Almost 350 clinicians working in palliative care signed a letter to Heath Secretary Wes Streeting urging him not to withdraw funding from hospices that refuse to provide assisted suicide.
MP Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is being debated today in the House of Commons at Third Reading. A crucial vote is expected next Friday on 20 June.
As the Bill currently stands, hospices do not have a right to refuse to provide assisted suicide provision to patients.
Medics working in end-of-life care have warned that hospices that refuse to participate in assisted suicide could lose funding, meaning that they might be forced to close if the Bill is passed into law.
A third of hospice funding comes from the Government, and charities find the other two-thirds.
In Canada, where assisted suicide is legal, a hospice in British Columbia was forced to shut down when the Canadian Government cancelled $1.5 million of funding after it declined to provide medical assistance in dying (MAID).
Before today’s debate on the Leadbeater Bill, 347 clinicians – including 124 palliative medicine consultants and doctors – wrote to Mr Streeting to voice their fears about what might happen in England and Wales.
“Some hospices may be forced to close should they be denied NHS funding because they are unwilling to participate in the provision of assisted suicide”, the letter warned.
“Our hospices provide expert, community based, specialist palliative care which is world-leading in our sector. We do not want to kill our patients, nor have them fearful that we may do just that. Let us do the job we are trained to do…
“We urgently request clarity from the Government that no hospice will be denied public funding because they are unwilling to facilitate assisted suicide on their premises or be placed under a duty to provide such a service.”
Conservative MP Danny Kruger raised concerns about hospice defunding during the Committee Stage of the Leadbeater Bill.
In March, Mr Kruger said: “I am concerned about the implication of that, which might be that institutions that did not wish to provide or facilitate assisted suicide but did receive public money, for instance care homes or hospices, would be at risk of losing that money – essentially being defunded – on the grounds of their conscientious objection to participating in assisted dying.”
That same month, MPs sitting on Ms Leadbeater’s committee voted against opt-outs for hospices that do not want to provide assisted suicide.
Professor Katherine Sleeman, a palliative care expert, recently posted on X that she “spoke to a consultant at a large hospice… She told me if their hospice ‘opts in’ to providing AD [assisted dying] the entire consultant body has decided they will leave en masse…
“I am not prone to exaggerate, but this is a disaster.”
The Leadbeater Bill seeks to legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales for terminally ill adults given less than six months to live.
Health Secretary Streeting is a known opponent of the Leadbeater Bill. Last year, he warned that assisted suicide, if legalised, would have “resource implications” for the NHS.
“To govern is to choose”, he said. “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.”
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