The progress of Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill to Committee Stage has been greeted with widespread dismay.
Parliamentarians, legal experts, palliative care specialists, ethicists, and newspaper columnists are among those continuing to raise serious concerns about the implications and workability of the backbench MP’s proposals.
Last Friday, MPs voted by 330 to 275 in favour of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. It would allow those in England and Wales deemed to be terminally ill, and with less than six months to live, to receive help to kill themselves.
Broken trust
Consultant oncologist Professor Mark Saunders, in a letter to The Times, said the vast majority of his patients wanted more time with their families. He explained: “I have never been asked to hasten a patient’s death. I have also not known any patient to commit suicide”.
Writing to the same newspaper, intensive care consultant Dr Roger Stedman warned: “Making myself or other members of my profession agents of assisted suicide would break the bond of trust”.
Dr Sarah Cox, President of the Association for Palliative Medicine of Great Britain and Ireland, called on the Government to “fix” palliative care; a view echoed by Dr Rachel Clarke, who warned that ‘grotesque’ underfunding was failing dying people.
BMA medical ethics committee chairman Dr Andrew Green highlighted the need for “an opt-in system so that doctors choose whether or not to participate, the right for doctors to decline to participate in any part of the process, and the protection from abuse and discrimination for healthcare workers”.
Legal challenges
In separate correspondence, Court of Protection specialist Melinda Giles asked how much it would cost “to train doctors in the critical aspect of assessing mental capacity”.
Legal proceedings in this area, she observed, can be ‘long, drawn-out, and expensive’, and she wondered whether assisted suicide cases would “jump the queues to access court time”.
And former High Court judge Sir David Bodey highlighted the absence of the funded infrastructure required to enable the court to “meaningfully carry out its proposed inquisitorial function” in approving an application for assisted suicide.
Cheap death
The Scottish Council on Human Bioethics said the House of Commons’ decision “gives rise to very grave concerns for all the vulnerable people who may have felt under pressure to end their lives”.
Its disquiet is shared by Oxford City Rector Revd Anthony Buckley, who explained: “I have had the sad privilege to be alongside those whose child or sibling has felt it right to end his or her life.”
“The underlying message of this vote is that our society believes that there may come a time when we all agree it is better if a person’s life were to stop, and we will help this ending.”
Continuing to speak against the proposals, Diane Abbott MP told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme: “We’re moving to a situation where it will be cheaper for a GP to get a very ill person to sign on the dotted line for assisted suicide than to find them a place in a hospice.”
Coercion over compassion
Reflecting on the vote, columnist for The Scotsman, Euan McColm, branded the process “rushed”, the ‘safeguards’ weak, the arguments used in support of the Bill emotive, and the amount of work still to be done on it “troubling”.
He concluded: “I have no doubt that Kim Leadbeater and those MPs who support her proposal are convinced they have right on their side but I find their certainty terrifying.”
He added: “I was once very much in favour of assisted dying. I believed that it was the compassionate option for the terminally ill people whose pain could no longer be managed by medication.
“But, over time, my position has changed. I’m concerned not only about the possibility of coercion but that some terminally ill people may conclude they should opt for assisted dying rather than continuing to be a ‘burden’ on their families.”