the point and the power of the testimony recited by the hon. Member for Spen Valley, to which I will come on in due course.

I understand that in order to make the Bill effective, an exception must be made to section 2 of the Suicide Act. Section 1 says that someone is allowed to commit suicide; section 2 says that one cannot help somebody else to do so. I agree that such an exception is necessary if we are to pass the Bill, but I cannot follow why clause 24(1) is needed. I will be grateful if the hon. Member for Spen Valley or the Minister can explain which other offences would necessarily be committed by a doctor properly carrying out his or her functions under the Bill. What other offences might be caught that require clause 24(1)?

Clause 18 will forbid a doctor from engaging in euthanasia. One criminal law from which an exemption is not necessary is the law on murder, yet ostensibly subsection (1) has no such limitation. I would be grateful for the Minister’s confirmation that subsection (1) will not afford a defence when the charge is murder. I presume that that is not the intention.

What about manslaughter, and particularly gross negligence manslaughter? Under the Bill, a pharmacist performing the function of prescribing or dispensing the legal drugs would be, to use the wording of amendment 504, “performing” a “function under this Act”. If a pharmacist makes a grossly negligent mistake and mislabels a drug, which is then sent to another patient who takes it and dies, that would quite clearly be gross negligence manslaughter. Can the Minister explain why clause 24(1), as amended by amendment 504, would not allow someone to benefit from an immunity in respect of gross negligence manslaughter? To be clear, I agree that if the pharmacist intentionally mislabelled the drug, he could not be described as

“performing any other function under this Act”,

so he would not have that defence. However, in a case where, in good faith, he had made a fatal and grossly negligent mistake, surely he would have been performing such a function, albeit performing it very badly.

Can the Minister clearly set out the reasoning to explain why there is no chance of such a defence under the clause? Of course the hon. Member for Spen Valley does not intend to exempt from criminal liability a pharmacist acting in that grossly negligent way, but I am trying to make sense of the drafting of the amendment. If there is any criminal offence, other than in the Suicide Act, that requires an exemption, it would be best to say so clearly in the Bill rather than relying on a catch-all term, as subsection (1) does.

I concur with the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate and will not repeat them, but I do find it interesting that the hon. Member for Spen Valley has chosen to retain the offence of assisting and encouraging suicide. This is because two arguments made by proponents of the Bill lead to the logical conclusion that the offence should either be repealed entirely or limited to self-conduct, as is the case in Switzerland. Let us look at the two arguments in turn.

The first argument relates to autonomy. If an autonomous individual with capacity decides to end their own life and requests the assistance of another person, why should that other person be criminalised? After all, that person is simply helping another person to do something to their own body that the law has not prohibited since 1961, so surely it is a violation of autonomy to criminalise such conduct of assisting in suicide.

Lord Mance, a former justice of the Supreme Court, put the matter as follows on Second Reading of the Meacher Bill in the other place:

“Suicide is decriminalised, yet assisting suicide remains criminal—probably a unique exception to the principle that you can only be an accomplice to an act that is itself criminal.”

It is bizarre that the act is not itself criminal but being an accomplice to it is. Lord Mance went on to say:

“If a person may choose freely to commit suicide, what justifies a refusal to allow them to obtain willing assistance?”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 22 October 2021; Vol. 815, c. 408.]

I believe in the value of a prohibition on assistance, but the logic of the argument from autonomy—that someone should be allowed to request assistance to help them to die—surely obviates the distinction. I do not see why we have kept section 2 at all, and I would be interested in hearing from the supporters of the Bill what the limiting principle is. Why do they think assisted suicide should remain a crime, despite its being a limitation on autonomy, outside the scheme created by the Bill? Why are we simply creating a scheme within the Bill?

The second argument given, which I think relates to the intervention from the hon. Member for Sunderland Central and to the point made by the hon. Member for Spen Valley, is based on the fact that the current law requires people to travel to Switzerland. The argument against the current system comes in three forms. One stresses the toll that it places on families to know that the people who assist have committed a criminal offence and could be investigated by the police, even though the chances of prosecution are remote. I fully recognise and share all the concerns among Members about the terrible distress faced by people who may in any way have assisted their loved one to take their own life.

The second objection to the status quo makes the point about the unfairness that the situation creates. The hon. Member for Liverpool Wavertree (Paula Barker) said on Second Reading:

“I do not want choice to be available only to those who can afford to pay. That is not just or equitable.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2024; Vol. 797, c. 1073.]

The suggestion is that to have to pay to go to Switzerland is a violation of equality.

The third is a constitutional argument. It is said that it is constitutionally improper for the Director of Public Prosecutions to have effectively decriminalised assisted suicide for people who travel to Switzerland. But the point I am trying to make is that under the Bill, anyone helping their relative to travel to Switzerland, or any other country, would still be committing an offence under section 2 of the Suicide Act.

Research from My Death, My Decision, a campaign group pushing for a wider Bill than the current one—it supports the Bill but clearly wants it to go further—has found that 50% of cases going to Dignitas would not be eligible under the Bill. It helps to make my point, which is that I am afraid that if the Bill were passed we would still have stories like the very moving testimony read out by the hon. Member for Spen Valley. In fact, as my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate said, there is a significant likelihood that there would be more prosecutions. If the Bill were enacted, the conclusion of the Crown Prosecution Service and the police might well be that, given the existence of an assisted dying regime within the UK, assisting one’s relative to go to Switzerland should be subject to a greater likelihood of prosecution. That is a legitimate concern.

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

The point that the hon. Gentleman is making is actually one that I made yesterday. I appreciate that we are on entirely different sides of the debate, but that is exactly why I was talking about ensuring wider eligibility—the point he makes in relation to My Death, My Decision—and ensuring the provision of assistance for people who might have illnesses such as motor neurone disease. We have had to put a cut-off somewhere, and some people fall outside it, but does he accept that fundamentally this is about making sure that there are safeguards? That is the key point: that we should ensure safeguards. What the hon. Gentleman is talking about is exactly that.

[Danny Kruger]

I am grateful. With great respect to other members of the Committee, I think the hon. Gentleman is the most honest advocate of assisted dying among us, because he genuinely recognises that autonomy demands the widest possible range of eligibility. It might be that other Members feel that we have the balance exactly right. I recognise the force of his argument that if we are going to introduce a new human right, it is very difficult to circumscribe its boundaries. He himself thinks that there should be some boundaries: he proposed an amendment that specified 12 months, and he thinks that only certain people should be able to ask someone else to perform assisted death to them. Nevertheless, he is acknowledging that if we believe in autonomy, the Bill would not satisfy some people.

I think it would be intellectually coherent and more logical for proponents of the Bill to want to repeal section 2 of the Suicide Act, and I do not understand why they are not doing so. We could certainly continue to insist on prohibitions against any form of coercion, persuasion or inducement to take one’s own life, but if somebody is clearly in their right mind and wants to receive assistance to kill themselves, that is the principle of the Bill. It would be neater if we amended the Suicide Act accordingly.

The fact that proponents do not want to do so suggests that they see some value in the law and that they consider that that value trumps concerns about autonomy and the impact of the law on family members of someone who wishes to travel to Switzerland to end their life. I agree that there are such principles—namely, the intrinsic value of life and the protection of the vulnerable—but I do not see why proponents of the Bill consider that such principles trump autonomy when it comes to terminally ill adults in England.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-fifth sitting)

Debate between Danny Kruger and Tom Gordon

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Tom Gordon]

The hon. Member mentioned that down the line the Bill could be changed through guidance. I do not think there would be any scope or ability to do that. Does he agree that that point might be a little bit beyond what we all think might be possible under the terms of guidance?

[Danny Kruger]

I hope the hon. Gentleman is right. Nevertheless, one of my concerns about the Bill is that we are leaving enormous areas of clinical practice, and regulated conduct for the professionals involved in assisted suicide, to be performed under guidance that is still to be set out and that it is the job of future Ministers to determine.

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman, because he has correctly identified a group of patients for whom the drafted Bill may present obstacles to the fulfilment of their wish for an assisted death. My belief is that the ability to assist will probably cover almost anybody who wants it and has found a doctor who wants to help them, but the hon. Gentleman is right that there are some groups for whom that might be more of a challenge than others. I think the answer we are going to get—it is one made by hon. Members in the debate already—is that technology will fix it, and I fear it will, because I think we are going to find ourselves in a world in which it is perfectly possible for the administration of death to be enabled through some kind of technological device, which somebody with the most limited physical mobility will nevertheless be able to activate.

I fear the insistence that we have on self-administration. Although we can all acknowledge, as referenced in the previous debate, the conceptual difference between administration and self-administration, we do have this idea that we are individuals cut off from each other and that there is an essential gap between us and other people. At the very end of life, though—in the moments that we are considering and legislating for—that distinction is void, because we are intimately connected with other people, as per the clauses that we are debating. I fear that we are going to find ourselves in a world in which a laptop will be set up and even a movement as small as the blink of an eyelid by the patient will be enough to trigger what will be called “self-administration” of the fatal dose.

I oppose this group of amendments, moved by the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough, because I do not believe in assisted suicide. I do not understand why other supporters of the Bill are not following the hon. Gentleman’s lead, and acknowledging that if we believe in autonomy and assisted suicide, of course we should enable patients to have the final act performed upon them, rather than insisting on this arbitrary distinction that it is possible to insist on self-administration in all cases.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Gordon]

I will keep it short and sweet. I had not intended to push the amendments to a vote and will not be doing so. A lot of important points have been raised. Irrespective of whether the amendments were going to be pushed to a vote or would have been successful, it is important that we listen to and take into account the voices of people with different diseases who might wish to access an assisted death. We must also take into account the evidence that organisations have submitted, because it is important that those voices are heard too. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Danny Kruger]

I beg to move amendment 435, in clause 18, page 13, line 6, at end insert—

“(9A) Where the procedure has failed, the coordinating doctor must escalate the care of the person by making the appropriate referral to emergency medical services.”

This amendment would require the doctor to escalate the care of the person in cases in which the procedure fails.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting)

Debate between Danny Kruger and Tom Gordon

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman will have to forgive me, because I am a relatively new MP and there are still bits of parliamentary procedure that I have not yet got my head round, but is it not the case that MPs will have a say on Report, when they can table amendments to take the Bill back to how it was? That point could therefore be debated on Report.

[Danny Kruger]

Of course that is correct: a small number of amendments will be selected for debate and vote on Report, and if somebody wants to table an amendment on this issue it might indeed make it through Mr Speaker’s selection, but the point of the Committee process is to consider the Bill that was passed on Second Reading and come back to the House with the Bill either unamended or amended. This is a very substantial change to the Bill that was presented and voted for on Second Reading. As I say, many Members supported this clause, no doubt including the hon. Gentleman.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Debate between Danny Kruger and Tom Gordon

Committee stage
Wednesday 26th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Danny Kruger]

I recognise that this is a vital point; I am not surprised that we keep returning to this important distinction. I do think that there is a vital distinction between accepting treatment and declining a treatment. In fact, the treatment proposed here is not a treatment at all—the British Medical Association specifies that it is not a medical treatment. The termination of life deliberately does not apply to a particular condition, whereas a ventilator, or any treatment that one might decline or withdraw, is specific to a particular condition or illness. There is a difference in purpose, even if the effect—which is death—is the same.

To the hon. Member’s point on whether the MCA is appropriate in cases of withdrawal of treatment; well, there we do seem to have a substantial body of clinical practice over many years, to which I am not aware of many objections. My non-expert view is that it is probably appropriate to continue with the MCA in those cases. I do not have an objection there and I am certainly not making that argument. It may well be that it is appropriate, and I am sure we will constantly review the applicability of that particular test in those circumstances. It might well be that some of the problems that I am identifying with the proposed law may also apply in cases of withdrawal of treatment—but I am not aware of that, because I do think they are substantially different. Even if it were perfectly acceptable to apply the MCA in cases of withdrawal of treatment, that does not mean it is appropriate in this case, because they are fundamentally different scenarios. I do not detect that I have satisfied the hon. Member, but it is always good to have the exchange.

I will conclude my challenge to the suggestion that the MCA is universally understood and properly applied. The Court of Protection case of Patricia, a patient with anorexia nervosa, has been referred to a number of times in the course of our debate. We heard evidence from a group of anorexia sufferers who wrote to the Committee to say:

“The judge in the Court of Protection case of Patricia…stated that he had changed his mind several times while considering the evidence. He then came to a different view on capacity from the treatment team. This single case exemplifies how complex the processes described under Clauses 7, 8 and 12 of the Bill in relation to assessment of capacity are likely to be”.

We are not talking about a straightforward process. It is clear from all the evidence we have had that there is a real problem with the way that the MCA would apply.

I want to make a rather obvious point, which is that when the MCA was debated and passed 20 years ago, assisted dying, or assisted suicide, was not on the table; it was not part of those considerations, as far as I am aware. It turns out that Dignity in Dying was on the case back in those days, although I think it was still called the Voluntary Euthanasia Society then. That group was conscious of what would come—I do not think that others were—and I detect that it is quite pleased now with the influence applied then to ensure that the presumption of capacity would be very useful one day when it came to passing an assisted dying law. It was not the intention of the House of Commons or of the Committee that considered that Bill that in fact they were establishing a test that would be applied in the case of assisting suicide and changing the terms of the Suicide Act. I am sure that if that had been the case, it would have been commented on, and I daresay the Mental Capacity Act would not be in its current form, or there would have been some addendum to that effect.

My hon. Friend the Member for Reigate referred to the very powerful evidence from lawyers, Baroness Hale and the Royal College of Psychiatrists about the challenge here. I want to quickly say, in support of amendment 322 in the name of the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford, that my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate made a powerful argument about impairment; it is striking that the MCA only applies when there are cases of impairment of, or disturbance in, the functioning of the mind or brain—I will not repeat the point she made, but I urge Members to reflect on it.

I will quote Ruth Hughes, a barrister specialising in mental capacity law and inheritance. This refers back to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate and I discussed in an earlier sitting about the clear opportunity that the Bill affords people to seek an assisted death for the sole purpose of saving their family money. Ruth Hughes says:

“If the…Bill is passed, then this will lead to some of the most vulnerable people dying for others’ financial gain. That is certain…Although in general I would, of course, accept the importance of the presumption of capacity, in relation to assisted dying, I consider that, the burden of proof for capacity should be reversed so that it is necessary to establish capacity to decide to die positively.”

Amendment 322 is tabled for that very obvious reason: there is a clear financial advantage for family members, and, I am afraid to say, there are many other distressing motivations that people might have that are not intended by the Bill’s promoter, the hon. Member for Spen Valley. It feels absolutely appropriate that we reverse the burden and have a much higher test of eligibility than that afforded by the Mental Capacity Act.

I want to make another point, although I do not know how hon. Members will feel about it because a lot of people do not accept that we are talking about suicide, even though it is in the terms in the Bill that we are amending the Suicide Act. The assumption of capacity in somebody taking their own life is what is proposed if we adopt clause 3: we are proposing that somebody has capacity if they end their own life. That implies directly that somebody who is standing on a window ledge or a bridge, about to commit suicide, is assumed to have capacity and to be making a rational decision, which other people should support. I say that directly, because there is a direct read-across with the whole topic of suicide prevention, which obviously we all strongly believe in. How can we say that somebody who is about to take their own life, unassisted, does not have capacity and is not making a settled and informed wish? In which case, why should we stop them or try to wrestle them back from the edge?

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

When people are in what is often termed a “crisis”, that would indicate that they are not in a situation where they have capacity. I do not see how the hon. Gentleman can think that it is reasonable to make a comparison between these two things; they are entirely different, and I am sure everyone here would broadly agree with that—I think, on this one, he is sort of on his own. Would the hon. Gentleman be able to offer any further insight into why he thinks that two wildly different situations are analogous—one is in a medical context where people have all the safeguards, and that layer of security and checking, and the other is someone who might be doing something in a moment of desperation?

[Danny Kruger]

The connection is explicitly in terms of the Bill. The Bill disapplies section 2 of the Suicide Act, which makes it illegal to assist somebody to commit suicide. It says that that section no longer applies. This Bill assists people to take their own life—I will not use the word “suicide” if people do not like it. There are other eligibility criteria: I totally acknowledge the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough pointing out that someone has to have a diagnosis of terminal illness, but that is not the point I am making. I am making the point that, under clause 3, we are saying that somebody who wants to take their own life has capacity, according to the very low bar of having a settled and informed wish. We are assuming capacity in the person who wants to end their own life. I suggest that that presents a real challenge to our national suicide prevention strategy—I will leave that point there, but I welcome any challenges to it.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Debate between Danny Kruger and Tom Gordon

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Danny Kruger]

Yes, but I simply state on the record that I believe that this is not the end, but the beginning of a wider Bill that would follow if we passed this one. I am encouraged by what the hon. Lady says, or implies: that she does not want to go further than this Bill.

My plea to the Committee is straightforward. Let us confine eligibility to the people who the campaigners talk about: those with diseases or illnesses that are genuinely terminal. We can do more to strengthen that definition with later amendments, but, first, we have to remove the gaping hole in the fence that is this term “medical condition”. Let us remove that term.

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

Marie Curie’s definition of a terminal illness is

“an illness or condition which cannot be cured and is likely to lead to someone’s death”.

It is obviously one of the best-known end of life charities, so how does the hon. Member reconcile the differences he has with its professional expertise?

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Ninth sitting)

Debate between Danny Kruger and Tom Gordon

Tuesday 11th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Tom Gordon]

The hon. Member makes a valid point about ensuring that there is documentary evidence. Does he not feel that that will be covered at a later point in the Bill when we debate the amendments on training, and specifically on ensuring a coherent way in which all the doctors and people in the process set about recording?

[Danny Kruger]

The hon. Gentleman is a great stickler for doing things in the right order. I am grateful to him for calling us to order on that point again. I dare say that he is absolutely right. All these issues are rather interwoven through the Bill.

I will finish on a point about the role of the Court of Appeal. A rejected application—although not an approved application, I am sorry to say—can be appealed under clause 12. For the Court of Appeal’s review to be substantive, it must surely be able to review the evidence as fully as possible on what happened throughout the terminally ill person’s application.