MPs reviewing the Leadbeater Bill at Committee stage have voted against opt-outs for hospices that do not want to provide assisted suicide.
MP Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill for England and Wales proposes to legalise assisted suicide for terminally ill adults given six months to live. It is currently at Committee stage before being voted on by MPs at Third Reading next month.
An amendment proposed by Rachell Maskell MP to allow hospices to opt out of facilitating assisted suicide was rejected last week by the Committee, despite being common practice in nations where such laws exist.
Danny Kruger MP, who supported the amendment, said that hospices should have the choice to be “a safe space in which there will not be state-assisted suicide”.
But one member of the Committee, Conservative MP Kit Malthouse, threatened to defund non-compliant hospices. “Should they still be able to deny what is a legal service, if they are in receipt of public funds?” he asked.
Advocates for the amendment were seeking assurances that institutions would not be penalised for not wanting to provide assisted suicide, which could, in theory, breach the Equality Act and lead to funding being withdrawn.
One in five hospices has cut services in the last year because of an ongoing funding crisis, according to charity Hospice UK, raising concerns that assisted suicide could force institutions to choose between cutting more health services or losing staff who object to assisted suicide.
A survey of Association for Palliative Medicine (APM) members recently reported that more than two in five respondents said that “if assisted dying was implemented within their organisation, they would have to leave”.
Professor Katherine Sleeman, an expert in palliative care, posted on X last week that she “spoke to a consultant at a large hospice last month. 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.”
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has warned that assisted suicide, if legalised, would have “resource implications” for other national health services.
“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.”
British Medical Association (BMA) consultants recently voted in favour of a motion stating that assisted suicide, if it becomes law, must be based on an “opt-in model… and no consultant shall be expected to be involved in any part of the assisted dying process, including having no obligation to either suggest assisted dying to patients, nor refer patients for it”.
Similarly, the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) stated in September 2024 that any assisted suicide law should 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”.
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