As Peers subjected the assisted suicide Bill to its seventh day of Committee Stage scrutiny on Friday 23 January, over 87% of speakers who took a position in a speech spoke against the Bill, while the Bill’s sponsor in the House of Lords came under intense criticism for claiming the job of the NHS is “providing” death.
Across the day’s debate, of the 42 speakers who made speeches, 34 (87.18%) spoke against the Bill, while only 5 (12.82%) spoke in favour of it.
The sponsor of the assisted suicide Bill in the House of Lords, Lord Falconer, claimed that “providing people” with death is “certainly … a part of what the National Health Service should be doing”.
Assisted suicide should not be legalised in a context where palliative care is in crisis, Peers argue
The defining theme of the day was the reiteration that the legalisation of assisted suicide, while the palliative and end-of-life care sectors are in crisis, would be a very dangerous move.
Baroness Berger argued, “[E]ven in the parts of the country where high-quality palliative care exists, around 100,000 people do not get it at a time that would amplify it and ensure that they get the maximum benefits”.
Lord Blencathra pointed out that the lack of adequate care limits choice at the end of life, and that the proposed legislation would create “a single-minded pathway to assisted death. That is not a neutral design choice. It reshapes incentives, shifts resources and narrows real options for people at the end of life”.
Former Health Secretary, Baroness Coffey, highlighted that, given the crisis in the health and care sectors and the number of people who already avoid the NHS, vulnerable individuals could expect to hear their “already overworked GP saying, ‘Here you go; here’s some information [on assisted suicide]. Someone can hold your hand’. I worry that too many people would stay away from the NHS when they desperately needed treatment”.
Baroness Finlay, a professor of Palliative Medicine and former President of the British Medical Association, reiterated, “As we have heard, the NHS cannot cope. We have patients on extra beds in the middle of wards, seriously ill patients being looked after in corridors and patients sitting on plastic chairs waiting for a bed, sometimes dying on those plastic chairs. The NHS is not the place to have a dignified death in a hospital setting in the lovely planned way that seems to be described and desired by some people”.
Baroness Fox stated that she is “worried” due to how the legislation would encourage medical professionals to help individuals die, but would not help them provide any help in dealing with the underlying reasons one might choose assisted suicide, like loneliness or financial problems.
Terminal diagnoses and prognoses are often incorrect, Peers argue
Baroness Finlay also highlighted that, according to evidence presented by the Royal College of Pathologists, “at post-mortem, one in 20 people were found to have died from something different to what was written on the death certificate”. Errors in diagnosis and prognosis are relatively common; to allow these as justifications for assisted suicide is unjustifiable.
She continued, reiterating a point made by Baroness Cass, that the probability of a six-month prognosis being correct “has been estimated at around 48%”. Lives should not be ended on what amounts to little more than a doctor’s best guess.
Evidence shows that assisted deaths are not quick and pain-free
Referencing international evidence from places where assisted suicide is legal, Baroness Lawlor drew attention to the fact that around half of all assisted suicide deaths in Oregon took longer than 53 minutes, while statistics from Canada show a 50% likelihood of an assisted death taking longer than an hour. She added, “Occasionally, the working of the drugs can be much slower still: an assisted patient in Oregon took over five days to die”.
Baroness Finlay argued that assisted suicide is being sold to the public as providing a “Hollywood death” – that individuals quickly and peacefully pass away after ingesting a tablet – but the reality is that this is not the case. She probed Lord Falconer on how he can say that the deaths “will be safe, efficacious and not cause suffering” with any certainty, given the lack of adequate research that has been done.
Pro-assisted suicide Peer says palliative care is “helping people to die”, compares midwives to assisted suicide workers
Assisted suicide supporter, Lord Markham, claimed that palliative care currently exists for the purpose of “helping people to die comfortably”.
In reality, palliative care exists to ensure those at the end of life are able to live as happily and as comfortably as possible, rather than have their deaths hastened, as Lord Harper argued.
Lord Markham also falsely compared the role of midwives to the proposed assisted suicide personal navigators; midwives help babies to be born, while assisted suicide personal navigators would exist with the sole purpose of helping to end lives.
Assisted suicide supporter appears not to understand the legislation despite months of debate
Supporter of the assisted suicide Bill, Lord Winston, appears not to understand that it is an assisted suicide Bill, rather than a euthanasia Bill, referencing “the injection”.
As Baroness Finlay rightly points out, “this is about self-administration”.
Despite claims that assisted suicide is popular with the public, it does not appear in any party manifesto
Lord McCrea made the great point that while many proponents of assisted suicide claim the issue is popular with the public, no party has committed to introducing it in their manifesto. If the Bill had “overwhelming public support”, as its supporters claim, one would imagine that at least one party would adopt the issue as a manifesto commitment. That this isn’t the case is revealing.
Peers’ duty is to scrutinise legislation
Lord Gove reminded the House that, regardless of what the public’s general view on the issue of assisted suicide is, this is not what Peers are debating. Lord Gove argued that Peers’ roles are limited to scrutinising the legislation of the Bill itself, not the wider issue of assisted suicide, saying it is the “purpose of this House and the purpose of legislators here not to attempt to discern the general will and to enact it, but to look at specific legislation and to decide whether it is fit for purpose”.
Asisted suicide should not be passed for utilitarian cost-saving reasons, Peers argue
Lord Harper argued that the cost savings for the NHS in ending people’s lives rather than providing treatment will inevitably drive more people to end their lives, and warned against introducing the legislation in this context.
“The cost of the drugs to end someone’s life, according to the impact assessment, is £14.78, but the saving you would make from four months of healthcare not used would be £13,075, and anyone with any experience of NHS budgets knows that that contrast would inevitably drive people to being pointed towards assisted suicide”, he said.
Lord Deben also argued against this cost analysis of life versus death, saying, “many people in many institutions will be tempted to look at the price of death as against the price of life for those who are very seriously ill”.
“I want a society that cares about those people right to their last moment in which they die”, he added.
