Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Lauren Edwards and Imran Hussain

2nd reading
Friday 11th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Lauren Edwards]

I will make some progress. As acknowledged by organisations that provide that care, though, their services cannot address pain and suffering in all circumstances. During the passage of the Bill in the last parliamentary Session, we heard examples of the limits of palliative care from Members with medical expertise themselves.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?

[Lauren Edwards]

No, I will make some progress. We heard difficult stories about patients with bile duct cancer facing the prospect of faecal vomiting as their illness progressed. We listened as Members recounted memories of watching patients bleed to death while conscious, cancer having eaten away at their carotid artery. We felt their frustration when the maximum dose of sedatives could not alleviate the choking and suffocation of someone with peritoneal cancer. Those people deserved choice and a dignified end, too.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lauren Edwards]

I would point out that there is a range of views among those in the palliative care community. It is specifically for that reason that the Bill allows them not to be involved in the process if they do not wish to be.

[Imran Hussain]

Will my hon. Friend be generous enough to give way on that point?

[Lauren Edwards]

No, I am sorry.

I end with the words of Elise Burns, who, like me, called Kent home, and who sadly died in July with secondary cancer of the lungs, liver and bones. She said she would love peers

“to look me in the eye and tell me why me and my friends, and anyone with terminal illness, don’t deserve to die with dignity and to have the choice to die…without pain.”

We owe it to terminally ill people like Elise, who are relying on us and who were so filled with hope when we voted in favour last time. Quite rightly, they cannot understand how, having secured the support of the people they elected to represent them, the issue that is so important to them has been frustrated by a small group of people with no democratic mandate.

The important conversation that we have been having on assisted dying, as legislators and as a society, has been interrupted. To leave it so would have a profoundly negative impact on people’s trust in our political system. If we fail to support the Bill’s Second Reading, are we not saying that it is fine for a minority of unelected peers to defy the will of the House of Commons? Are we really prepared to cede that point and accept the consequences not only for this vital legislation but for future legislation too?

I ask hon. Members to join me in sending a clear message that the will of this Chamber should be respected, on behalf of all the people that we represent, and to support this Bill on Second Reading.