The impassioned debate on assisted suicide last Friday has been widely hailed as a display of Parliament at its best. The discussion was dignified, the interventions serious and the mood sombre as MPs – freed from their demeaning tribal shackles – put across arguments on a complicated moral issue. I counted just two crass attempts to make party political points, both rightly jeered.
Their verdict changes our country after they opted to overturn traditional views on the sanctity of life to let loose the unpredictable genie of euthanasia within the health system.
Yet for all the fine words and emotive speeches, it is hard to escape the conclusion that ultimately this was a show of crude politics. Our newish Prime Minister, a long-standing cheerleader for euthanasia, relied on a hefty majority to ensure that his stumbling administration will almost certainly leave a legacy of historic reform.
This landmark bill was published less than three weeks before the vote, slashing time for scrutiny. It was pushed through by a loyal backbencher with no apparent previous interest in the issue, operating in tandem with a famous television presenter and a well-funded lobby group, which even put up posters in stations showing a blonde woman in pink pyjamas jumping with joy at being allowed to kill herself.
I have long argued against such reform, having investigated its toxic impact abroad and campaigned for rights of people with disabilities. As we see too often, the road to hell is paved with noble intentions – and those who suffer most tend to be the weakest and most marginalised.
This victory was based largely on a strong but solitary argument: that terminally ill citizens deserve more control over their deaths. Yet MPs brushed aside a welter of powerful evidence about coercion of vulnerable people, inability of doctors to predict timing of death, inadequacies of palliative care provision, dysfunction in the NHS, a rotting social care system, societal prejudice against elderly and disabled people, and the inevitability of criteria widening under challenge from lawyers, patients and campaigners once the door is opened.
Typical was watching one surgeon turned Labour MP read out his speech detailing a gruesome fact about neck cancer fatalities but ignore an intervention pointing out that 59 per cent of patients accepting assisted death in Washington state in the US – seen as a model – feared being a burden to “family, friends or caregivers”.
Consent and coercion are complex issues that can become easily entwined with costs of care, availability of hospice beds, treatment wait times and lack of support. “I’m shocked a Labour government would jump into power and make this one of the first things they do,” responded the actor and disability rights activist Liz Carr.
She was shocked that this flawed bill lets doctors suggest the idea of assisted suicide to patients who might be depressed or traumatised after learning they face death. This point alone shows how all those claims about “world-beating safeguards” melt when probed – and why supporters were often left floundering on the few occasions that broadcasters quizzed them on policy rather than parliamentary procedure or personal tales. It was painful to watch the Liberal Democrat MP Christine Jardine, a sponsor of the bill, waffle and visibly wilt under forensic interrogation on issues such as coercion from Victoria Derbyshire on BBC Newsnight.
Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP who used to preach about unity before pushing this divisive bill, even had to apologise before voting for falsely suggesting her side was backed by serving members of the judiciary.
Yet how disturbing to hear discussion by the media of potential cost savings through killing terminally ill patients within minutes of the result.
Perhaps such chilling talk will provoke greater examination of the issues – and 28 MPs will switch sides after seeing the corrosive reality of this concept, and reverse the vote. Otherwise, we can only hope safeguards get heavily strengthened before medically aided suicide is unleashed in a blundering act of misguided humanity.
It took 700 hours of parliamentary debate to approve a ban on fox hunting, so will state-sanctioned killing of humans snare up Parliament even more?
Matters are complicated by opposition from Cabinet ministers overseeing the key health and justice departments. No wonder Downing Street is reportedly worried now that this issue will overshadow its priorities while piling additional pressure on the most beleaguered public services – especially as Keir Starmer tries to get his Government back on track this week with a relaunch of his agenda, which includes fresh tactics to tackle NHS waiting times.
The bill’s pernicious impact can be glimpsed in the cancer wards that would deliver most patients for assisted suicide if Britain follows trends seen abroad. MPs want to inject euthanasia into a system where it can take weeks to see a GP, and 38 per cent of cancer patients fail to receive their first treatment following “urgent” referral within the 62-day target – in a country with some of the worst cancer survival rates in the developed world.
Those neck cancer patients suffer some of the longest waits. And about one in four patients cannot access palliative care, half a million people are stuck on growing waiting lists just for social care assessment, and even the Government admits the health and care regulator is “not fit for the purpose” of protecting citizens.
In a hideously symbolic moment, another private members’ bill was shunted aside after the vote on assisted suicide. It was introduced by Ian Byrne – a Liverpool MP who led a local appeal to raise £5m for an infant hospice threatened with closure – to demand a review of funding for children’s hospices. This left-winger voted against euthanasia in order to prioritise investing in palliative care, salvaging the NHS and protecting people with disabilities.
Sadly, his fellow Westminster politicians seem more focused on delivering the choice for people to die – despite their shameful collective failure to deliver the chance to live the fullest possible life for millions of British citizens. Yet they claim to be compassionate and pose as progressive.
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