Death at the hands of the state: MPs push for broader access ahead of assisted-dying Bill

LONDON – Scores of MPs are pushing for broader access to assisted suicide ahead of the introduction of a Bill to legalise the practice. They say people who are suffering “incurably” should be able to ask for lethal drugs to take their own lives along with those who have terminal illnesses.

In jurisdictions where this has been allowed, people with mental-health illnesses, such as anorexia, post-traumatic stress disorder and autism, have been killed at the hands of their doctors. Their demand comes just days after Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP for Spen Valley, announced she would table a Private Member’s Bill in the House of Commons on October 16 to permit doctor-assisted death for people who are terminally ill.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, the group calling for broader criteria includes 13 politicians who hold positions within the Government. Thirty-eight of 54 MPs in the group are in the Labour Party.

They include Lizzi Collinge, the Labour MP for Morecambe and Lunesdale, who told the newspaper that she had already written to Ms Leadbeater to ask for a broader eligibility.

“It is an important position because ultimately this is about human suffering,” she said. “Unfortunately suffering is not limited to those who have a terminal illness.

“Some people who do not have a prognosis of six months or less will be suffering in a way that no matter what you do, no matter the care you receive, their suffering becomes intolerable. That, I think, needs to be reflected in the law.”

Opponents of the Bill will inevitably see the drive for change as proof that no safeguards are capable of halting the slippery slope to full-blown euthanasia on demand as soon as the law permits medics to kill.

This will include the practice of euthanasia, in which doctors administer lethal injections, superseding assisted suicide, in which patients sometimes endure long and complicated deaths after ingesting poisonous drugs.

Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, promised an assisted-suicide Bill ahead of the general election in July and will give the Bill time to proceed into law if the House of Commons votes in favour at a Second Reading.

It will be the first time MPs will be given a free vote on assisted suicide since 2015 when a Bill introduced by Labour MP Rob Marris was rejected by 330 votes to 118.

Ms Leadbeater, the sister of murdered Labour MP Jo Cox, has rejected the concerns of doctors and disability rights campaigners that an assisted suicide law would wreck palliative care and put sick, vulnerable and elderly people under pressure to kill themselves.

She said: “It will not undermine calls for improvements to palliative care.

“Nor will it conflict with the rights of people with disabilities to be treated equally and have the respect and support they are absolutely right to campaign for in order to live fulfilling lives. I support these causes just as passionately.”

“The Health and Social Care Select Committee report earlier this year found that where legislation similar to mine has been introduced elsewhere around the world it has been accompanied by improved palliative care provision and has not impacted negatively on the lives of disabled people.”

The claims of the select committee have been rejected as “inaccurate”, however, by the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, an Oxford-based institute serving the Catholic Church in the UK and the Irish Republic.

Ms Leadbeater also promised robust safeguards – in spite of evidence from every jurisdiction where euthanasia and assisted suicide have been introduced that such protections are easily and quickly eroded and removed.

She said: “I believe that with the right safeguards and protections in place, people who are already dying and are mentally competent to make a decision should be given the choice of a shorter, less painful death, on their own terms and without placing family and loved ones at risk of prosecution.”

Catherine Robinson, spokeswoman for Right to Life, said: “Making assisted suicide legal poses an acute threat to vulnerable people, especially in the context of a struggling healthcare system. Members of the Prime Minister’s own cabinet recognise this problem and that, within this setting, certain people will likely be particularly vulnerable to coercion”.

“With an NHS described by the sitting Health Secretary as ‘broken’, and the 100,000 people who need palliative care dying each year without receiving it, this assisted suicide legislation is a disaster in waiting.

“Every suicide is a tragedy and this remains the case for those suffering at the end of their life. The situation for people who may already have a serious illness is not helped by a failing health care system and a cold home.

“In such cases, vulnerable people may feel pressured to end their lives prematurely. This would be an extremely poor indictment of our healthcare system and society as a whole.

“The UK needs properly funded high-quality palliative care for those at the end of their life, not assisted suicide.”

Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury said in a pastoral letter to the people of his diocese earlier this year that euthanasia would be a disaster.

Bishop Davies said: “Opening the doors to euthanasia would change the medical and nursing professions in their relationship to the sick and the aged; distort the way the sick and the elderly are viewed in society when it is less costly to kill rather than to care; put intolerable pressures on the sick and the aged who are made to feel a burden; and advance a culture of death which has extended to more and more people in countries where euthanasia has been adopted, even extending to the mentally ill and to children.”

Last month, the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales offered resources to Catholics to help them to combat the threat of assisted suicide and euthanasia.

At present the 1961 Suicide Act makes assisting a suicide punishable by up to 14 years in jail, though prosecutions and jail sentences are extremely rare.

With the spread of euthanasia and assisted suicide throughout countries of the Western world in the last decade, more MPs are expected to vote in favour of a change in the law. Similar Bills to scrap legal prohibitions on doctor-assisted death will soon also be considered in Scotland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.

Among the Westminster MPs who will oppose the Bill are Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, a Muslim, who has already made her opposition clear.

She said: “I don’t intend to support it … I know some MPs who support this issue think, ‘For God’s sake we’re not a nation of granny killers, what’s wrong with you …?’ [But] once you cross that line, you’ve crossed it forever.

“If it becomes the norm that at a certain age or with certain diseases, you are now a bit of burden … that’s a really dangerous position.”

Health Secretary Wes Streeting has also declared himself “conflicted” and “deeply uncomfortable” about legalising assisted suicide or euthanasia.

He said: “Candidly, when I think about this question of being a burden, I do not think that palliative care, end-of-life care in this country, is in a condition yet where we are giving people the freedom to choose, without being coerced by the lack of support available.”

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