Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Vicky Foxcroft.

I don’t claim that every disabled person opposes assisted dying, but I do claim that the vast majority of disabled people and their organisations oppose it.
They need the health and social care system fixing first. They want us as parliamentarians to assist them to live, not to die.

That's bollocks.

I know this is a free vote, and that she's resigned already, but I'd support the Prime Minister kicking people who lie like this out of the government.

I don't know how Kim Leadbetter doesn't lose her rag with some of these colleagues. it's incredibly hurtful this stuff that they come out with.

Vicky Foxcroft probably means she saw a tv show where Liz Carr argued agains assisted dying.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Fri Jun 20, 2025 12:37 pm

A similar sort of thing happens with council budgets. At the last stage when everything is decided and funded, pipe up with "free bus travel for under 25s" or something. Then it's "the council voted against free bus travel for under 25s', not "they wouldn't put this unfunded thing in the budget at the last minute".

A tactic that sometimes backfires. IIRC when the Civil Rights legislation was going through the US system, those opposing it threw in a load of sex equality stuff, hoping that would be an amendment too far for congress. Instead, they looked at at and went "Well, if we're fixing things for ethnic minorities, we may as well sort out women's rights while we're at it!".

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Fri Jun 20, 2025 12:20 pm Oh, here's Mr Care Not Dying, Gordon McDonald.

As this is a private members’ bill, the MP in charge of the bill was able to choose who she wanted in the committee, choose who she wanted to give evidence and decide which amendments would be accepted and which wouldn’t.

The first person Kim Leadbeater appointed to the bill committee was Danny Kruger - literally the principal and most vociferous opponent of the bill.

Again, the Rice-Davies "Well, they would say/do that, wouldn't they?" shit-smear raises its head.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Fri Jun 20, 2025 12:43 pm Vicky Foxcroft.

I don’t claim that every disabled person opposes assisted dying, but I do claim that the vast majority of disabled people and their organisations oppose it.
They need the health and social care system fixing first. They want us as parliamentarians to assist them to live, not to die.

That's bollocks.

I know this is a free vote, and that she's resigned already, but I'd support the Prime Minister kicking people who lie like this out of the government.

Not that it’s true, but even if the vast majority were against it, it doesn’t matter - they are not obliged to ever use it. And this is part and parcel of fixing the health and care system - not “either/or”.

As stated, bollocks all round.

Tom Tugendhat.

This isn’t assisted dying – assisted dying is what a hospice does already, today, now, helping people, caring for people, supporting them. This is assisted killing – or assisted suicide – depending on which word you choose.
But honesty in language is important. If we’re not even willing to be honest with ourselves in this place, how on earth can we expect the courts when they have to look at the cases to consider the questions that we’ve debated?

If you're dying anyway, it's assisted dying. "Honesty in language".

What's that rubbish about the courts? Parliament passes laws, courts interpret. He wouldn't have been very happy when he was in Government if they passed laws and courts then debated the laws and decided they didn't like them?

Virtually every debate where we try to allocate scarce resources, somebody will pipe up and say "Well. MPs earn lots of money, hypocrites".

Somebody should stand up and say "MPs have lots of money and the option to go to Dignitas".

Abernathy wrote: ↑Fri Jun 20, 2025 1:16 pm

The first person Kim Leadbeater appointed to the bill committee was Danny Kruger - literally the principal and most vociferous opponent of the bill.

It would be quite funny if Gordon McDonald said "Danny Kruger is an idiot, too thick to be on Rutland's Dog Catching Committee" but I think he probably loves Danny Kruger.

Good speech in support by Mark Garnier (Con, Wyre Forest). In contrast to this undergraduate philosophy essay point by Tom Tugendhat.

This is about the power of the state through its agents to exercise power over life and death. Yes, agreed; yes, approved of in advance; but when the state takes a life, even with consent, that is a huge shift in the relationship between the individual and the state.

So suffer agony for as long as it takes because what? Is there even a slippery slope here?

Tugboathat doesn’t want honesty in language - he wants people to use the scariest, most offputting form of language to make the process sound as involuntary and/or morally questionable as possible. And of course he’s probably convinced he’s a genius for figuring this out, and that no one else will realise his wheeze.

Regretably, Chi Onwurah has done the same bollocks.

This bill could change the founding principles of the NHS, clinicians are trained to save lives, now they will also be able to kill people.
Our police, our armed forces, their job is to protect life and liberty, now they will also protect those who take people’s lives, because this marks a fundamental change in the relationship between state and citizen.

Passes by 23 votes.

So despite the "key defection of the leader of Blue Labour", the opposition of the "conscience of the left" sorts, and Kemi telling her MPs to reject, it's passed.

This will doubtless be represented as the bill crawling over the line before anybody had time to scrutinize it properly.

I know Ellie Chowns will have voted in favour. I am proud of her.

I'm glad it passed. Not that I'm generally a big fan of them, but I'd seriously consider voting for them if they were second to a Labour MP pulling some of the rubbish that we've seen today.

Jez and his Independent mates voted against. So did all the Labour MPs who lost the whip because they stand up for the vulnerable, as they see it, apart from McDonnell, to his credit.

Sunak, Hunt, and Dowden all in favour. As was David Davis despite the coverage given to him saying, quite reasonably, that his earlier vote in favour just a vote to advance it and shouldn't be taken as a sign he'd vote for the final bill. Still highlighting that was all part of the "this bill will be lucky to pass" mood music.

Credit to those on the Left like McDonnell, Clive Lewis and Nadia Whittome who voted for, rather than get into the mindset that lots on the left did.

Cat Smith said Aye. Good on her.

Ah, forgot her, well done indeed. And also to Kim Johnson and Paula Barker.

Tubby Issacs wrote:Sunak, Hunt, and Dowden all in favour. As was David Davis...

Good God! My MP has done something I approve of!

I have spent my whole life disenfranchised in safe Tory seats and this is the first time my MP has actually represented my wishes in parliament.