Dr Simon Opher
MP for Stroud · Labour · United Kingdom
“The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech. I would like to talk about natural flood management and how it sits naturally with district councils. In my constituency we have had more than 1,200 interventions over 12 years—I think we lead nationally on this.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Just over a year ago, I and my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Dr Prinsley) were detained and then deported by Israeli authorities as we tried to enter the west bank. Yesterday, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), the hon.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend is being so generous with his time. I echo what he said about my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson), who has led this campaign so strongly in Parliament.”
House of Commons26 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There are many exceptional Lords who do a really good job at that, but their contribution is undermined by their complete lack of legitimacy. It is simply not right that our Parliament has more unelected lawmakers than lawmakers with a mandate from the people.”
House of Commons20 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“According to research by Transparency International UK, 128 peers hold paid political advisory roles that risk breaching parliamentary rules. We must strengthen the House of Lords code of conduct to put beyond doubt that legislators who serve in the House of Lords should not be lobbyists.”
House of Commons20 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The idea of unelected peers having inherited access to Parliament alongside crony appointees controlling the laws that Parliament produces is clearly ridiculous. It is no wonder that the crisis of confidence in our political system is at an all-time high.”
House of Commons20 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
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“Some of the other amendments do not materially add anything to the Bill. On changing “an inevitably” to “a typically”, I do not think that would change the Bill—in fact, I think it would weaken it slightly, so I would not support amendment 123. Both amendment 11 and amendment 181 talk about how we can exclude mental health issues as a cause for seeking assisted dying. My personal feeling is that the Bill is strong enough as introduced to exclude that.”
House of Commons25 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There is a lot to talk about in this group and I thank you, Mr Efford, for calling me to speak. I would also like some confirmation about the term “medical condition”, and I agree with the hon. Member for East Wiltshire that we need to absolutely nail that. I am still to be convinced on the question of a condition that does not come under illness or disease but would come under “medical condition”, so I agree that we need to be very clear about what that means. Frailty is very often diagnosed in older people and I fear that “medical condition” could be equated with that, which would open up the Bill. We need to decide whether we want to do that. Personally, I would not support that in any way. If this is an opening for that, we need to close it, so I agree with the hon. Member in that respect.”
House of Commons25 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I would like to make a short comment. It is very important that the Committee does not get too hung up on anorexia, because the Bill is very clear about what is excluded. Deprivation of nutrition is always reversible. Someone who is anorexic and about to die would go into multi-organ failure and be unconscious and unable to give any sort of consent. Before that, the nutritional deprivation is reversible and therefore not covered under the Bill.”
House of Commons25 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am not aware of that. I believe that this is always reversible until a person goes into the absolute terminal stage of multi-organ failure. Before that, we can reverse nutritional deprivation. I do not accept that point, and I think it is important that we look at the Bill in all its detail. I think it has enough safeguards to exclude someone with anorexia.”
House of Commons25 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There is nothing inevitable about a diabetic getting worse; they just need to take the right treatment, so I would say that “inevitable” is a key word. I respect what the hon. Lady is saying about the amendments, and they do have some value, but I do think it is covered by the current language— “inevitably progressive…disease…which cannot be reversed.” I think “inevitable” and “cannot be reversed” are enough of a safeguard to make this a good clause.”
House of Commons25 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I must admit that I rejoice in these stories—it is fantastic that these things can happen—but shall we just outline exactly how the Bill will work? If you are given a prognosis of six months by a doctor and you decide that you want to—”
House of Commons25 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Sorry—will my hon. Friend not accept that this Bill will work in such a way that people may register for assisted dying, but only actually do it when their death is close? Therefore, if they get better and unexpectedly live longer, they will not take their lives.”
House of Commons25 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Does my hon. Friend not believe that an eating disorder is reversible? Under the Bill’s provisions, if someone has a condition that can be reversed by treatment, they would not be appropriate for assisted dying. Is she saying that eating disorders are not reversible?”
House of Commons25 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Actually, there is a lot of debate about whether terminal states of eating disorders actually exist or not, so they cannot be said to be a real thing in that way. Some people in the profession think they certainly do not exist, so I would contest the point made by the hon. Member for East Wiltshire.”
House of Commons25 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I would like to bring the Committee back to a certain amount of reality. What we are talking about is how we can assist clinicians to assess coercion and pressure. I like the way we have discussed this in a very good way, trying to make the Bill safe, but would the hon. Lady’s amendment make that any easier for the clinician? I do not think it would. The Bill is very clear as it is. I do not think there will be any implications if there are further amendments, because the Bill provides a statement of what we do; as a clinician, I would understand and be able to apply that.”
House of Commons12 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We are all in this together. We all want the safest Bill possible, so we should defer to the legal side to form the safest language. I am not a specialist on this legal subject but we all want the same thing and we are arguing about words on which we perhaps just need to take advice, to make the safest possible Bill.”
House of Commons12 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This is a really interesting discussion, but it misses the point of how clinical people assess coercion. What we really do not want is a tick-list saying, “Confirm that you have not been encouraged” and so on, on a piece of paper. It is a much more open discussion. To get to real coercion, we have to leave it completely open. We follow the flow of the patient’s conversation. I do not think that any particular words will help in that context.”
House of Commons12 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I do believe that what was actually said in evidence was that one of the reasons was that the person felt a burden, but there were other reasons. From the Californian doctors, we heard that feeling a burden is not in itself a reason to approve an assisted dying request.”
House of Commons12 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In my experience, often the reason people talk to me about assisted death—obviously, it is not legal at the moment—is fear of uncertainty at the end of life. That is one of the major things. For example, if someone has a bronchial tumour, it might suddenly haemorrhage, causing them to die by drowning in their own blood. That is something that people will do a lot to avoid. That is not pain; it is something else. As the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire mentioned, a tumour on the carotid artery can suddenly bleed catastrophically. That is not pain, but it is another reason for doing it. I believe it is that fear of what might happen at the end of life that drives most of this. Sometimes it cannot, but usually pain can be palliated —there are many ways to do that—but that fear of what will happen cannot be.”
House of Commons12 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In carcinoma of the bronchus, it is a real risk—and it is a risk that oncologists will tell me and tell the patient. That is the sort of thing that people adopt assisted dying to avoid.”
House of Commons12 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I think we are going slightly off topic. The hon. Gentleman is talking about pain control, not whether pain can be used as the sole criterion to qualify for assisted dying. I do not know, Mrs Harris, whether—”
House of Commons12 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I do not believe that the intention of the Bill is simply about being able to have an assisted death because of pain. Nothing in the Bill says that. We heard evidence from Dr Hussain, who was against assisted dying, but she admitted that there are people for whom we cannot control the pain, so that is another point. The whole interpretation of the Bill is incorrect. It is not about pain at the end of life; it is about controlling one’s own death.”
House of Commons12 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There is something called continuing healthcare, which would fund end-of-life care, if someone has a terminal prognosis of six months or less, so care costs would be covered by the state.”
House of Commons12 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As a doctor, if I, under this legislation, came across someone who gave their main reason for ending their life as being that they wanted to save money for their family, that would come under pressure or coercion, even if it was from themselves.”
House of Commons12 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I do believe that the Mental Capacity Act enables people to make very serious decisions, such as stopping cancer treatment, so I would absolutely dispute the hon. Lady’s interpretation of it.”
House of Commons11 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We also heard evidence that if we make this more complicated and introduce more terms into the Bill, then there will be less safeguarding for patients. That is why we are all here: we are trying to make this Bill safe for patients seeking assisted dying. Changing it from the Mental Capacity Act will make it less safe.”
House of Commons11 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I use the Mental Capacity Act almost every week in my work. As Chris Whitty said, in the majority of cases, whether someone has capacity is clear and indisputable. For a narrow proportion of people, it is more difficult to decide. The Bill takes account of that by using a panel to decide on those difficult cases of capacity. I would insist that most cases are very straightforward.”
House of Commons11 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If we are not sure about capacity, we must refer to psychiatry, so that a specialist organisation can make a more detailed assessment. However, most people do not fit into that category. Most people clearly have not got capacity or have got capacity, so this is a very narrow cohort.”
House of Commons11 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I apologise to the hon. Lady for my continued interruptions, but I want to put across some important points. In our medical system, the Mental Capacity Act is currently used to test capacity in cases of withdrawing life support. Does the hon. Lady not agree that that is on the same level as assisted dying?”
House of Commons11 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“First, it is impossible to argue that, because we have never been able to have assisted dying in this country, so it is a spurious argument. However, I do not quite understand the argument here. You are suggesting—”
House of Commons11 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am sorry. My hon. Friend is suggesting that a system that has been tried and tested in court and by clinicians throughout the country over the last 20 years is not preferrable to a new system that is completely untried. I thought this Committee was about making these things safe for patients, and I cannot see how the amendment makes them more safe.”
House of Commons11 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I have a simple question: is it not illegal to deprive people in prison and homeless people of the same care that the rest of the population receives?”
House of Commons11 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I think that my question has been covered by my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford. I just wanted to be sure that we were secure if the doctor was not in the room, but that has been answered.”
House of Commons30 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Q It seems clear from an expert in European law that the human rights convention is covered by this legislation, so we have got some very good advice there. I would just like to confirm that, if we could, Dr Graham. Also, to all of you: could we have some positive things that we could put in the Bill to make it safer? We have been talking about the Bill but this is a practical session where we need to improve the Bill. First of all to Dr Graham.”
House of Commons29 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I have a very short question. Can the hon. Gentleman state the number of onshore wind installations that were put together under the last Tory Government?”
House of Commons24 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As a co-sponsor, I have been so impressed by the way the Minister and the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) have talked, negotiated and brought the Bill forward. She asks whether we are willing to act—yes, we are clearly willing to act. Will the Minister ensure that the dialogue continues?”
House of Commons24 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We need to listen to them and learn from them, but having some of them against assisted dying is enough to give us due discipline and ensure we listen to exactly what the problems might be, so I disagree with the hon. Member for East Wiltshire.”
House of Commons21 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Bill as proposed is extremely similar to the Australian law, but it is not similar to Canadian law. Therefore, I do not see that bringing Canadian expertise into the Committee is of any use at all. I also back the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire when he said that in almost all situations we are just replacing one expert for another, so the only contentious bit is whether we have people from Australia in support of or against assisted dying. A split of 38 to 20, with the other witnesses being neutral, is appropriate and actually reflects the vote in the House. I do not see that as a disadvantage. Are the witnesses really going to change what we are saying?”
House of Commons21 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The £29,000 minimum income threshold is already the highest in the world, and 75% of applicants would not be able to meet the even greater figure of £38,700 proposed by the previous Government. It is deeply unjust that many British citizens working in our NHS, our police forces and other key public services now earn too little to live with their spouse in the UK. This is a matter of basic fairness. Families belong together. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister, when the review is published, to commit to a policy that will keep families together.”
House of Commons20 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Despite losing 250 extended family members in the February 2023 earthquake, Rebecca persevered, but because of the UK’s rigid financial rules, they remain separated, with no certainty about when they can reunite. The cost of applying for a spouse visa is now a staggering £14,256 and increasing regularly. Rebecca is essentially exiled from her own country because she does not meet an arbitrary financial threshold. Rebecca’s case highlights further issues with the present policy. Rebecca is having to go through the cash savings route, which means she must hold £88,500 in savings. The average 25 to 34-year-old in the UK holds about £3,500 in savings. That just goes to show that the £88,000 figure is absolutely ludicrous. The current policy means that family reunification is a luxury; as we have heard, it is only for the very richest.”
House of Commons20 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This policy is not only inhumane, but economically flawed. This debate is not just about numbers on a spreadsheet and arbitrary thresholds; it is about real human lives and love, and the human cost is immeasurable. I will highlight the case of one of my constituents, Rebecca Gray, who played a pivotal role in securing the debate by rallying her social media followers to help to get this petition over the 100,000-signature line. In 2023, Rebecca and her husband married in Turkey and began the spouse visa application process, knowing they had to meet a savings requirement of £88,500. To achieve that, they both worked 18 hours a day, seven days a week, while living in a high-risk earthquake zone in Turkey.”
House of Commons20 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In 2024, the UK issued 3.4 million visas; 87,000 were family visas, which accounted for 7%, and the spousal visas made up even less—less than 5%. Moreover, the narrative that foreign spouses are a burden to taxpayers is fundamentally misleading. The Home Office’s own guidelines explicitly state that foreign spouses have no recourse to public funds. In fact, they contribute through taxation, national insurance and an annual immigration health surcharge of £1,035. I also worry that the cost of enforcing this policy is greater than the financial benefits. As we have heard, families forced into single-parent situations often require more Government support. As a GP, I have been seeing a patient and their family; the children are suffering because they cannot live with both parents, which has caused a lot of mental health difficulties.”
House of Commons20 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Friend the Home Secretary commissioning the Migration Advisory Committee to conduct a review of this area as soon as we entered government. In November, I, with 25 of my colleagues, wrote to the Migration Advisory Committee calling for the family visa income requirement to be lowered to the equivalent of the full-time national living wage. That adjustment would enable thousands of families to reunite, while still supporting financial stability; it would be a compassionate shift away from the previous Government’s harsh stance. I am hopeful that the committee will come to the same conclusion. Some people have sought to misrepresent the truth about this matter when discussing immigration. It is our duty to bring the facts to this debate.”
House of Commons20 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell) for introducing this debate. I would also like to thank the more than 300 petitioners from Stroud who have made this debate possible, and the Petitions Committee for allocating parliamentary time to this crucial debate. As we have heard, the previous Conservative Government hiked the minimum income requirement to £29,000, and were seeking to raise it even further, to £38,000, all under the guise of controlling immigration. That does not seem to have worked, but let us be clear about this policy and what it has actually achieved: it has torn families apart and inflicted hardship on ordinary people. So I welcomed my right hon.”
House of Commons20 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Will the hon. Lady say whether the policy of punitively attacking families was successful in reducing migration? Will she also say what effect immigration has on GDP?”
House of Commons20 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On pregnancy, obesity actually begins in the womb—it does not even begin when we are born. In one fascinating experiment, one group of pregnant women were fed a lot of carrots and another group did not have any carrots. The children of the women who ate carrots loved carrots, so a memory is made in utero. It is therefore really important that pregnant women have a very healthy diet, as this is a risk factor for obesity in young people. Another is formula feed. Breastfeeding protects against obesity, but formula feeds do not. Follow-on feeds, hungry baby feeds, are just normal milk packed full of calories, so they tend to increase obesity. That is perhaps something we need to discuss, too.”
House of Commons20 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“One problem is that unhealthy and ultra-processed foods—UPFs—that are high in fats, salt and sugar are often the easiest, cheapest and most convenient. Crucially, they make the most profit for the food industry. The other problem with these types of food is that they are addictive—salty, fatty foods are addictive. Another problem, revealed by the Food Foundation, is that healthy foods, calorie for calorie, are twice as expensive as less healthy foods. So there are a lot of issues there to unpick. Inequalities and deprivation are very, very strong causes of obesity, with less well-off people being twice as likely to be overweight. Therefore, one strategy has to be to increase the living wage, reduce child poverty, improve health and social services, and invest in education —all of which the Government are doing.”
House of Commons20 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“What is the cause of obesity? From the evidence, it is clear that the main cause of obesity is diet—it is what we eat. The food system in this country is fundamentally broken. I welcomed the statement from the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham and Croydon North (Steve Reed) about sustainable food production: nutritious foods grown while restoring nature, and farms with good food production at its core, rewarded properly. There is a complicated relationship in food production, whereby farms mostly exist on Government subsidy with very small profit margins and then the supermarkets make profits out of what they sell. We need to look into that complicated relationship.”
House of Commons20 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Ischaemic heart disease, the leading cause of death in the UK, is much more common in obesity, as is hypertension and osteoarthritis, which causes joint pain and reduced mobility. Something that a lot of people do not know is that 13 cancers are directly attributable to obesity—it is actually also the second commonest cause of cancer. As a GP, there are other things I see quite regularly, such as reflux, varicose veins, infertility and even thrombosis, all of which diminish quality of life. The commonest cause of liver disease is now obesity. I will not go into the cost too much but, as we can imagine, obesity costs the country an absolute fortune: on average, four extra sick days a year; and, taking into account the cost to the NHS and so on, an estimated £98 billion a year, or 4% of GDP. The cost to the NHS is £19 billion a year.”
House of Commons20 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The figures are even more worrying in children: 10% of children aged four, when they enter school, are obese; that figure rises to 22%—nearly one in four—in year 6. One problem with obesity is that, as many of us know, once someone becomes overweight, it is difficult to shift. That is why the most important age group to concentrate on is young people. Obesity is now the single most important modifiable risk factor for the prevention of disease, and I will briefly go through its effects—as a doctor, I cannot resist. Around 4 million people in this country have type 2 diabetes, which is five times more likely in obesity. Type 2 diabetes almost doubles a person’s mortality rate, with 22,000 people with diabetes dying early every year.”
House of Commons20 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the impact of food and diet on obesity. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating parliamentary time to this crucial issue. We were actually going to have this debate before Christmas, but we decided that before Christmas was not a good time to discuss obesity; we were then going to have it last week, but it was postponed. I am really grateful to colleagues across the House for supporting the debate. Our country has an obesity crisis that is threatening the health and wellbeing of the whole nation. It is a cross-party issue: since 1990, rates of obesity have doubled. Two thirds of all adults in the UK are carrying excess weight, and a quarter of adults are classified as obese.”
House of Commons20 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Nesta, the Obesity Health Alliance and the House of Lords Food, Diet and Obesity Committee have done multiple reports on obesity, and it is clear that we can halve it. All we need to do is reduce everyone’s calorie intake by 200 calories a day. That is the difference between McDonald’s large fries and standard fries—other fries are available—so it is not a massive thing, but we all have to do it. As always with public health, small drops in what we take can have a massive effect on the population.”
House of Commons20 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I absolutely agree with that. We must treat people in a fair and compassionate way. We must point that out to them, as medical professionals, and help them to get better. I agree with the hon. Lady about stigma. On obesity strategies, since 1990, we have had 700 separate policies to tackle obesity, yet it has doubled. Clearly, we are doing something wrong. Having looked at the evidence, it is clear that voluntary targets do not work. Voluntary targets for the food industry and relying on individual agency—giving us choice in what we eat—cannot reduce obesity. The food industry, of course, has a vested interest in making money. While education and exercise are really good, there is not much evidence to suggest that they reduce obesity. It is all about food. There has been a lot of research.”
House of Commons20 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Absolutely. One of the main pitfalls we must avoid is that there is no point in making cheap food more expensive. That will make people poorer. We need to be much more creative than that.”
House of Commons20 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We certainly must not let takeaway outlets open near schools—that is a planning must. I would also caution against the treatment of the obesity crisis with injections of drugs such as Ozempic, which could well turn out to be dangerous.”
House of Commons20 January 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗