Kit Malthouse MP: speeches

Speeches

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  No, I do not share that regret, because until today, and until we all vote on it, the Government do not actually know what they are facing. They have undertaken that they will produce exactly the assessment that my hon. Friend is talking about between the end of this process and Report, so we can all have a look at what it will be. At that point, Members can put a price on other people’s death and other people’s pain if they want to, but there are lots of situations where the House of Commons decides about things on the basis of moral principle and public interest, and then we ask the public sector to absorb it. If that causes operational problems, then we solve those separately. In my 10 years in the House, I cannot remember anybody ever standing up and saying, “We shouldn’t do this because the public sector can’t cope.”

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Or “youse”.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  And the panel.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  To be clear, does my hon. Friend envisage that I would either be in the hearing, or lying in my bed listening to the hearing—the fungating tumours in my neck restricting my ability to breathe—having gone through all the eligibility criteria, but having to listen to someone argue that I should go through a death that I am trying to avoid, by arguing that I do not have capacity? Does he not see that that could be profoundly distressing to someone who is in the closing moments of their life? In many ways, it might actually be cruel and traumatic for me to hear somebody arguing, frankly, that I should endure the pain, in their opinion.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I rise briefly to amplify a couple of points from the excellent speeches by the hon. Members for Rother Valley and for Ipswich. First, in clarification, I understand that there are situations where judges can sit in essentially supervisory positions—not least, for example, on the BBC board—and they can of course be Cross Benchers in the House of Lords. They are allowed to undertake other charitable trustee roles, although they are restricted in their activities.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Forgive me, Sir Roger. Will the hon. Lady give way?

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  But they already are terminally ill.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am not sure that my amendment (d) was selected—unfortunately, I missed the deadline— so the Minister does not need to cover it.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I share the confusion of the hon. Member for Spen Valley. By the time we get to clause 13, my understanding is that the two doctors and the panel are already satisfied of the person’s eligibility, so they are by definition terminally ill. I do not understand why they would then seek to render themselves doubly terminally ill by adding the characteristics the hon. Lady is talking about. Maybe I am getting confused. I could understand the hon. Lady’s case if she had made it way before, but at this stage the person has been through two doctors and the panel and got permission to go ahead. I do not understand why they would then starve themselves.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am just intrigued. My hon. Friend is talking a lot about the evidence. Did any evidence on anything in the Bill change his mind on any aspect of it?

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  As I recall it, there were a number of questions at the oral evidence stage about the notion of there being a panel, specifically when we had the panel of lawyers. We asked about that. But the hon. Gentleman is right; the issue was an emerging one at the time. That is the nature of the kind of iterative policymaking, or legislative process, that we are going through at the moment. The Government have said that they will produce an impact assessment, so we can all have a look. It will not be long—three or four weeks—and then we will all be able to make a judgment.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Sorry, Sir Roger.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  But they do not need to if they have got to this stage.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady puts it exactly right. These are two separate questions, and we should not conflate them. Certainly, we should not allow the House of Commons to be constrained by those capacity constraints from doing what it thinks is the right thing. We should do the right thing, and then put pressure on the Government to provide the facilities that we think are required.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twentieth sitting) · Hansard source

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  What is an acceptable answer? Can we have a list?

• 11 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twentieth sitting) · Hansard source

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  indicated dissent .

• 11 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twentieth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Subjective.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty First sitting) · Hansard source

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  I agree about the primacy of autonomy, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that, given the status quo and the many stories that we have heard about individuals who took their lives but kept it secret from their families, whether by going to Switzerland or by doing it in a horrible way in lonely circumstances, a regulated atmosphere would makes it more likely that people will talk to their family about what their death will be like and, as we have learned from overseas, make arrangements for their family to be around them, or at least to say goodbye, as they move into that process? At the moment, because this area is unregulated, way more people do it in secret than need to.

• 7 Mar 2025 · Protection of Children (Digital Safety and Data Protection) Bill · Hansard source

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  As I think we all know, the Government are likely to adjourn the debate on the Bill. Will my hon. Friend’s case be made if the case for adjournment is that the Minister commits that he will go and do these things anyway, and therefore the legislation is unnecessary?

• 7 Mar 2025 · Protection of Children (Digital Safety and Data Protection) Bill · Hansard source

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  I am not convinced that the guidance created by this Bill will be any more authoritative than that created by the NSPCC or by Internet Matters. The point I was making was not necessarily that the guidance is going to be pivotal, but that we need to get to a critical mass of observance before guidance is likely to have any impact. The original Bill was likely to do that, not least through the ban in schools, which created a nucleus of clear space for children that could be translated into homes. Many Members may have heard on the BBC this morning a short piece on the Fulham boys school, which has an absolute ban on even bringing a smartphone to school. That ban during the school period has resulted in the periods before and after school also being phone-free, and therefore much more social and beneficial to those pupils.

• 7 Mar 2025 · Protection of Children (Digital Safety and Data Protection) Bill · Hansard source

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  It is a point of order. Madam Deputy Speaker, I wonder if you could give us guidance as to whether we actually have the right Minister responding to this Bill. If there were negotiations with the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister) about the Bill, one would expect the Minister who had conducted those negotiations, and who was therefore able to speak to the decisions that have been made, to appear at the Dispatch Box. Have we got the right person?

• 7 Mar 2025 · Protection of Children (Digital Safety and Data Protection) Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend vividly illustrates the problem with this kind of collective action and peer pressure. Has she reflected on the fact that it is not just the addictive nature of the application that is pulling in our kids, but the fact that they are free, and therefore everybody is encouraged to get them? We then get 100% coverage, and it is very hard to deny them to our child, if they will be the only child without.

• 7 Mar 2025 · Protection of Children (Digital Safety and Data Protection) Bill · Hansard source

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  I would be willing to accept the hon. Gentleman’s encouragement if this were advice to schools, but it is not; it is advice to parents and carers. If there were going to be authoritative advice for schools, as well as other organisations that have charge of children—scout troops, children’s clubs, and other publicly funded organisations that look after children—I would have said, “Possibly,” even though there is to be a 12-month delay before the CMO tells us stuff we already know, as the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington pointed out. The second step is for the Government to publish a plan for research within 12 months. That is not the conclusion of research, and there is no time limit—just a plan, a vague aspiration that we should have a plan, with no commencement, no sense of budget and no idea of when it might come. I am sorry to say that the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington has been sold a cosmetic pup. The third and final point is that the Government have to publish this “assessment”—whatever that may be—which, as far as I can see, is fundamentally to tell us something we already know, and which the hon. Gentleman has illustrated extremely vividly. We should all be furious about the delay and prevarication that is being injected into what could have been a huge step forward for parents and children.

• 7 Mar 2025 · Protection of Children (Digital Safety and Data Protection) Bill · Hansard source

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  I was going to come on to that later, but my hon. Friend is completely right.

• 7 Mar 2025 · Protection of Children (Digital Safety and Data Protection) Bill · Hansard source

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  As the hon. Lady says, the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister) has done an enormous amount of work, and it is obviously desirable for the Government to act in the face of evidence. Does she think that the Bill, as negotiated with the Government, constitutes action?