Labour MP tells of suicide attempts and homelessness as she warns of assisted dying bill dangers

A Labour MP has spoken of her own experience of suicide attempts and homelessness – and her mother’s imprisonment for killing an abusive partner – to warn of the risks the assisted suicide bill would pose to prisoners and homeless people.

Naz Shah (pictured) was speaking on Tuesday to the committee examining the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill, in support of amendments which would have ensured that the option of seeking an assisted suicide would not be available to those who are prisoners or are homeless.

Her efforts to increase its safeguards came as pressure mounted on the Labour MP behind the private members’ bill, Kim Leadbeater, over her decision to replace a system in which the high court would approve every application for an assisted suicide with a panel of “experts”.

Reports suggest the move could see support for the bill among MPs drop off ahead of its next parliamentary stage, with Conservative MP Danny Kruger warning on Tuesday that more than 60 MPs had voted for the bill at its second reading in November “because of that safeguard”.

The bill passed in November with a majority of just 55, so it could take less than 30 MPs to change their minds for it to be defeated.

Shah told fellow MPs on the committee on Tuesday how her mother had been imprisoned as a survivor of domestic violence, and how she herself was then left homeless.

She told the committee: “I also have experience of whilst I was homeless attempting suicide on two occasions… so I speak from a reasonable amount of experience.

“From a domestic violence point of view, which is why my mother killed an abusive partner, and having been a victim of domestic abuse, I also understand the vulnerabilities, of women in particular.

“The majority of women that end up in prison… are victims of domestic abuse, some kind of abuse, whether it’s sexual abuse, domestic abuse.

“Yes… in an ideal world they should absolutely have equal access to healthcare, but the problem is we are not in an ideal world.”

She said the prison system was not fit for purpose, while people from a minority ethnic background have less trust in healthcare services, and do not have “equity” in accessing those services.

Shah told the committee she was trying to imagine the significant vulnerability of prisoners, particularly women prisoners.

She said: “That vulnerability for me speaks to the issue of capacity, it speaks to the issue of coercion.

“I am supporting this amendment because it protects those that are vulnerable.

“I would be really, really uncomfortable seeing anybody in prison being given that option [of assisted suicide].

“I cannot imagine being in the position of, say, my mum… the idea of being taken away from your family, being incarcerated, rightfully or wrongfully, guilty or not guilty, and you’re in a place, and you’re in a system, and you’re in an institution.

“Faced with all of that, finding out that you’ve got six months to live.”

But Conservative MP Kit Malthouse, who strongly supports the bill, said: “Their access to the service or not should be based on assessment of them as themselves, their mental capacity, their particular characteristics, their settled will, just like everybody else will be in the bill.

“The fact that they are at that point a prisoner does indeed impact on the context in which their capacity is assessed, and that has to be the critical factor.

“Having a blanket ban on all prisoners… seems to me cruel.”

Shah has written previously, when first campaigning for election in 2015, of how her mother was imprisoned for 14 years for killing her violent drug-dealing partner, before her daughter’s campaigning helped reduce her sentence.

The Conservative MP Danny Kruger, who proposed the amendments and opposes the bill, said he had run a charity working in London prisons for 20 years, 10 of them as chief executive, and recognised both the dignity and the vulnerability of prisoners.

He said: “It is no surprise that, with their lives in tatters, feeling completely unable to change anything for the better, that so many prisoners self-harm or attempt suicide.”

He said there were more than 40,000 incidents of self-harm in prisons in a single year.

He said: “Given their vulnerabilities, and their dependence on the state, offering assisted dying to prisoners would be fraught with hazard.”

And he added: “For someone who is homeless, or indeed a prisoner, it is surely doubtful that the choice of going for assisted dying can ever be a fully free one.”

He pointed to the comments made in oral evidence to the committee last month by Fazilet Hadi, from Disability Rights UK, who told MPs: “This isn’t an abstract exercise, this bill, it will land in a society that is rife with inequality.

“I can’t suggest any way in which this bill could be strengthened, and that’s because it’s the society it will land in is the thing that needs to change, not the bill, and at the moment there’s very little likelihood of that society becoming more equal, having better public services, having less health inequality, in the next few years.”

But Malthouse said there was a “distinct moral issue about the denial of services to particular groups of individuals, based on their circumstances, particularly medical services.

“We don’t deny medical services to prisoners because they are prisoners… the same is true of those homeless groups.”

The health minister, Stephen Kinnock, who is a member of the committee, said the government’s position was that the amendments could potentially breach the European Convention on Human Rights.

Kruger withdrew the amendments without asking the committee – which is heavily weighted in favour of supporters of the bill – to vote on them.

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