Left image – Wikimedia Commons: Official portrait of Siobhain McDonagh
Labour’s Dame Siobhain McDonagh has warned that legalising assisted suicide could “break the NHS”. Her comments come ahead of a crucial House of Commons vote on MP Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill on Friday, 20 June.
Tomorrow, MPs will hold a crucial vote on Ms Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. The Bill seeks to legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales for terminally ill adults given less than six months to live.
However, Dame Siobhain is among many Labour MPs now opposing the Bill over concerns about coercion, safeguarding and the negative impact assisted suicide will have on health service funding.
Dame Siobhain said: “It’s now clear that the assisted dying Bill will rob our stretched NHS of much needed resources and could become the trojan horse that breaks the NHS, the proudest institution and the proudest measure in our Labour Party’s history.
“We already know from the impact assessment that this new system could cost tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds making our mission to cut waiting times and rebuild our NHS harder.”
Last year, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said 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.”
Mr Streeting is a known opponent of the Leadbeater Bill who said he would vote against the draft law.
Last week, over 50 Labour MPs wrote to Leader of the House Lucy Powell asking her to postpone Friday’s vote on Ms Leadbeater’s Bill.
“The private member’s bill process has shown itself to be a woefully inadequate vehicle for the introduction of such a foundational change to our NHS and the relationship between doctor and patient”, the letter stated.
Earlier this month, over 1,000 doctors signed a letter to MPs urging them to vote against Ms Leadbeater’s Bill.
The letter expressed the fears of many doctors that they would “feel pressurised when dealing with patient requests for assisted deaths, meaning that doctors may end up having involvement despite it being against their principles, because they want to help their patients”.
Last November, MPs voted by 330 to 275 in support of Ms Leadbeater’s draft law at Second Reading.
Friday’s vote is expected to be very close, with some MPs who previously voted in favour of the Bill now stating their intention to vote against it.
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