Image – Wikimedia Commons: Official Portrait of Wes Streeting MP
Health Secretary and Labour MP Wes Streeting has said that he will vote against Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill after voicing concerns about coercion and funding “implications” for the NHS and palliative care.
This week, in an interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson on the Today programme, Mr Streeting said that he wouldn’t be voting for the proposed law as he disagrees with its advocates “on the merits of the bill overall”.
Mr Streeting previously voted against the Bill at the Second Reading last year, which saw 330 to 275 MPs vote in favour of Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill – which proposes to legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales for terminally ill adults given six months to live.
A second vote at Third Reading is set to take place in the House of Commons on 16 May.
“To govern is to choose”, the Health Secretary said last year: “If parliament chooses to go ahead with assisted dying, it is making a choice that this is an area to prioritise for investment. And we’d have to work through those implications.”
Mr Streeting also voiced his “concerns about coercion, and how people might be coerced into taking their own lives… [not] just through malevolent intentions on the part of people with a vested interest… but also the extent to which people might feel themselves to be a burden on their loved ones”.
The issue of underfunded end-of-life care was also raised. “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”, he warned.
Other public figures and medics have raised fears about the ramifications that assisted suicide might inflict on health services.
Last week, a pastoral letter issued by Cardinal Vincent Nichols asked, “Can the National Health Service cope with assisted suicide or will it, as the Health Secretary has warned, cause cuts elsewhere in the NHS? Can MPs guarantee that no medical practitioner or care worker would be compelled to take part in assisted suicide? Would this mean the establishment of a ‘national death service’?”
Palliative care doctors in the UK are overwhelmingly against the legalisation of assisted suicide. A recent Association for Palliative Medicine (APM) survey found that over two in five respondents said that “if assisted dying was implemented within their organisation, they would have to leave”.
Members of the British Medical Association (BMA) also recently voted in favour of a motion stating that assisted suicide is not healthcare and presents “serious moral hazards to consultants”.
In September 2024, the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) stated that any assisted suicide law must include “a right to refuse to participate in the process” and “should not have a negative impact on funding for palliative care services in any way”.
However, during the Committee Stage of the Leadbeater Bill, MPs voted against an amendment to ensure an opt-out for hospices not wanting to participate in assisted suicide.
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