Sarah Olney MP: speeches

Speeches

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

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  The hon. Lady talks about the four tests and parts of the Mental Capacity Act; the point I was making was that we want to retain elements of the Act, although using it in its entirety is problematic in this context. The four functional tests about whether someone is capable of making a decision absolutely should be retained—as she said, that is well tested, it works well and people understand in a court of law exactly how to apply it—but some of the other elements of the Mental Capacity Act are problematic. That is why I seek to redraft “capacity” to “ability”—I accept that that might be a problematic word, but I hope the hon. Lady will take on board my earlier comments—and that is what is important. The hon. Lady is saying we should not take out those bits of the Mental Capacity Act that are valuable and important, and I agree.

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

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  I have a suspicion that the hon. Gentleman may have made that point already in one of his many interventions. Withdrawing treatment is not the same as someone making an informed wish to have their death assisted. That is why we need to be very careful about considering whether the Mental Capacity Act is appropriate for that kind of decision. That Act is being used in a way it was not designed for. To use this definition of “capacity” is to accept the premise that this is just like any other treatment option and not qualitatively different, and fails to recognise the complexity and gravity of the decision. The Bill also fails to consider that there may be a risk of assessor bias—that sometimes it may well be that a doctor who makes an assessment may well have their own views about the suitability of assisted dying as an option for that particular patient. They may be in favour of it, or they may be against it. If that were to sway them towards making an assessment against capacity, that could have lots of serious implications for the patient. I have proposed amendment 34 because I think it is the best way forward at this stage, given the variety of evidence we have had and the real difficulty for us in this room of making an appropriate determination of the extent to which the Mental Capacity Act’s use may be modified for this purpose, or of coming up with something entirely new. I think the best way forward is to give the power to the Government—to the Secretary of State—to define the term “ability” in relation to this legislation at a later date.

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

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  I have to ask the hon. Gentleman to clarify that. When he says he uses a panel, is he referring to the new amendment that has been proposed? I have not seen it yet and cannot comment on it, and have no idea if it will be adopted.

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

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  If I may say so, the hon. Gentleman’s intervention precisely illustrates what other hon. Members were raising as points of order earlier. How can we properly scrutinise the legislation when new amendments are being tabled at the last minute that potentially change the entire nature of the legislation that we are attempting to scrutinise? It is very difficult then to speak about the amendments that have already been tabled.

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

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  I agree exactly with the hon. Lady’s point. The Act was not designed for this purpose, and it is essential that we carefully scrutinise whether it should be used in this way.

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

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  Will the hon. Lady give way?

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

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  I say to that what I have been saying throughout: a test of mental capacity is not sufficient for this Bill. For example, the Royal College of Psychiatrists states that the Mental Capacity Act “is not sufficient for the purposes of this Bill. Extensive consideration needs to be given to what an assessment of mental capacity should consist of” for decisions relating to assisted dying or assisted suicide— “and, indeed, whether a determination through such an assessment can be reliably arrived at in this novel context.” I believe that what the Royal College of Psychiatrists means by “novel context” is that no legislation of this type has been framed before and we do not have any precedent to guide us in terms of what an appropriate determination of capacity might be.

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

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  rose —

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

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  I am grateful to the hon. Member for his intervention, but I am not proposing to change any legislation other than the Bill before us. All the other legislation to which he refers should remain precisely as it is, and for the purpose for which it was intended. He asks who is to say whether someone is making a wise or unwise decision; that is the job of the people who are instructed to provide assessments under the Mental Capacity Act. As was clear from my response to the hon. Member for Reigate, if someone has been assessed as having capacity, there must not be any further interference in their decision-making process, even if there are distinct concerns that that person may be deciding to end their life not purely because of their terminal illness but because they are suffering from depression. There is no other mechanism in the Bill to enable that further safeguard.

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

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  I look forward to the hon. Lady’s further comments, but as I said, the psychiatrists were very clear that they did not believe that this was a sufficient safeguard, and we should acknowledge that. I was unable to put my question to Alex Ruck Keene KC during the oral evidence session, but he kindly agreed to give further evidence in writing in response to a letter I sent to him later that day. That exchange of letters has been published as written evidence. It was his position that, in actual fact, Professor Sir Chris Whitty misinterpreted the Mental Capacity Act when he gave evidence. There is no such requirement in the Mental Capacity Act that states that the more serious the decision, the greater the level of capacity that someone needs to have. Mr Ruck Keene’s view is that that was the common law prior to the Mental Capacity Act coming into force, whereas in actual fact the Mental Capacity Act does not require that the more serious the decision, the more capacity someone needs to be judged to have.

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

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  I look forward to it.

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

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  The hon. Lady has moved on considerably from the point that I was going to make, so I took it that she was not going to take interventions. Although I would have liked the opportunity to respond to some of her points, I have kept my counsel. Since she has now given way, I want to make something of a point of order. The hon. Lady mentioned that she thought my use of the word “ability” was ableist, and I want to put on the record that I had absolutely no intention of it being interpreted in that way. I meant no offence, and I hope that the word would not have been considered in such a light. If that caused any offence, I apologise. I hope that the general meaning of the word “ability” is well understood in this context.

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

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  The hon. Member for Solihull West and Shirley used an arresting phrase this morning: he said that to abandon the Mental Capacity Act would take us “into tiger country”. The concept appeals greatly to me, but what I would say to him and other Committee members is that it is the Bill itself that takes us into tiger country. It is unprecedented, and this is very new territory for legislation in this country. That is the tiger country, right there. If we are going to let those tigers out into the wild, we need to ensure that the British public, and particularly the most vulnerable members of it, have the right protections. That is what the amendment seeks. There was not a consensus among those who gave oral or written evidence that the Mental Capacity Act is a sufficient safeguard for the purpose proposed in the Bill. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford for his speech this morning, which illustrated vividly for all of us how the Mental Capacity Act is used in practice. I particularly thank him for his personal reflection. Let me reiterate what the amendment seeks. The Bill proposes to judge mental capacity for a decision to request assisted dying in relation to the Mental Capacity Act 2005. There are elements of the Mental Capacity Act that are tried and tested, and should be retained in assessments of capacity in relation to this legislation, but as per the written evidence of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Mental Capacity Act is not sufficient for the purposes of assisted dying, because it cannot distinguish between those who suffer from a mental disorder and those who do not. It needs to be adapted for the purposes of the Bill. My amendment 34 would therefore substitute “capacity” with “ability” and reserve to the Secretary of State the power to define ability for the purposes of the Bill. To me, that is a pragmatic response. The debate in the Committee Room today reflects the lack of consensus among the experts who gave witness. That is why I think the matter is better resolved by those experts giving advice to the Secretary of the State, so the definition of ability can be expertly decided on. The difference between choosing assisting dying and choosing to end treatment was a big topic of debate both this morning and this afternoon. It goes to the heart of the different approaches that people take towards the Bill. I support the observation from the hon. Member for East Wiltshire that the difference is between dying of an illness itself, or dying of the effects of the approved substance, as laid out in the Bill. To me, that is a substantial and material difference, so our approach to establishing capacity should reflect that. The hon. Member for Reigate made an important point about the difference between a passive and an active choice. That very much reflects what I am trying to achieve through the amendment, which would allow us to strengthen the safeguards around the assessment of capacity. Given that there was not a consensus, among the experts who gave evidence, on whether the Mental Capacity Act is sufficient for the purpose, the pragmatic step is to allow the amendment to create the conditions under which a stronger safeguard can be adopted if necessary. Question put, That the amendment be made.

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

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  The Minister says that the Government have made their own choice about when to do the impact assessment on the Bill. Does he not accept that it would have made sense to have done it before the Committee stage? Then, any evidence that the assessment threw up could have given rise to amendments tabled during the Committee stage—that would have made it an appropriate time to have done the impact assessment. The impact assessment could then always have been updated depending on how the Bill was then amended during Committee.

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

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  It is really important that we establish whether this will be defined as a treatment or indeed as something quite distinct in law. My understanding is that the word “treatment” should never apply to assisted dying. I would be grateful for the Minister’s clarification.

• 6 Feb 2025 · UK-EU Relations · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. I welcome much of the statement’s content—that the Government are serious in their commitment to resetting our broken relationship with the European Union—but what the Liberal Democrats want is action. The European Union is our closest neighbour and largest trading partner. I sense that the Minister knows that we have to get on with repairing the trading relationship which was so badly damaged under the former Conservative Government, so please let us get on and do it. The botched Brexit deal has been a complete disaster for our country, especially for small businesses, which have been held back by reams of red tape and new barriers to trade, costing our economy billions in lost exports. The Minister talks of pragmatic negotiation. Surely what is pragmatic is to drop the Government’s red lines and agree a new UK-EU customs union. It would be the single biggest step that the Government could take to unlock growth, and I cannot think of anything more pragmatic. Liberal Democrats will continue to call on the Government to do the right thing. We are also disappointed by the Home Secretary’s comments at the weekend on ruling out a youth mobility scheme. Does that represent the Government’s stance? A youth mobility deal would be good for our economy, especially our tourism and hospitality sectors, while providing young British people with the opportunity to work and study abroad. It would be a win-win. Not only that, it is what the British public want. New polling shows that two thirds of the UK population are in favour of such a scheme. Does the Minister not agree that introducing a youth mobility scheme is exactly the kind of pragmatic negotiation that the Government should be prioritising?

• 5 Feb 2025 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Government’s increased funding for the Metropolitan police, but this commitment does not go anywhere near far enough to deliver what is required for safe policing on the streets of London. The Labour party was elected into office on the mandate to restore community policing, which was gutted by the last Conservative Government. The shadow Policing Minister, the hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers), may profess his own interest in police funding, but a more eloquent story is told by the empty Benches behind him when it comes to their commitment on this issue, which was demonstrated throughout their Administration. We need to see real action and a real commitment to neighbourhood policing in order to address the ongoing issues of crime and antisocial behaviour that we are seeing across London, and to give the police the tools that they need to restore trust and confidence in our police service. I am concerned that this grant is not enough to protect current services provided by the Metropolitan police from further cuts, let alone enough to restore policing numbers and infrastructure to their previous levels. The force is experiencing real challenges in the recruitment and retention of police officers, which is affecting its ability to fill vacancies. I receive regular correspondence from my constituents, who have passed on their experiences of being victims of burglaries and other criminal activities. The recurring theme in this correspondence is the difficulty that victims experience in ensuring that their cases are investigated in detail and at length by the Met. That is a direct consequence of cuts to our forces because our neighbourhood teams are severely stretched, meaning that the time they can spend on each case is limited. My constituency of Richmond Park used to be home to three police stations, but after years of cuts they have all been closed. Richmond police station acted as a hub for our community, and provided reassurance to residents that they could quickly report a crime or a development in a case to an officer in person. The lack of these police stations in my constituency is causing that connection between the public and the police to be lost, due to the reduced visibility of police officers on our streets.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When I speak to my local police officers—the officers patrolling the streets of my constituency—I find very often that they actually live quite some distance from the communities they serve. That is obviously a direct result of the cost of living in London, but it creates a real problem for Londoners in that they are not served by Londoners in the police force. My hon. Friend is also exactly right about morale—that really has to be urgently addressed. This story is common across London. More than 100 police stations have been closed by the Met, while there has been a 64% reduction in community policing since 2015. However, the Met is now in a position where it cannot sell off any more of its estate to balance its budget, and it is clear that it requires a significant influx of funding. The Metropolitan police is responsible for policing regular and well-attended protests in central London, which require a greater intensity of resource to police. In Richmond Park, we regularly see our local officers abstracted away from their neighbourhood responsibilities to provide additional support at these events, which has resulted in a lack of cover on our streets, which adds to people’s anxieties about the lack of policing. Recently, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, has warned about the deeply concerning shortfall faced by the Met. In December, referencing a £450 million funding shortfall, the commissioner warned that if substantial funding is not provided, the Met would be forced to cut 2,300 officers and 400 members of staff in the next financial year. The funding proposed by the Government today is, therefore, a drop in the ocean compared with what is required to prevent cuts to our London officers, and this provision of funding is certainly not in keeping with the Government’s promise to restore neighbourhood policing numbers to our communities. While I cannot match the speeches on rural crime from my hon. Friends the Members for Winchester (Dr Chambers) and for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart), my constituency does have a significant police force, the Parks police, which specifically patrols the Royal Parks. The Parks police plays a crucial role in keeping crime and antisocial behaviour in the Royal Parks across London to a minimum, while its expertise in its domain enables the force to quickly address emergency situations. In response to a survey I recently conducted, nearly 1,000 of my constituents voiced their strong opposition to any proposed cuts to the Parks police, as well as providing first-hand accounts of times the Parks police helped to provide a quick resolution to what could otherwise have developed into a crisis situation. With all that in mind, will the Minister provide us with assurances that the new grant funding for our police forces will mean that cuts to such important and valued police departments are not on the table? I urge the Minister to go further, and to really consider the specific demands of the Metropolitan police and the valuable work it does right across our city in keeping our community safe.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is precisely right. Having had conversations with local police teams, what I find frequently is that there is a large turnover of police officers in neighbourhood policing, which really affects the ability of police officers to develop a relationship with their local communities. That lack of experience can be so telling when it comes to responding to issues such as antisocial behaviour.

• 3 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  A constituent came to see me last week who had not eaten for four days. Her state pension had increased in line with the triple lock but this took her over the threshold for pension credit, which then took away her entitlement to a range of other benefits including the winter fuel allowance. What are the Government doing to ensure people do not experience such a significant cliff edge?

• 30 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Dr Price, I am really glad that we are able to have the Royal College of Psychiatrists in front of us today; thank you for making the time. I want to ask you about paragraph 11 of your written evidence, which states that it is the royal college’s view that the Mental Capacity Act “is not sufficient for the purposes of this Bill.” Could you expand a little on that and, if you feel able, make some recommendations as to what you think could be sufficient? Dr Price: Thank you. In answering this, I will also refer back to Professor Gareth Owen’s oral submission, thinking about the purpose that the Mental Capacity Act was drawn up for and the fact that decisions about the ending of life were not one of the originally designed functions of it. We would need to think carefully about how that would then translate into a decision that was specifically about the capacity to end one’s life. We also need to think about how that would work in practice. When we are thinking about capacity assessments, it is usually related to a treatment or a choice about a treatment or about somebody’s life—for example, changing residence. Psychiatrists and doctors and actually lots of professionals are very used to those sorts of decisions and have gathered a lot of knowledge, expertise and experience around it. This particular decision is something that in this country we do not have knowledge, expertise and experience in, and we therefore need to think about how that would look in practice. As for advice to the Committee about what that might look like, I think that we need to gather what evidence we have—it is actually very thin—from other jurisdictions that think about capacity as part of this process. I am thinking about my PhD: I visited Oregon and talked to practitioners who were directly involved in these sorts of assessments. They described the process, but they are not using the Mental Capacity Act as their framework. They described a very interpersonal process, which relied on a relationship with the patient, and the better a patient was known, the more a gut feeling-type assessment was used. We need to think here about whether that would be a sufficient conversation to have. One of the things that I have thought quite a lot about is how we can really understand the workings of a mental capacity assessment, and one of the best ways we can do that is to see who is not permitted to access assisted suicide because of a lack of capacity and what that assessment showed. We do not have data because the assessments for people who were not permitted to do it are not published; we cannot read them, so if this becomes legislation, one of the suggestions that I would have—it is supported by the Royal College of Psychiatrists—is to, with patients’ consent, record capacity assessments to see whether they meet the standard that is necessary. I think it is important to set out the standard necessary and the components needed to be confident about a mental capacity assessment. That will help with standards, but will also help with training, because this is new territory for psychiatry, for medicine, and to be able to think about consistency and reliability, training needs to actually see a transparency in capacity assessments.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you all for coming today and for sharing these really personal recollections. I have one question, but to both Liz and Julie, if that is okay. According to the notes that I have here—apologies if I have got this wrong—in both your brother’s situation and your husband’s situation, it was administered by the doctor. The Bill proposes that the person who has made the choice about ending their life should self-administer a solution. I am really sorry if this causes you any distress, but, on reflection, do you think that a self-administration regime would have made a difference? Liz Reed: I do not think so, no. I do not think it would have changed his mind. I am someone who is real squeamish, so I probably would not want to, because of how I feel about all that kind of stuff, but it would not have changed anything for him—no, absolutely not. But I think there is a comfort in having a doctor there administering that, “This is going to go as it should,” and there is a calm that comes with that. Julie Thienpont: Guy being intensely private, as I mentioned before, he would have preferred less people around him at the time. There were two nurses, the family doctor and the administering doctor. They prepared the scene and put the drips in—they had to put one in each arm—and they had to be there in order to witness the whole thing. He would have preferred to have been able to do it himself, but I do not think the fact that it was administered by somebody else impacted in a negative way for him.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  Thank you for answering that.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q The Chair has given me permission to ask a very quick follow-up, Pat, since you mentioned that. I am really sorry to ask this, but do you think that if it had been administered by a doctor, she would have chosen to live for a little longer? Pat Malone: I cannot speak for her, but there were many, many problems. Bizarrely, the last package of documents that she sent to Dignitas got caught up in the postal strike, and they were all irreplaceable original documents. I do not know if you remember, but around that time—this was the winter of 2022-23—there was a postal strike, and it particularly affected international mail. For nine weeks, the documents were held up in a sorting office, and they could not find them. She was getting more and more concerned, because her horror was that she would miss that deadline. In actual fact, Dignitas agreed that in the final analysis she could hand carry the last of the documents she needed when she came to Switzerland, and she was still able, but her horror when she thought she was going to miss the bus was quite palpable. Yes, if a doctor had been able to do it, she might well have chosen that option.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Proportional Representation: General Elections · Hansard source

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  There was no Back-Bench speech from any Member of your party, and you will have your opportunity in a minute.