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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 hanardsociety.org uk/PM.

[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, charting the progress of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) bill, the bill that would enable assisted dying in England and Wales.

[00:00:36] And this week, Ruth, the bill reached an important milestone. The end of its marathon committee stage.

[00:00:41] Ruth Fox: It did half past midnight on, uh, well, early hours of Wednesday morning. The committee finally concluded its proceedings. So, uh, 29 sittings. I'm told 90 or so hours. I haven't calculated them myself, but that's what we're told.

[00:00:56] 110 divisions. The committee stage comprises 850 pages of Hansard text. So, uh, yes, it's been a marathon

[00:01:05] Mark D'Arcy: And one of the most significant players in the latter stages of the Committee has been Marie Tidball, a Labour MP and disability campaigner who pushed through significant changes aimed at helping to protect people with disabilities.

[00:01:17] Now, we've discussed on the pod before that most of the new MPs on the Committee have little experience of this kind of scrutiny work. But she's the exception to the rule as she told us when we met her just hours after that Committee had risen.

[00:01:28] Dr Marie Tidball MP: It wasn't my first rodeo, as they say. I started off on the Employment Rights Bill Committee, which was a huge privilege, and I was put on that in part because I made my maiden speech at the Second Reading.

[00:01:37] As someone who's done a lot of work in disability and, and equality, I think it, it is different by the nature of the fact that it's cross party, and I found it the most extraordinary, cross party deliberative process of any bill I've ever been aware of. And I've been, you know, looking at bills and statutes in my previous day, job and, and academic work around disability law and policy for nearly 20 years.

[00:02:00] And to be at the heart of that process, working cross party, working in such a deliberative way, in a context where we got 600 amendments which we examined individually and looked at against the Bill, and in understanding how they would work across the Bill and consistency and the implications of those amendments, and not least considering those amendments in light of the evidence we'd heard at the oral witness sessions.

[00:02:25] Fifty witnesses that came forward in that and following through the things that they'd said into then understanding what those amendments would mean in practice and whether or not they would work in the context of the Bill and make it stronger or have negative impact on the way that the Bill could work in practice was an extraordinary process and a real privilege to be part of, and gave me a huge insight into the power of Private Members Bills.

[00:02:50] And I think it's the very best of Parliament. You know, the tone that we saw in the Second Reading on the assisted dying bill right across the house was extremely respectful. And whilst there were stressful and challenging times in the Bill Committee, and I think this came across, if you listen to the debates we were having in the early hours of the morning, this morning, there was still that respectfulness and that sense of collective responsibility wherever we stood in terms of our own consciences on this issue. And whichever side of the debate we were on, you know, whether the for side or the against side, we really had collaboratively tried to bash through hundreds of these amendments and understand how we could debate them to improve this Bill as much as possible.

[00:03:34] And that was a really rich and enriching process. I learned a huge amount about this job. And you say it was obviously my second Bill Committee. We spent 10 weeks on the assisted dying bill as it's become colloquially known, the Terminally Ill Adults Bill, uh, we spent 10 weeks, 90 hours we spent debating the minutiae of these amendments. So it has been a really challenging and a really intense process.

[00:04:02] Mark D'Arcy: And of course there must have been a lot of prep. You presumably had to sort of sit down and trawl through the bill before sitting in the Committee?

[00:04:09] Dr Marie Tidball MP: Well, absolutely, and I had gone through the Bill very, very closely before I made my Second Reading speech.

[00:04:15] And you might remember, there were things that I said in my Second Reading that I would want to see changed in Bill Committee. So I kind of had my hit list of key things that I wanted to see that Committee process attend to and deal with, and all of those things that I set out in my Second Reading have been dealt with.

[00:04:33] So first of all, one of the things that I said was I wanted to make sure clause four was changed so that it was really clear that where the doctors were having a conversation with someone seeking assistance, that all options were discussed and that seeking assistance. for an assisted death was not talked about in isolation. And I worked really closely with Kim Leadbeater, the the lead member on that particular amendment, which she brought forward in her name and that's on the face of the Bill.

[00:05:00] My next really clear thing was around the high courts and wanting that strong legal backstop. I listened to the evidence that we heard from lawyers and judges who were concerned about the way that that mechanism might work, both in terms of the status of that member of the judiciary but also the evidentiary process that would be followed. And I think what's now replaced it with the panel, which will have a very senior lawyer, a psychiatrist, and a social worker, absolutely reflects the evidence we heard, which was about making sure that there was a multidisciplinary team looking at the circumstances of an individual who was seeking assistance and making sure that they had done all they could to determine that this was the right choice for that.

[00:05:41] Individual and it was their own choice and that they fulfilled all the criteria around six months terminality and having capacity to make the decision. And so I think we've got a really robust third tier. And added to that with the Commissioner, there's someone who's gonna have that ability to helicopter above everything and understand trends and patterns and, and the way that this system is working and, and work with a panel to make sure that's an iterative process to improve that.

[00:06:07] You

[00:06:07] Ruth Fox: said you had this hit list. Yeah. And you obviously had discussions with Kim. Can you sort of talk us through the sort of mechanics of how you went about that? Because you said that Kim had tabled the amendment in her name rather than you tabling it in yours. Why would, would that be? Can you explain to our listeners?

[00:06:21] Dr Marie Tidball MP: I really wanted it to be clear that the lead member was supporting this very significant change that was significant to me. She really got that, you know, I reflected to her that it was an area that was my biggest concern because I wanted people to be presented with all options in those discussions, and it felt that on that one, it was really important that that came from her as the person who had brought the Bill to demonstrate that.

[00:06:52] She recognised that was a real priority for a lot of us who were either on the fence or supported it with some hesitation, and she completely got that and and has been a brilliant colleague to work with. She's a fantastically creative thinker. She's brilliant at bringing people together and reaching a consensus on issues.

[00:07:10] Mark D'Arcy: You had a couple of amendments that you introduced. One was to create an advisory panel on disability and one was to make sure that disabled people going through the assisted dying process had a specialist advisor. First of all, let's, let's talk about the advisory panel for the assisted dying Commissioner. Uh, what's the function of that? What sort of issues do you see it grappling with?

[00:07:33] Dr Marie Tidball MP: So the Disability Advisory Board, which was in my, uh, new clause 35, the very last that was debated in the early hours of the morning, was designed to really measure and check the implementation of the Bill. So it will be appointed six months after the Commissioner is appointed to understand how the, the Bill's being implemented in considerations for disabled people in that process of implementation.

[00:07:57] And then after that reporting on the impact of the Bill on disabled people. And what was crucial for me is that we captured the concerns that were raised at the oral witness evidence stage around whether there would be any impacts in culture in the NHS, on the options around end of life care, palliative care for disabled people, and making sure that we were capturing that, that sense of any of those changes, changes in attitudes, but having the insight and the lived experiences of disabled people at the heart of this Bill.

[00:08:30] There's the tenet "nothing about us without us", uh, in the disability community. That was something that was very much raised by Disability Rights UK and for me it was really important that we had the voice of disabled people reviewing the implementation and impact of this, really centrally in the bill as it goes forward and then that report having to be brought back to the House by the Secretary of State.

[00:08:53] Mark D'Arcy: Is there a, a sort of underlying worry about what might happen with this Bill for disabled people?

[00:08:59] Dr Marie Tidball MP: I think it's fair to say that there has been, but I think it's also fair to say that there are disabled people that want to have this choice. You know, I talked about in my Second Reading speech that for me, this is about. Enabling disabled people to have control and in a situation where they often haven't had control and choice and how to live a good death. And that's really important to me that disabled people were empowered in that process, having a voice as part of the bill in making that process better for them.

[00:09:32] Mark D'Arcy: I mean, is, is the thought though that there is at least a danger that the Bill could create a kind of pathway, a conveyor belt almost towards assisted dying for disabled people if left unchecked?

[00:09:43] Dr Marie Tidball MP: I think this is something that other organisations have expressed. I am convinced that we have a Bill, which is, has the strongest safeguards in the world, and that has this built in mechanism, which makes sure that the voices and, and perceptions of disabled people are at the heart of it, uh, and will prevent that. And the checks and balances throughout this bill, you know, the fact that it has to be someone who's six months terminal, they have to have capacity, there's psychiatrists and social workers on the panel. You know, there's been extensive training, or there will be extensive training around coercion, dishonesty, and pressure. Compared to what's available in other countries this is outstanding and what it's been able to achieve in putting those safeguards in place at every point during the process that someone might well be seeking assistance.

[00:10:33] Ruth Fox: One of your other amendments is about the independent advocate for people with learning disabilities to help them navigate through the assisted dying process. Can you explain what your purpose was behind that?

[00:10:43] Dr Marie Tidball MP: I really believe in inclusive healthcare and have seen the value of independent advocates in the context of mental health proceedings for those with mental health problems. And again, one of the things that came through from organisations like Mencap, but, but many others was ensuring that people with learning disabilities, autistic people, people with mental disorders under the Mental Health Act, could have somebody with them at through parts of this process. And it's likely that certainly if those individuals don't have capacity, they wouldn't qualify. But it felt to me that it was necessary to ensure whether they ultimately qualified for an assisted death or not, that right from the start they had access to an independent advocate that could support them through that process and reflect some of the way that it's worked in a, in a mental health context. Really taking together what had happened in terms of the written evidence that we'd received and the oral evidence and some of the earlier, much more narrowly drafted amendments that other colleagues had brought that we needed something much more comprehensive.

[00:11:50] So my amendment that's in new Clause 25 is a real attempt at staking out the need for an independent advocate available for the three groups that I mentioned already. But also we have, um, a subsection in there which has a slightly broader group that could have access to such an advocate in certain circumstances, because ultimately we want to make sure that those that may well be vulnerable and may need that extra support to access this process or understand if they were eligible to access this process, that they do have access to an independent advocate.

[00:12:28] Ruth Fox: One of the safeguards that in the Second Reading debate, many MPs said that was important to them was this judicial safeguard that a judge would sign off the process. And obviously that's been replaced now by Kim's clause to add, as you say, social worker and psychologist and so on.

[00:12:45] And there's been criticism that that is weakening the Bill rather than strengthening it. Weakening the safeguards. You don't feel like that do you? So why not?

[00:12:54] Dr Marie Tidball MP: I don't feel like that. I think there was a real concern that that might have been a checkbox system, and instead, what we have now is a really rich process which will take a, a psychosocial approach at looking at the person who is seeking assistance in the round and understanding their circumstances in the round with three forms of expertise, a very senior lawyer, a psychiatrist, and a social worker. And for me as a disabled person that fills me with much more confidence that it's not just going to be through a medical model perspective, uh, but it's going to look at people's lived experience and, and life circumstances with the role of the social worker, but also that the lawyer will be there who can spot some of the issues for example, like coercion. And again, from the 50 witnesses we heard from, there was a real sense that the multidisciplinary approach was the best approach. And I think the panel really captures that and the essence of what those witnesses said to us very effectively.

[00:13:57] Mark D'Arcy: There is a, a view around that this is a, a swing issue and that some people who initially supported the bill at Second Reading might on the basis of the change to the role of judges in the process now turn around and say no.

[00:14:08] I mean, have you had people coming up to you as a Bill Committee member and saying, what about this? Does it work? Should I change my mind on this?

[00:14:15] Dr Marie Tidball MP: I think I've had the reverse. Because I think that a lot of people will have heard that even the judiciary were concerned that it was gonna be a checkbox system, that there wasn't a clear process to receive evidence about the individual and to make sure that their voice was heard in that process.

[00:14:30] That's something, um, that we debated a lot, uh, and the opportunity for the individual seeking assistance to provide a remote recording and speak to the panel, that wasn't there in the first version of the Bill. So. I've actually had people be much more positive about the panel than I've heard anything about, and certainly that's not something that people have approached me with in the lobbies to say that they are now concerned that the high court judge mechanism is not in place.

[00:14:59] Mark D'Arcy: You finished work on the Bill Committee in the small hours of this morning, and here you are back in your office a few hours later. I mean, was it pretty tough doing that? Or was there just a shrug of the shoulders, part of the job?

[00:15:13] Dr Marie Tidball MP: I think for me, I always wanna do the very best for my constituents, but on an issue like this, an issue of conscience, which is so sensitive and really goes to the heart of, I think, our core kind of ethics as human beings, you want to make sure you have given that absolutely the most thought and care that you can give.

[00:15:34] And for me, that meant if we had to work really late to do that and to get that done so that we can move that forward, we had to do what it took. That's why we've spent 90 hours over 10 weeks, uh, working on this. That's why on top of that, we've all spent a huge amount of time reading the written evidence, rereading Hansard records of the oral evidence, which I've done, uh, even though I asked quite a lot of the questions in those oral sessions. Because I really do believe that being a Member of Parliament is about service.

[00:16:04] And at the heart of everything that I do is, this has to be done in the best possible way I can do it so that I'm making the difference and so that my constituents feel that I'm there to serve them.

[00:16:15] Ruth Fox: So, Mark, what did you make of that?

[00:16:18] Mark D'Arcy: Well, I mean the, it always strikes me when we talk to participants in the Committee how different it seems inside the room as opposed to the kind of chorus outside the room.

[00:16:28] Mm. If you watched on social media, all the tweets about the work of the Committee, you get the impression they're all at daggers drawn. If you talk to the participants. They say it's much more collegiate than that, and both sides make that argument. Certainly there are deeply held divisions. Certainly there are strongly held views out there. Mm-hmm. But it hasn't been the kind of trench warfare that others have implied, I think.

[00:16:49] Ruth Fox: No, absolutely not. And you also got the sense of the end of the Committee in the early hours of Wednesday morning that some of them were a little bit demob happy.

[00:16:58] Mark D'Arcy: and who can blame them really? I mean, 90 hours of Committee sitting, if that's the exact figure should also be added up against also the, the considerable amount of preparation that you have to do before the Committee. I mean, Danny Kruger was talking about this on last week's pos.. It's not just that you're sitting in that room for hours on end, it's that before you even go in there, you have to read all the detail, read the amendments, go back and check things against the witness statements and all the evidence that's been taken before.

[00:17:23] So there's an awful lot of work around the Committee sittings as well. So this has been taking up an enormous amount of people's parliamentary energy, if you like.

[00:17:29] Ruth Fox: Yeah, and I think it's important to stress that this has been breaking new ground for Private Members bill because it's taken oral and written evidence, which is a huge amount for the members of the committee to work through.

[00:17:41] And, you know, we heard there from, from Marie, she was talking about, she'd gone back to some of the evidence and re and reread it, um, in preparing for some of the later sessions in terms of the, the sheer number of amendments, you know, 600 tabled for consideration. That is a very large number, and to get your head around the intricacies of the amendment process, particularly as you say, when there's so many inexperienced members involved in the in the Committee.

[00:18:06] So it has been a huge amount of work, and I think it's worth stressing that the members of the Committee don't get any extra additional support for doing this kind of work. And normally they'd have the Whips to guide them and there'd be party briefings and, and so on to help them sort of guide their way through the thickets of a Government bill process.

[00:18:26] But very much on this Bill, they've been on their own, sort of reliant on their own staff, their own teams and, and you know, whatever voluntary campaign organisations were out there that were lobbying them.

[00:18:38] Mark D'Arcy: And Danny Krueger was making that point that he was relying on a few volunteers, brilliant volunteers, as he called them, to help him with the process.

[00:18:45] And the other point to make though about this is that actually for a Private Members Bill, this level of scrutiny has been, if not record breaking, I, I think pretty close to it. Mm-hmm.

[00:18:58] Ruth Fox: Yeah, the sheer volume of scrutiny compared to what a, a normal Private Member's Bill gets, it's a different order of magnitude, but of course, you know, normally Private Members Bill might be a handout bill. It might be a few pages, few clauses, very often doesn't get amended in Committee. Tends to be quite small niche subjects. You've really gotta go back to the heyday of Private Members bills to have a piece of legislation that is comparable to this. You know, thinking back to the abolition of the death penalty, the abortion legalization, abortion, etcetera.

[00:19:26] Mark D'Arcy: Yeah. And one of the debates that's been bubbling on behind the scenes in Parliament is whether or not the Private Members Bill process as it exists now is actually up to a task of this magnitude. Whether this is simply too big and too serious a topic to be handled by the efforts of a single Member of Parliament, albeit one backed up with lots of other supporters and maybe supportive think tanks and pressure groups and whatever, helping to do some of the, the heavy lifting on it or whether maybe there should have been some kind of different mechanism. Maybe a Royal Commission leading to the government, drafting a bill and then having a free vote on it and saying to MPs, look, here's a way that this could work. Vote on it or don't vote on it. , it's a matter of conscience. You choose.

[00:20:11] Ruth Fox: Well, I mean, Royal Commissions historically don't always have the best record.

[00:20:14] I mean, for a start, they take forever. So we'd probably be looking at, you know,

[00:20:17] Mark D'Arcy: They take minutes and last years as Harold Wilson once said.

[00:20:20] Ruth Fox: Yeah, yeah. So you can criticize each and every process that could have been used for this. I mean, a lot of people have said it, oh, it would be so much better if it was a Government bill and, you know, the, the policy would've been better formulated.

[00:20:30] And yes, that's possibly right. And certainly one of the critiques of of doing it this way is that we are still not clear at the end of this process, having gone through Committee of exactly how the government sees implementation of this. Certain things that were sort of suggested that they'd, that would be clarified, and that amendments would be brought forward to fill out some of the detail, hasn't come forward. Now, whether it will come through at the next stage and through the Impact Assessment, for example, and the Delegated Powers Memorandum and so on that the government has promised before Report Stage, we'll have to see. But there's still a lack of clarity about how it will be operationalised which I think understandably worries people.

[00:21:11] But I just think it's politically unrealistic to think it would've started as a Government bill because this is a bill that that cuts across party lines.

[00:21:18] Mark D'Arcy: Absolutely. And, and, and in my cynical way, I find myself thinking that if some alternative process had been used, some of the critics are now saying there should have been a royal commission or something like that, would then be saying, why didn't they use the good old private members bill process?

[00:21:31] Ruth Fox: Well, well this is where I think you could reform - and I feel more strongly about this now than I did at the start of this process - this is where reforming the Private Members Bill process could address some of these problems. Mm-hmm. Because what we have is we pick out in a ballot, literally out of a fishbowl, numbers assigned to an MP who's, who's put themselves forward to say they'd like to bring a bill in.

[00:21:51] They don't have to say what bill it is. Kim Leeadbeater comes top of the ballot and she decides she's gonna introduce this, this piece of legislation. She's then up against a very tight timetable to get that bill drafted, ready for the First Reading. And then the Second Reading debate, and it all has to be done by the end of the Session. Mid-July is the last dates for the, for the final Private Member's bill consideration in the House of Commons. So it's a pretty compressed timetable, so you haven't got long to draft the bill. I think it would be far better, rather than having time in the chamber for legislation allocated according to essentially whether you are lucky enough to win parliamentary bingo, far better that you have to put your proposals forward, flesh out what it is you want to do, why you want to do it, and what kind of timescale you're looking at. What process in terms of consultation and development of the bill you, you, you imagine having, and it has to go to a Committee that considers it. The proposal and time in the Chamber for consideration of Private Members Bills is allocated on merit.

[00:22:58] Mark D'Arcy: On the proposal, rather than simply to an individual MP who can then propose whatever wacky law they, they light upon.

[00:23:04] Yeah, and that's essentially what happens in the House of Lords. Yes. The House of Lords their ballot is, which bit of legislation do you like and Peers vote saying, let's bring forward that one and see how it does.

[00:23:13] Ruth Fox: But I think you've got to think through the timetable though, because it's still, even if you did it that way it's still quite tight. Yeah. In terms of the amount of time available to draft the bill to consult on it.

[00:23:24] Mark D'Arcy: But you, when the starting gun is fired, you've got a bill in place.

[00:23:27] Ruth Fox: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:23:27] Mark D'Arcy: Even if it's not a, a perfect and might be revised a bit along the way, you've, you've got a proposal that's in some kind of coherent form to start with.

[00:23:34] Ruth Fox: And therefore, for example, you know, you would've perhaps developed, you know, invested in time and resource, in trying to get a bill draft up and, and running.

[00:23:43] And I know that there've been previous Private Members Bills in the House of Lords from Lord Falconer amongst others. This Bill's not entirely a copy of those. Um, you know, it has been developed separately. It's been very well drafted from a technical perspective by, you know, professional drafter

[00:23:59] Mark D'Arcy: Dame Elizabeth Gardiner KC, I nearly said QC.

[00:24:02] Ruth Fox: Who, who we had on our, our second episode of this, this special podcast series. But I, I just think you could have a situation where. You apply on the merits, you promote your case, your cause, and you get an extended timetable. And it might even be that, that, you know, you develop it over two sessions rather than having to rush straight into the first session with your bill. That if you've been selected by the Committee, you then have an opportunity to say, well, I don't want it introduced in this Session, I'd like it introduced in the next Session. Bit of flexibility. Yeah. You think about different ways.

[00:24:35] Mark D'Arcy: The way, the way we make laws now, it does seem to be a bit antiquated and a bit less deliberative than it might be, especially for Private Members Bills.

[00:24:43] But the next stage for the Bill now is Report Stage in the House of Commons.

[00:24:46] The stage where the bill emerges from its consideration and all the changes that have been made in Committee are put before the whole House. Again, MPS can propose further amendments and there's further discussion, and we'll probably get Third Reading on a day after April the 25th, which is scheduled for the Report Stage, which is quite unusual in itself for a Private Member's Bill. And already potential amendments to the Bill have been starting to go down. Uh, they're, they're selected later on. So we, we are not clear yet what will be debated, but a few amendments have pinged into existence moments it seems, after the bill Committee had finished its work.

[00:25:18] Ruth Fox: Yes. So several amendments have been tabled already.

[00:25:21] Several of them in the name of, uh, of Meg Hillier, prominent committee chair, Chair of the Liaison Committee, and was, uh, an outspoken opponent of the Bill at, uh, at Second Reading. There's an amendment to prohibit medical practitioners from raising the subject of, uh, of providing assisted dying. And unless the person has first raised it,

[00:25:41] Mark D'Arcy: Doctors can't kind of prompt people.

[00:25:43] Ruth Fox: So that, that proposal, and then there's another one suggesting that medical practitioners and health professionals shouldn't raise the subject with anyone under the age of 18, which has been a controversial running sore during the, the, the course of the Bill's discussions.

[00:25:56] Mark D'Arcy: I suppose the thought here is that you can have people who are under the age of 18 who might want to consider assisted dying after they reach that age.

[00:26:04] So a, a kind of preloading issue here.

[00:26:06] Ruth Fox: Yeah. And then there's, um, an amendment from Tom Gordon, who's actually a member of the Public Bill Committee. He put this amendment forward in Committee and it was rejected, but he wants to extend the definition of terminal illness in the bill to include neurodegenerative conditions where a person's death can reasonably be expected not within six months as the bill defines, but within 12 months. So that's sort of expanding the scope of the bill. I think there'll also be um something to look out for is the question of how long the implementation period for the bill should be. Because one of the late changes on the final day of the Committee discussions was, uh, to extend the implementation period from what was originally two years in the bill to potentially four.

[00:26:49] It has to be done within four if it can be done earlier, great. So it's sort of a, it's a backstop, not a target, but there was some criticism about that. And, and certainly from my perspective, I thought this was a little bit rum, to be honest as, as amendments go. Because the previous week, the government minister Stephen Kinnock had said during the course of proceedings discussing the regulations that would introduce the drugs to facilitate the assisted death, um, that Parliament shouldn't have a debate and a vote on what those drugs should be. The reason given was that it would risk the operationalisation of the Bill within that two year timetable.

[00:27:27] Mark D'Arcy: It would just take too long to do.

[00:27:28] Ruth Fox: Yeah. Which frankly was nonsense because you can set up the debate and the vote very quickly. It could have been done within days if necessary, so it was nonsensical on its terms.

[00:27:38] But I just sort of thought he must probably have known that this amendment was coming. I'd been very surprised if he didn't and therefore it was even more nonsensical to be then.

[00:27:47] Mark D'Arcy: Well, if you've got four years to decide on what drugs you can use no, there's no excuse for Parliament not being able to get a vote on it or, or at least debate the implications.

[00:27:54] Ruth Fox: Yeah. And then, um, I think a couple of interesting developments in that final session is that two amendments were approved by the Committee, which did not have the support of Kim Leadbeater or Ministers. So they found themselves on the losing side in the, in the division. And both of them concern matters in respect of Wales.

[00:28:15] And one again was in relation to this extending the implementation period. So Sarah Olney, who we had on the, the, the podcast earlier in the series, she introduced an amendment so that rather than the Secretary of State bringing the act into force in Wales, it would be done by Welsh ministers. It would be subject to a vote, and there wouldn't be the four year limit. It would be for ministers in Wales to decide. Now, this is potentially controversial because the Welsh Senedd the Parliament, has voted against assisted dying quite recently. Mm. So whether or not, you know, they, what, what the implications would be for commencing the act in those circumstances would be interesting.

[00:28:54] Mark D'Arcy: Well, of course, in the Senedd, they've also got incoming elections. The, the political complexion might change fairly dramatically. Yeah. And, uh, who knows, A, who will be in charge, and B, how the individual members would vote on an issue like this.

[00:29:07] Ruth Fox: Yeah. And then another, uh, amendment that was agreed, again, not with the support of Kim Leadbeater and, and Ministers was in relation to provision of reports and certificates and declarations and, and so on forms in Welsh as well as the English language and that, that was quite complicated. And, uh, that came from the, uh, Plaid Cymru leader, Liz Saville Roberts on the Committee who was wanting to assure the use of, of Welsh language, uh, materials.

[00:29:32] Mark D'Arcy: Well, Ruth, that's a good point I think to wind up on this particular episode. We'll be back next week to look forward to how that Report Stage will unfold. Till then, goodbye.

[00:29:41] Ruth Fox: See you then. Bye.

[00:29:45] Intro: Parliament Matters is produced by the Hanard Society and supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. For more information, visit hansardsociety.org.uk/PM or find us on social media @HansardSociety.