‘She died alone with photos of us around her’: MP reveals terminally ill mother chose to end her life as she backs assisted dying Bill

Claire Hazelgrove said the “harmful status quo” meant her mother died alone in October last year, after living with a rare blood cancer for half her life.

Ms Hazelgrove argued “not all pain can be palliated”, as she spoke in favour of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on its return to the Commons on Friday.

The Bill would allow adults in England and Wales, with fewer than six months to live, to apply for an assisted death subject to the approval of two doctors and an expert panel.

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Ms Hazelgrove said: “Last October, my mum, Ruth Hazelgrove, chose to bring her late-stage terminal illness to an end, on her terms at home, with dignity and with a strength I can only try to imagine.

“Mum had just turned 61, she had endured significant health challenges for almost half her life. When Mum was 32, she was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer, polycythaemia vera.

“Thankfully, she was able to see us grow up and meet her grandchildren. Mum loved life and laughter, and our family will remember her this way.

“In early 2024, she was told her condition had taken a significant turn. That autumn, while we debated the initial version of this Bill, Mum’s pain was excruciating.

“She had access to good palliative care, but what we learned, the hardest of ways, is that not all pain can be palliated. I will never forget seeing her writhing and screaming in pain at points for weeks.”

The MP for Filton and Bradley Stoke in Gloucestershire added: “For Mum, it wasn’t a choice of life or death. It was a question of what kind of death she would have.

“She was clear that she didn’t want a painful or undignified death. She wanted peace.

“For us, it will always be a tremendous personal sadness that the current law meant that she couldn’t tell us her plan, and we couldn’t say goodbye to her.

“But more importantly than that, that she couldn’t say goodbye at the end of her life, or be surrounded by her loved ones, which is what she would have wanted for her death.

“Instead, the harmful status quo meant that Mum died alone, with photos of us around her.”

Ms Hazelgrove told MPs her mother wrote that she wished the assisted dying Bill would have come into force during her lifetime, in her final note to her family.

Labour former minister Jess Phillips also spoke of her mother’s experience of the rare cancer leiomyosarcoma, leading to her death at the age of 61.

The MP for Birmingham Yardley said: “She wasn’t writhing, it wasn’t awful; however, she should have been able to choose to have her family with her.”

Ms Phillips said she would vote in favour of the Bill as she warned MPs not to “rest on the laurels that if we do nothing, people today won’t be coerced to death”.

“The idea that we are going to walk out of here if we do not pass this today, and women in our country are any safer, is an absolute myth,” she added.

Opposing the Bill, former health minister Ashley Dalton told the Commons that she herself has stage four metastatic breast cancer, which is incurable.

“While honourable and right honourable members were debating the issue, I was grappling with my own terminal diagnosis,” the Labour MP for West Lancashire said.

Ms Dalton described feeling “grief, fear and anxiety”, and facing questions around how her family would cope with her diagnosis, how much treatment would cost and “how badly will it hurt?”.

She said, if the Bill were written into the statute book, patients seeking an assisted death should have their psychological health assessed “at the beginning of the process”, with check-ups along the way.

She added her cancer “is stable” but warned she was unsure for how long drugs would continue to work.

Ms Dalton said: “Palliative care professionals and oncologists tell me that, whilst they can more or less give me an indication of when I’ll die when I’m a few days or weeks off, anything beyond that is the flip of a coin.

“The six-month prognosis in this Bill is something no one can ever be really sure of.”

The former minister, who was visibly emotional during the debate, also said: “In the campaign around this Bill, it seems to me that it’s being implied that a person with a terminal illness will have a dreadful, painful death unless they have access to assisted dying – and it’s simply not true.

“Palliative care in the UK is excellent.

“Far too many people do not have access to palliative care that they need but the idea that it is not possible to alleviate pain and discomfort is false.”