A Whitehall cost analysis of MP Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill is set to conclude today that it will save the NHS money by expediting the deaths of patients said to have six months left to live. SPUC slammed the impact assessment as “brutal arithmetic that lacks compassion and humanity”.
The Whitehall impact assessment, set to be published this afternoon, will reportedly conclude that assisted suicide will save the state money, even considering the costs of enacting Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, if passed into law.
Leadbeater’s bill, set to be voted on by MPs on 16 May, proposes to legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales for terminally ill adults given six months to live.
Pro-assisted suicide supporters have increasingly forwarded such laws as a cost-cutting measure.
Last year, a “cost analysis of medical assistance in dying in Canada” estimated that assisted suicide could save the Canadian state between $34.7 and $136.8 million every year.
Although the Canadian report claimed it was “not suggesting medical assistance in dying as a measure to cut costs,” it did “suggest that the savings will almost certainly exceed the costs associated with offering medical assistance in dying to patients… [and would] release funds to be reinvested elsewhere”.
Last year, Luc Van Gorp, a Belgian health insurance boss, praised assisted suicide as a cost-cutting measure, stating: “Why would you necessarily want to prolong such a life? Those people don’t want that themselves, and when it comes to budgets, it only costs the government money.”
Palliative care doctors in the UK recently sounded the alarm bell against assisted suicide. An open letter written by end-of-life consultants to Leadbeater said: “It hasn’t gone unnoticed that assisted dying is financially a cheaper solution than providing holistic care to those who are dying.”
This week, a YouGov poll revealed that over half of Britons fear that vulnerable people will be pressured into ending their lives if assisted suicide is legalised in the UK. 56 per cent feared it is likely that citizens would opt for assisted suicide because they feel they are a burden.
There were over 15,000 assisted suicides in Canada in 2023. Almost half of people killed by assisted suicide that year cited being a “burden” as a reason to die.
MPs must reject “cold utilitarian ethic of assisted suicide”, says SPUC
SPUC’s Michael Robinson, Executive Director (Public Affairs and Legal Services), said: “This report is a chilling insight into the cold utilitarian ethic of assisted suicide that prioritises savings over the care and well-being of vulnerable patients.
“MPs must reject this brutal arithmetic that lacks compassion and humanity. Reducing patients to a balance sheet would not only be dehumanising, but it would also be a betrayal of the state’s duty to protect all citizens equally and without discrimination.
“We can see with shocking clarity how patients will soon be ushered into early graves unless we act now to prevent it. If the Leadbeater Bill is passed, many people will surely feel pressured to end their lives in such a coercive system, which we see already in nations where assisted suicide is legal.
“SPUC urges all its supporters and concerned citizens to lobby their respective MPs with all haste to warn against the mortal threat posed by assisted suicide. We must TAKE ACTION before it is too late.”
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