Warning for MPs set to vote on assisted suicide: ‘Please do not sleepwalk into something you will regret’

A string of disabled people’s organisations and disabled activists have delivered powerful statements opposing a bill that would legalise assisted suicide, just two weeks before it is due to be debated and voted on by MPs.

Labour’s Kim Leadbeater finally published her 38-page terminally ill adults (end of life) bill on Tuesday, giving MPs only 17 days to digest the contents of her private members’ bill before they vote on it on Friday 29 November.

Among the disabled people’s organisations to issue statements opposing the bill this week were Inclusion London, Disability Rights UK (DR UK) and Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC).

In a thread on social media, DPAC warned that MPs would have a maximum of five hours to debate the bill’s 43 clauses and six schedules at second reading, which was not long enough “by many miles”.

The bill, which applies to England and Wales, would allow people to seek an assisted death if they have “an inevitably progressive illness, disease or medical condition which cannot be reversed by treatment” and their death could “reasonably be expected within six months”.

DPAC warned that doctors often get such estimates wrong with terminal illnesses.

And although the bill creates a new offence of “dishonesty, coercion or pressure” aimed at those trying to force someone to seek an assisted suicide, DPAC said such actions were “difficult, indeed sometimes impossible, to detect”.

And while the bill would give a new right to an assisted suicide, there would be “no right to palliative care or independent living support”, said DPAC.

Inclusion London said it was “deeply concerned” that after “14 years of austerity and broken public services… choosing to die may seem like the only viable option”.

It said in its statement that the solution to suffering pain, isolation, poverty or a lack of good support was not helping people to die “but instead helping people to live by investing in and providing the support they need.

“We know many in our society think our lives are not worth living and we see the consequences of this deeply entrenched view in the experience of other countries, such as Canada, where the conditions and criteria for assisted dying quickly become wider than only the terminally ill and now include many different groups of disabled people.”

Inclusion London added: “We also saw how quickly disabled people’s lives were treated as of lesser value during Covid.

“Legalising assisted dying will only reinforce and perpetuate this.”

In its statement opposing the bill, DR UK said that assistance to die “should not be easier to access than assistance to live.

“Parliament and government should not allow assisted dying when political choices undermine our lives, and rights, every day.”

The statement added: “We recognise this is an issue many feel strongly about, and not everybody (including some disabled people) will agree with our position.

“However, until access to good quality support and services become the norm, we believe that opting for assisted dying may not be a real choice, and the proposed change in the law poses a danger to disabled people.”

There were also powerful statements this week from disabled activists.

Baroness [Jane] Campbell, who for years has led the fight against legalisation as co-founder of Not Dead Yet UK (NDYUK), told Disability News Service that disabled people were “deeply worried” that the legislation would be “passed in a hurry, to please the electorate”.

She said: “NDYUK has studied the effects of assisted suicide legislation internationally over two decades.

“The evidence demonstrates that safeguards do not work in practice.

“The Kim Leadbeater bill will result in more deaths amongst the most disempowered people in our society.”

She added: “Disabled people without sufficient health and social care to live with dignity often feel a burden on their families and friends because these services are scarce and declining in quality.

“It is not rare to hear disabled people in vulnerable situations say, ‘Perhaps I would be better off dead?’

“Feeling a burden or desperate for scarce health and social care services to live with dignity, must never be the reason to end a life prematurely.”

Baroness Campbell said she was calling on MPs not to “sleepwalk into something which you will regret” and to “hear our voices of experience before voting on the 29th November”.

She said: “Thousands of disabled people do not enjoy choices and rights to support services when we are ill or incapacitated.

“Assisted suicide legislation will only serve to push the desperate in a direction from which there is no coming back.”

Dr Miro Griffiths, co-director of the Centre for Disability Studies at the University of Leeds, although speaking on behalf of the Better Way campaign, said: “We are deeply concerned that Kim Leadbeater’s bill will not enjoy an appropriate level of scrutiny before second reading in two weeks’ time.

“MPs and the public deserve the opportunity to give this legislation and the issues it raises considered reflection.

“This will not be possible under the dangerously short time frame allowed for by the bill’s architects.

“Legalising assisted suicide in the UK would give rise to profound injustices, injustices that affect disabled people, people facing poverty, people who are isolated and lonely, and many others.

“No amount of legal drafting can rule out citizens choosing to end their lives because they lack sufficient support to go on living.”

He added: “Doctors warn that ‘assisted dying’ would undermine palliative care for everyone.

“Psychiatrists warn of a harmful shift in our societal response to suicide.

“And sociologists caution that a change in the law may open the door to more permissive legislation in years to come.

“The tragic experience of other nations suggests it is a matter of when, not if, laws expand.”

Picture: Dr Miro Griffiths (left) and Baroness Campbell

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