‘I begged my mother and father to let me die – that made as we speak’s determination so arduous’

A Labour MP who has lived with a disability all her life spoke of how she begged her parents to let her die in a moving speech on assisted dying.

Marie Tidball said her decision to support the assisted dying bill was “one of the hardest that I have had to make”. But she said she wanted people to have the choice rather than enduring “intolerable suffering”.

Her comments came during an emotional Commons debate on assisted dying, which saw MPs back changing the law to allow terminally ill adults with less than six months to live to end their lives. The bill passed its first Commons hurdle by 330 votes to 275.

Ms Tidball, the Penistone and Stocksbridge MP, told the Commons: “Today’s decision has been one of the hardest that I have had to make. In my career in disability law and policy I chose not to focus on debates about whether disabled people should be born, or whether we should die.

“Instead I focused on enabling disabled people to live better, more fulfilling lives. Today I find myself voting in a way that I thought I never would, I will be voting in favour of moving the Bill to the next stage of the legislative process.”

Sharing her personal experience, Ms Tidball said: “When I was six years old I had major surgery on my hips. I was in body plaster from my chest to my ankles, in so much pain and requiring so much morphine that my skin began to itch.

“I remember vividly laying in a hospital bed in Sheffield Children’s Hospital and saying to my parents ‘I want to die, please let me die’. I needed to escape from that body that I was inhabiting. That moment has come back to me all these years later. That moment made it clear to me that if the Bill was about intolerable suffering I would not be voting for it.”

The MP said she had since lived a “good life”, but added: “That moment also gave me a glimpse of how I would want to live my death, just as I have lived my life.

“Empowered by choices available to me. Living that death with dignity and respect and having the comfort of knowing that I might have control over that very difficult time.”