Many MPs spoke out against Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill, even though the proposed law was approved by 330 votes to 275 on 29 November. While SPUC called the result “disappointing”, it says that “this is not the end of the debate. There’s still time for MPs to recognise the mortal threat that assisted suicide poses.”
The Leadbeater Bill, seeking to legalise suicide for terminally ill adults (aged over 18) who have six months to live, was approved at its second reading last Friday. Before the vote, MPs debated the proposed law, which will now move on to committee and report stages before a second vote next year.
Tim Farron, Lib Dem MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, spoke powerfully against the Bill on Friday. “Neither side has a monopoly on compassion”, he began, remembering his experience of watching his mother die. “My opposition to the Bill is grounded in compassion.”
One of Mr Farron’s main concerns was that the Bill would “create the space for coercion that would undoubtedly see people die who would not otherwise have chosen to do so. There are no safeguards in the Bill that would prevent that…
“No amount of doctors, safeguards or bureaucratic mechanisms will prevent those who self-coerce from opting to die simply because they assume that no matter what their loved ones say, everyone would be better off if they were dead.”
As well as calling out the Bill’s “hasty process”, Mr Farron pointed out that assisted suicide would almost certainly replace palliative care, which is already a “postcode lottery” on the NHS. “The group that has contacted me who are most vociferously against the Bill are palliative care doctors”, he observed.
“We all know what is coming. Assisted dying means a shift in focus away from helping people to live in dignity and comfort, towards simply helping people to die. Then, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“We Are The Safeguard… This Parliament”, Says Kruger MP
Danny Kruger, Conservative MP for East Wiltshire, scolded MPs who objected to his point that specialists in Canada “personally kill hundreds of patients a year in their special clinics…
“If hon. Members have difficulty with the language, then I wonder what they are doing here. This is what we are talking about. I met doctors for whom this is their profession and their job, and they are proud to do it.”
Mr Kruger also voiced his worries about the effect the Bill would have on palliative care. “The evidence is that, with this new option and the comparative loss of investment and innovation in palliative care, real choice will narrow”, he said. “If we have concerns about practice in the NHS, let us deal with that. Let us not license suicide.”
On the issue of “choice”, Mr Kruger warned that, in practice, an assisted suicide law would “impose” a “new reality… the option of assisted suicide, the obligation to have a conversation around the bedside or whispered in the corridor, ‘Is it time?’ It will change life and death for everyone.”
Mr Kruger empahsised that, on such a matter of seismic change, the rushed process of the Bill left very little time to debate the proposed law that he believed was innately unsafe.
“Let me tell the House: we are the safeguard—this place; this Parliament”, he concluded. “We are the people who protect the most vulnerable in society from harm, yet we stand on the brink of abandoning that role.
“The Rubicon was a very small stream, but on the other side lies a very different world – a worse world, with a very different idea of human value. The idea that our individual worth lies in our utility, valuable only for so long as we are useful – not a burden, not a cost, not making a mess. Let us not be the Parliament that authorises that idea.”
MPs Must Undo This “needless Tragedy”
SPUC’s Daniel Frampton, Editorial Officer, said: “This is not the end of the debate. There’s still time for MPs to recognise the mortal threat that assisted suicide poses. SPUC encourages all those MPs who voted for the Bill to listen to colleagues like Tim Farron whose arguments against assisted suicide are not only compelling but also demonstrably true, as we have seen in Canada and elsewhere.
“MPs should also pay special attention to doctors and nurses on the frontline of palliative care. These dedicated people – professionals who care every day for the dying in a woefully underfunded sector – know what they are talking about, and their warnings about assisted suicide must be heeded before it is too late.
“During the debate, Mary Kelly Foy MP explained that her daughter, born with severe disabilities, was initially given just six months to live. ‘She lived for 27 years.’ Had this Bill been in place then, her life might have been threatened from the start, not by disability but by the imposition of assisted suicide. The ‘slippery slope’ is real, and it cannot be ignored.
“Ultimately, there is nothing progressive about assisted suicide. It is a terrible regression that pushes death as a solution to ‘problem’ people who want to live – if only they were provided with proper and timely care, which is true compassion.
“By prioritising assisted suicide over end of life care, 330 MPs, including the Prime Minister, offer patients no choice at all but suicide. This is a needless tragedy, but one that can and must be undone.”
