Palliative care doctors on the frontline of end-of-life medicine in the UK are overwhelmingly against Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill that will be voted on at the end of November, despite safety and ethical concerns.

The “next generation of palliative consultants” wrote to Kim Leadbeater this week to express their vehement opposition to her assisted suicide bill, which will have its first reading in Parliament tomorrow, 16 October.

The letter voiced their “disappointment” that Ms Leadbeater’s Bill focuses on assisted suicide rather than improving palliative care. “Thousands of people dedicate their lives to walking beside people and their families facing death. Those dying need properly resourced care”, the letter read.

“Currently, hospices are funded predominantly by charitable donations; funding is dwindling and costs rising, consequently hospice beds are closing. It hasn’t gone unnoticed that assisted dying is financially a cheaper solution than providing holistic care to those who are dying. We palliative medicine registrars strongly oppose this Bill.”

Dr Matthew Doré, the honorary secretary of the Association for Palliative Medicine (APM), told The Telegraph that he was “surprised” that Ms Leadbeater had not yet consulted his organisation, which is on the frontline of end-of-life care.

“We would expect for our views to be heard and considered”, Dr Doré said. He stressed that his sector receives only 37% of its funding from the government and relies heavily on charitable donations.

The APM represents over 1,300 palliative medicine doctors in the UK. In a 2020 position statement, it said it “opposes any change in the law to license doctors to supply or administer lethal drugs to a patient to enable them to take their own life.

“The majority (85%) of our membership do not support a change in the law, and a similar percentage would refuse to participate in assisted suicide or administer euthanasia.”

In 2023, Dr Doré, told a Westminster inquiry into assisted suicide that introducing such a law in the UK would be “bonkers… We are against this in healthcare, and certainly in palliative care.”

Last month, Dr Amy Profitt, the former president of the APM, also warned that assisted suicide laws are “downright dangerous” and might “mean that the NHS cuts back on cash for palliative care…

“New Zealand used to be ranked third in the world for the quality of its end-of-life care. After it introduced assisted dying in 2019, it dropped to 11th.”

Opposition to assisted suicide grows amid safety and ethical concerns

In a letter published in the Guardian this week, Dr Lucy Thomas, a palliative care and public health doctor, said that supporters of assisted suicide should “understand and address, rather than dismiss, the serious concerns raised by people like me who work with terminally ill patients on a daily basis and who he expects to enact his legislation (I see the worrying consequences of assisted dying in other countries”.

She added that the idea that such laws are “‘safe’ is belied by evidence from other countries”.

Claud Regnard, a retired palliative medicine consultant, also voiced his concern, writing:  “Only 2% of doctors in Canada and Oregon [where assisted suicide is legal] prescribe lethal drugs – even fewer in Australia. More than 98% of doctors in those jurisdictions do not want direct involvement with assisted deaths. They recognise the dangers to patients, healthcare and to themselves (ongoing adverse personal impact has been reported in between 15%-20% of physicians taking part in an assisted death).”

He also noted that “more than 100,000 people each year in the UK cannot access the specialist palliative care they desperately need”.

A survey of Muslim medical professionals in the UK In July/August found that 88% of respondents thought it wrong for doctors to legally prescribe life-ending medication, the Hyphen Online reports.

77% of respondents said that they had concerns irrespective of their Muslim faith.

Palliative medicine consultant Nadia Khan, who leads end-of-life matters at the British Islamic Medical Association (Bima), said: “The key concerns we have centre around safety… Vulnerable groups may end up either being coerced into taking up assisted dying, or feeling like they have no other choice because of the gaps around good end-of-life care and social support.

“At the moment, we haven’t got equitable end-of-life healthcare for everyone. That needs to be resolved. Assisted dying is the wrong answer to the right question, which is how do we make people more comfortable at the end of life?”

The survey also reported concerns about the patient-doctor relationship. “When it comes to patients and healthcare professionals, there is an underlying agreement of trust that we will do no harm, that we are there to help them and heal them. That risks being undermined quite significantly,” Khan said.

We must listen to those who know most about end-of-life care

Daniel Frampton, SPUC’s Editorial Officer, said: “Kim Leadbeater’s admission in The Telegraph she has not yet spoken with the APM, despite “consulting widely on the precise content of my Bill”, is profoundly worrying.

“Politicians should listen to those medical professionals whose daily experience caring for terminally ill patients makes them most qualified to speak for or against assisted suicide. While Ms Leadbeater says she ‘will certainly include’ the APM in the process, it seems that their views are not a priority.

“SPUC and other groups opposed to euthanasia and assisted suicide have warned consistently about the perils innate in such laws, which killed over 15,000 people in Canada alone in 2023.

“Recently, SPUC heard from palliative care consultant Dr Dominic Whitehouse about the dangers that assisted suicide pose, not only to vulnerable patients but also to the ethic of medicine, which is to care for people, not kill them.

“As Dr Whitehouse says, ‘Assisted suicide is the complete antithesis of good health care. Palliative medicine specialists and others who provide good end-of-life care recognise that a person is dying, meet the person there and accompany them on that journey… Hastening death by assisted suicide or euthanasia sends completely the opposite message.  We would be saying: We cannot cope with your suffering, so we are going to hasten your death.’

“SPUC urges the public and politicians to listen to Dr Whitehouse and others who have dedicated their lives to caring for patients at the end of their lives and recognise the inherent danger in turning to assisted suicide as a cheap solution that is ultimately not medicine at all.”

TAKE ACTION: Lobby your MP NOW

SPUC encourages supporters and all people opposed to assisted suicide to lobby their MP now, asking them to oppose Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill.

Over half of MPs are new to Parliament and have not voted on this issue before. Many have not even thought about it, and they will be getting barrages of messages from the other side – we must make sure our voice is heard.

A tool is available on our website to help you do this. Enter your postcode to find out who your MP is, write your message, and press send.

SPUC is not providing a template text at this stage, as politicians appreciate genuine, heartfelt messages over copied-and-pasted content. MPs soon recognise if they are receiving identical communications copied and pasted from templates or campaign websites.

For a terrifying insight into the threat that assisted suicide poses to people with disability, watch Liz Carr’s documentary Better Off Dead? – available to watch on the BBC’s iPlayer.

SPUC has also compiled stories of ordinary people opposed to assisted suicide, which you can access here for free online.