Assisted Dying (No. 2) Bill
Debate between Rob Marris and Helen Jones(8 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Rob Marris
I am sorry but I must make some progress. The Assisted Dying Bill has a clear process with multiple safeguards. I will briefly go through that because there has sometimes been confusion about what I am and am not proposing. The Bill covers a patient who is terminally ill, which involves a prognosis of less than six months.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
The Bill is founded on the belief that it is possible to predict the time of death accurately up to six months. In fact, most doctors would say that that is impossible. It is certainly impossible to predict death beyond a week or two. Is that not the case?
Rob Marris
My hon. Friend, like me, is a solicitor, and she will know that professionals commonly give advice on a balance of probabilities. That is the same for medical professionals. On the gross statistics, when errors in prognosis occur for the terminally ill, it is usually an overestimate of life expectancy.
The second point is that the patient must be aged 18 or over and ordinarily resident in England or Wales. The patient must be of sound mind, and must voluntarily sign a declaration that they wish to embark on this process. Then the attending doctor, as defined in the Bill, countersigns the declaration—