Blogpost by Liam Gibson

Since the 1960s, successive British governments have undermined family life through the increasingly aggressive promotion of sex education, birth control and abortion. In 2022, the lives of over a quarter of a million babies were ended under the Abortion Act, and earlier this year the UK reached the important milestone of recording more deaths than births. These two facts are a direct result of the implementation of policies designed to reduce the global population. The cumulative effects of these policies mean that the UK, like the rest of Europe and much of the developed world, is facing a crisis that threatens to leave everyone more unhealthy, unhappy and impoverished. The steep decline in birth rates has brought the world to a demographic tipping point and is poised to destabilise the global economy.

While the USA, Europe, China and Japan account for roughly 26% of the world’s population, collectively these regions represent around 70% of its economic activity. Within these economies, it is people in the prime age years of 25 to 64 who drive the engine of productivity and consumption — especially in high-multiplying sectors like the housing market and motor industry. This group’s most important role, however, is in the generation of tax revenue. By contrast, the economic activity of the over-65 age group is extremely limited. Earnings and expenditure fall sharply in this group with only the consumption of healthcare services increasing with age. Our current economic model is successful only as long as the 25 to 64 age group is large enough to support the needs of the over 65s. With a rapidly ageing population, however, it is difficult for any economy to grow and the risk of collapse is drastically increased. The decline in the 25 to 64 age group is well underway in Europe, China and Japan. At the same time, the over-65 population is set to balloon. The Office for National Statistics estimates the current population of the UK in 2024 to be 58.3 million. It is projected to grow by 3.6 million to become 61.9 million by 2034. Most of this growth is predicted to be in a 2.3 million increase in people aged 65 or over.

With a shrinking tax base, governments will struggle to service the massive levels of debt they have built up. In the 2022/23 period, UK government expenditure was roughly £1.15 trillion, around 45.3% of gross domestic product. This spending was financed by £1.02 trillion of revenue raised and £1.28 billion of borrowing. 

According to a report published by the Health Foundation on 20 June 2024, the projected spending growth of 0.8% each year up to 2029/30 outlined by the Office for Budget Responsibility would leave the NHS in England with a shortfall of about £38 billion a year. The report states: “It is clear that the next government will face difficult trade-offs between spending on the NHS and other vital public services and between overall public spending and levels of taxation.”

The changing demographics of the UK will result in a significant rise in demand for healthcare. Although people will potentially live longer, increased life expectancy means they are likely to require long-term treatment for conditions associated with later life. The National Audit Office’s report on NHS Financial Management and Sustainability puts it this way:

“People over 65 are already responsible for the majority of acute spending and activity in hospitals, accounting for 50% of non-elective admissions and 67% of occupied bed days. NHSE forecasts two-thirds of those over 65 will have multiple health conditions by 2037, based on current trends. More widely, the Health Foundation projects the number of people diagnosed with major illness will be 9.3 million by 2040 compared with 6.7 million in 2019, an increase of 39%. Over the same period, the ONS [Office of National Statistics] projects that the population will increase by just 13.1%.”

Whichever party had won the election on 4 July, the people of the UK would be faced with difficult financial challenges. If it is to meet those challenges Keir Starmer’s government must introduce tax rises or spending cuts and possibly both. Starmer, however, has been a long-time advocate of assisted suicide and has committed his government to hold a free vote in Parliament on its legalisation. While the issue is usually presented as a compassionate response to the suffering of the terminally ill, it is naive to assume that the financial considerations will play no part in the legalisation of assisted suicide in Britain just as they have done elsewhere.

In the NHS, the formula of “quality-adjusted life years” is used to assess the cost-effectiveness of treatment decisions for patients considered to have a poor quality of life. Using this calculation, the condition of some patients can be judged so poor that they would be better off dead.

In 2020, an article Counting the Cost of Denying Assisted Dying, in the journal Clinical Ethics presented the financial case for permitting assisted suicide. The authors argued that:

 “the resources consumed by patients who are denied assisted dying could instead be used to provide additional (positive) quality-adjusted life years for patients elsewhere in the healthcare system who wish to continue living and to improve their quality of life.”

They gave the following example:

“…a patient who is in great pain because of cancer with a life expectancy of around two years will continue to require pain medication and support from clinical staff and also carers for those two years. For each such patient, legalising assisted dying would avoid this waste of resources.”

In Canada and the Low Countries, the cost implications of providing healthcare to people with chronic illnesses or disability are already a factor in how assisted suicide is perceived. In April 2024, Luc Van Gorp, the president of Belgium’s largest healthcare provider called for laws there to be relaxed to allow those tired of life the opportunity to end it themselves. He argued that this policy would save the government the cost of caring for an ageing population. The financial pressures caused by the UK’s demographic decline will almost certainly lead to the promotion of assisted suicide as the preferred option for those seen as a drain on NHS resources.

When abortion was being legalised in Western Europe and North America in the 1960s and 70s, it was presented as a necessary measure to save the planet from the so-called Population Bomb. Despite being exposed as a hoax, the same arguments are now made by those who claim babies are a threat to the Earth’s climate. Since 1968, over 10 million babies in Britain have been killed by abortion. Had they lived, most of these children would have had children of their own. There are, therefore, multiple generations of children missing from the UK population. Britain’s mass extermination of its children has created a demographic time bomb that cannot be defused. However, the culture of death which views the sick, the elderly and the disabled as a waste of NHS resources can be defeated.  It is not too late for Britain to avoid the fate of Canada.

In the coming weeks, both the House of Lords and the Scottish Parliament are set to debate the legalisation of assisted suicide. A change in the law in Scotland will have dangerous implications for the whole of the UK, so wherever you live, please take a few minutes to respond to the call for evidence from the Scottish Health, Social Care and Sport Committee. SPUC’s advice on how to take part in the consultation can be found here. It is vitally important that our politicians receive an unequivocal message that the lives of the most vulnerable regardless of their age or health status must be respected and protected.