Consultants: assisted suicide is not healthcare

Assisted suicide is not healthcare, and should not take place in NHS facilities, consultant doctors have said.

In a vote at the British Medical Association’s (BMA) consultants conference, doctors voted through a motion which identified that assisted suicide could have serious negative impacts on health services.

The motion called for the BMA to make clear to the Government that doctors must have the freedom to conscientiously object to involvement in assisted suicides.

‘Not a health activity’

The motion stated that Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill is an issue which raises “serious potential moral hazards for consultants, and serious potential adverse impacts on health services”.

The consultants voted for the BMA to work to ensure that an ‘opt-in model’ is adopted for providers, and that “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”.

It also stated that: “Assisted dying is not a health activity and it must not take place in NHS or other health facilities, and assisted dying providers must be employed under separate contractual arrangements.”

The next Horizon scandal

Labour MP Naz Shah, who is on the Committee tasked with scrutinising the Bill, challenged her fellow MPs: “The question we have to ask ourselves is, are we going to be that committee that ignores the evidence of experts who deal with this on a daily basis”.

She warned that this could become the next Horizon scandal if they choose to ‘place themselves above those experts’.

The MP stated: “We cannot ignore the testimony of those who have the most relevant experience. Too many government ministers and MPs and local councils from all parties, including mine, have done that in recent decades”.

The Committee has already rejected a host of amendments for greater safeguards, including one that would have ensured a stricter assessment of mental capacity, which senior lawyers and the Royal College of Psychiatrists supported.