Terminally ill people are being 'helped onto early train home' by clinicians in UK

Terminally ill people in the UK are already being sent “quietly” on an “early train home” by clinicians, the House of Lords has been told during an historic debate.

Assisted dying in England and Wales on Friday moved a step closer after proposed legislation passed the second reading stage in the House of Lords.

A record number of peers have been taking part in the first and second reading of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. A deal for a new select committee to scrutinise the assisted dying bill has been agreed by peers.

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Around 190 peers had signed up to speak, breaking the previous record of 187 speakers, set during the second reading of the EU withdrawal bill in 2018.

The Lords and Ladies were urged by the former Archbishop of Canterbury not to block the bill, telling them: "Do not risk our legitimacy by claiming that we know better than both the public and the other place (the House of Commons)."

One of those giving his views on the bill was Lord Nick Markham, aged 57, a former Government junior minister at the UK's Department of Health and Social Care, who revealed he was asked if he wanted his dying mum to be given help taking an “earlier train”.

He said: “My mum Judy was 62, a fit and healthy McMillan nurse, when out of the blue she was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given weeks to live.

“She was taken to a hospice three weeks later, barely conscious and very quickly the clinicians gathered round her next of kin and suggested that she was in a lot of pain and she didn’t have long and maybe helping her to take an earlier train would be the kind thing to do.

“We all agreed and we all thanked that hospice to this day, that kind and peaceful death that they gave her. This happened not in some far away land but right here in the UK.

“And I think we are all probably aware of many such instances in the UK, where informally and quietly, terminally ill people are helped to have a kinder, compassionate, pain free, death.

“It is that experience which is why I am in favour of finding a way to allow other people to experience that kinder, safer death, in a way of their own choosing…

“And I know from talking to many terminally ill people, it gives them great comfort knowing that they could have that ability to take that earlier train home.”

Labour’s Baroness Glenys Thornton, 72, opened the second day of the debate on Friday morning. She read out a letter she’d received from Pamela Fisher, a lay preacher in the Church of England.

It said: 'I live in terror at the prospect of how my final weeks of life may be… I am asking you to support this bill. It would be tragic if the bill were to fail now having passed through the commons with a clear majority. It would be personally devastating for me and countless others.

'The majority of the UK population support this bill and there is a majority amongst Church of England congregations despite the church’s leadership’s energetic lobbying against the bill.

'Please remember this is not about shortening life. It is about shortening painful and distressing ways of dying. Despite the best palliative care around 20 people die in agony, awful distress, every day.' The baroness added: “This is her plea for compassion and mine too.”

Baroness Tessa Blackstone told how her late husband died of stomach cancer at the age of 44 in agonising pain with terrible nausea too.

She said: "He desperately wanted it to 'come to an end', as he put it and asked for my help. I tried to persuade his carers to speed up his death but failed.

“...Was his wish to die, suicide? Surely not. He loved life and had not wanted to die but he was dying and when life became truly unbearable he longed for death. Because of the law I could not help him end his torture.” She pleaded for the Lords to spare human beings “terrible suffering as death approaches.”

Watching the debate closely, widow Louise Shackleton, from North Yorkshire, who went to Dignitas with her husband last December and is currently still under police investigation, said this morning: “You can see the Peers who have an understanding of why a terminally ill person would seek an assisted death.

“You can tell this because they speak from the heart about a loved one they have witnessed dying in a grotesque manner. Once you see a bad death anyone would support the bill.

“What compassionate human being would condemn another human being's final moments to be writhing in agony and begging a loved one to end their lives for them?”

She slammed Theresa May who has been accused of being “deeply insensitive” after the former PM referred to assisted dying for terminally ill people as suicide during a debate on the matter last week.

The baroness referred to it as an “assisted suicide bill” and said it “effectively says suicide is OK”. She told peers: “I have a friend who calls it the ‘licence to kill’ Bill.”

But on Day Two Lords and Ladies told how dying people were left distressed by her language.

Louise said: “People who are terminally ill are not suicidal. She clearly has no understanding of the mindset, wishes and feelings of a person whose death is imminent."

Even the former Archbishop of Canterbury criticised the former PM for using the “graphic phrase licensed to kill to describe the legislation. “I resist this description,” Lord George Carey said as he pleaded with the Lords and Ladies to not block the bill.

“It has commanding support from the British public,” he said, adding: ”Do not risk our legitimacy by claiming that we know better than both the public and the other place.”

Concerned about the bill, Baroness Kate Parminter, Liberal Democrat, raised the issue of eating disorders and said at least 60 people with them have been helped to die in other countries with assisted dying legislation.

She said: “Starvation of the brain causes distorted thinking… I remember vividly when our daughter was in the grips of severe anorexia, she could debate proportional representation with me but she was adamant she would rather die than put on weight.

“And yet in countries where assisted dying is legal lethal drugs are being given to people with this condition which has a well established link to depression and suicidality despite the fact with the right treatment and support, recovery is possible…Vulnerable lives must be protected if we are to take this momentous step.”

Conservative Lord Shinkwin, spoke on a video link and told how he was given six months to live until he had successful surgery. He described the bill as "the stuff of nightmares".

And he said he agreed with the former PM who said it would kill “the wrong type of people” - like him. “It would put a price on my head.”

He told the Lords and Ladies: “An MRI scan showed that a succession of mini strokes was killing me. I had six months left to live. The only hope was neurosurgery. I asked the neurosurgeon my odds on making a full recovery. Her reply was direct, she said; ‘I cannot give you odds on survival.

“What she didn’t say was ‘I can help you to die’.

“This bill would fundamentally alter the conversation a patient has with the doctor who they trust to do no harm.” He said his surgery was a success but now has to speak slowly to be understood.

Tory, Lord Jopling, told about his concern about the issue of ‘doctors for hire’ people who strongly support assisted dying and build a “reputation for sanctioning it” and “become a soft touch”. As a result he is calling for an amendment to restrict a doctor from signing for assisted death, no more than twice in four years.

Lord Peter Truscott, 66, told of his “major concern” about ‘coercion’ and called for the bill to be rejected. He said: “It is impossible to prove and police…according to Home Office’s own figures, 50 per cent of cases are dropped through lack of evidence and only 5 per cent result in conviction.”

“Subtle coercion is well nigh impossible to prove.

“The most common reason for people choosing assisted dying elsewhere is the fear of becoming a burden to others…not the fear of painful death.”

Boroness Berridge said: “We know that suicide can be contagious are we opening up that Pandora’s box again?” While Lord Anthony Young of Norwood Green argued there was “overwhelming” support for the “very carefully worded and structured bill.”