British MPs support assisted dying bill
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 29 November 2024
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
British MPs have voted to advance a bill which could give the terminally ill the right to end their own lives. We hear the arguments for and against and examine the next steps for the bill to become law.
Also on the programme, what can the European Union do to rescue relations with the former soviet republic of Georgia, and we have the first glimpse inside a restored Notre Dame in Paris, five years after a fire devastated the cathedral.
(Photo : Campaign poster in the UK; Credit : Reuters)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service Studios in central London. I'm Tim Franks. And we're beginning the programme with that rare type of political debate. It's intensely emotional. It's complex. It deals with one of the greatest things of all the way we die, or at least some of us. |
| 0:22.3 | And it involves a large minority of lawmakers saying that they don't just feel torn, |
| 0:27.4 | that they simply don't quite know how they're going to vote, |
| 0:30.3 | and that the chances are they'll make up their minds only when they've listened in detail to the arguments. |
| 0:34.8 | As I say, it's a rare sort of debate, and it's been going on today |
| 0:37.8 | for the best part of five hours in the British Parliament. It's on what's called assisted |
| 0:42.9 | dying, legislation to allow doctors in England and Wales to help some terminally ill people |
| 0:47.2 | to die when they choose. The vote in the House of Commons in Westminster is due to happen |
| 0:52.2 | while we're on air. Unusually, this is not a government bill. |
| 0:56.1 | It's coming from a backbench Labour Member of Parliament, Kim Led Beater. |
| 1:00.2 | She said that the current system was failing and robbing those who are terminally ill and suffering of choice. |
| 1:06.6 | Any one of us or our loved ones could be unfortunate or unlucky enough to receive a terminal diagnosis. |
| 1:12.6 | And I struggle to see how it is fair or just to deny anyone the autonomy, dignity and personal choice that we might want to take control of our final weeks. |
| 1:22.5 | And the right to choose does not take away the right not to choose. |
| 1:28.0 | Giving the choice of an assisted death to those who want it would of course not stop anyone |
| 1:32.2 | who is terminally ill from choosing not to do so. Mary Kelly Foy is also a Labour MP but she said |
| 1:38.1 | in the chamber that she will vote no. Her concerns centre on her experience with her daughter |
| 1:42.4 | Maria who was born with a number of health conditions. |
| 1:45.7 | We were told many times that she might have only six months to live. |
| 1:49.7 | She lived for 27 years. |
| 1:52.9 | Crucially, Maria was non-verbal. |
| 1:57.0 | And I am filled with dread and fear for those other people like Maria who are non-verbal |
... |
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