Former Birkenhead MP Frank Field has announced he now supports the Assisted Dying Bill currently being debated in the Lords, after revealing his own terminal illness and witnessing the “full horror” of an MP friend’s cancer diagnosis. In a statement read on his behalf by Baroness Molly Meecher, Field said:
I’ve just spent a period in a hospice and I’m not well enough to participate in today’s debate. If I had been, I would have spoken strongly in favour of a second reading. I changed my mind on assisted dying when an MP friend was dying of cancer and wanted to die early, before the full horror effects set in, but was denied this opportunity. A major argument against the bill is unfounded: it is thought by some that the culture would change and that people would be pressured into ending their lives. The number of assisted deaths in the US and Australia remains very low, under one percent. And a former Supreme Court judge in Victoria, Australia said [about pressure from relatives] that it just hasn’t been an issue. I hope the House will today vote for the assisted dying bill.”
The Bill proposes that patients with full cognition and a living prognosis of less than six months would be eligible to apply for an assisted death. At the time of going to pixel, the Bill is in its second reading in the Lords.
Would you vote to legalise assisted dying for the terminally ill?
— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) October 22, 2021
On this conscience issue Guido is conflicted, after thousands of votes our unscientific Twitter poll is surprisingly decisive in favour of legalising assisted dying..
Lady Hale only delivered her constitutional blow half an hour ago, but already MPs are returning to Parliament. Not an arduous journey for the cabal of London-based remainers…
Some MPs have already arrived, with Tom Tugendhat tweeting a selfie from the chamber. He is not sure whether being first back now legally makes him PM…
We’re sitting… pic.twitter.com/GdApCgcpbp
— Tom Tugendhat (@TomTugendhat) September 24, 2019
Rupa Huq tweeted that she’s already at her desk, “ready for proroguing the prorogation”
I’m at desk in my office in Parliament now, ready for proroguing the prorogation
Chamber not seen any action for a while, time to get back to scrutinising the government pic.twitter.com/7hqFy2q8fE
— Rupa Huq MP (@RupaHuq) September 24, 2019
Guido also spotted veteran former Labour MP, Frank Field, arriving at the Carriage Gate entrance at Parliament
As other MPs begin their journeys back to work, the main journey anyone’s worried about is when Boris will be travelling back from New York. PMQs tomorrow should be fun…
Speaking to TalkRADIO, Frank Field confirmed that if Labour do not select him, he intends to stand in the next election as an independent.
“There are 70,000 electors in Birkenhead, they are the sovereign body, they will decide who is the MP and I obviously wish to fight the seat next time as a Labour candidate, if not I will fight it as an Independent Labour candidate.
… They’re the body who will decide, not a tiny caucus of people in the Labour Party”
Will he really want to go through the punishing process of fighting the next election as an independent? In 2022, Field will be 80 years old…
Guido hears that the Boundary Commission will be publishing their ‘Final Recommendations’ on September 5, now that the DUP have seemingly dropped their major objections, accepting that downsizing the Northern Irish contingent of constituencies was probably worth it to help keep Corbyn away from Number 10. The boundary review began in 2011…
Guido reckons that the Commission’s aim of equalising the size of seats to within 5% of a target number will boost the Tories by some 20 seats by removing anomalies that favour Labour. Guido thinks it cost even more incumbent Labour MPs their seats. Corbynistas won’t be able to resist the temptation to push for sweeping deselections, justified by even very small adjustments to boundaries. Momentum have already scented first blood with the threatened removal of Kate Hoey and Frank Field…
Check out this rather entertaining red-on-red on the Sunday Politics where Labour leaver Frank Field tells metropolitan remainer Stella Creasy what he thinks of the party’s shift on the customs union. Frank said:
“Are you going to rat on the people’s decision to leave? You come out Stella with all these things, we’ll stay in a customs union, we’ll stay in a single market – the decision was quite clear to leave… in the North Labour voters voted very, very clearly… which bus are you on?”
Labour’s bus well on the road to betraying its core vote…
Beef. pic.twitter.com/jSsSK42grH
— Esther Webber (@estwebber) 14 November 2017
Labour’s Brexit wars spill out into the open as tonight’s EU Withdrawal Bill debate kicks-off…
