Hansard Society

• Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill: Concerns about the delegated powers

• Assisted dying - The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill: Rolling news

• The Assisted Dying Bill: A guide to the Private Member's Bill process

• The Assisted Dying Bill: Making sense of the parliamentary process [Video]

Parliament

• Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill: Bill documents

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[00:00:00] Intro: You are listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk.

[00:00:17] Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters. The podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.

[00:00:24] Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy, and welcome to the latest in our series of special podcasts tracking the progress of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, the bill that would legalise assisted dying.

[00:00:36] Ruth Fox: And this week we talk to Danny Kruger, the Conservative MP who has emerged as the leader of the opposition on the committee doing detailed scrutiny of the bill. We began by asking him how he got that role.

[00:00:47] Danny Kruger MP: Well, I think I was quite vocal on the subject in the last Parliament and I chaired an APPG (All Party Parliamentary Group) on end of life care called Dying Well, which is about promoting palliative care.

[00:00:57] So I got very involved in the whole question in the last Parliament and then when Kim came top in the ballot for the Private Members Bill and chose to do assisted dying, I sort of got mobilised again. But I actually think I'm prominent largely because Kim decided to have me on the Committee and I'm grateful to her for that because she didn't have to have me.

[00:01:14] She did have, by convention, to have a proportionate number of people who voted no on the Committee. As you know, she chooses who goes on the Committee. But she's supposed to respect the proportion of aye and no votes at Second Reading, and she has more or less, although slightly stacked in her favour. But she's had to select some people who are opposed. She selected me. I regret she didn't select some other, frankly, more senior, more prominent voices, particularly on the Labour side. You know, there's some very, very senior and respected people like Meg Hillier, Rachael Maskell, others who I think, frankly, would be doing a better job than me, not just in the Committee, but also convincing Labour MPs that it's not safe.

[00:01:49] But anyway, I'm very honoured to be involved, and it's been a fascinating process for me.