A large number of constituents have written to me about the Assisted Dying Bill that was debated in the House of Commons today (Friday 11 September). You may be aware that the Bill was defeated by 330 votes to 118 and therefore will not become law. I was one of the MPs who voted against the Bill.
This Bill has understandably been the subject of much public debate, and people on both sides have sincere and deeply held views. I know that many constituents were in favour of the Bill, and so I wanted to take the chance to explain why I voted the way I did.
Firstly, I want to say that this was not a decision that I took lightly. Over the months since this Bill was announced I have received a huge number of letters and emails from constituents both in favour of and against the Bill. Many of these had personal stories to share, and I am extremely grateful to everyone who took the time to write to me and share their views on this very important issue. I have also received letters and briefings from legal and medical experts, charities and spiritual leaders. I considered all of this evidence very carefully as part of my decision.
This is also an issue that has affected me personally, as it sadly affects so many other people during their lifetimes. I have had the awful experience of seeing friends, family and neighbours struggle with painful illness, and I understand the overpowering desire to do whatever you can to stop them from suffering. I sympathise with everyone who has lived with that pain, and with those who are suffering from terminal illnesses.
I chose to vote against the Assisted Dying Bill because I was not satisfied that the Bill contained the necessary protections to prevent the law from being either misapplied or misused. While I accept that the current legal position has its flaws, the Assisted Dying Bill presents its own legal and ethical issues which mean it is unlikely to be an improvement, and could establish worrying new precedents for the future.
The first of these issues relates to the difficulty of establishing who the new law should apply to. The Bill says that the procedure can be administered to anybody suffering from a terminal illness, defined as an illness from which they will be expected to die within six months. Yet it is common for such a prognosis to be incorrect, and for a person to live for several years after being told they have only months to live. It is therefore likely that some patients would take the decision to end their lives based on a mistaken prognosis.
A further issue is that the Bill will place a tremendous burden on doctors and other medical professionals, and fundamentally alter the relationship between doctors and patients so as to undermine trust. The Bill would require doctors to counter-sign a patient’s declaration and make a judgment about whether a patient “has the capacity to make the decision to end their own life” and “has a clear and settled intention to end their own life which has been reached voluntarily, on an informed basis and without coercion or duress.” For most doctors this is likely to be an impossible task, as many are neither trained to the degree of mental health specialism required to determine a patient’s mental capacity, or in a position to make a judgment about whether a patient has experienced coercion. There is therefore a risk that patients might be mistakenly euthanised against their wishes. For these reasons and others the Bill is opposed by Britain’s biggest medical professional bodies, including the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing.
More broadly I have serious concerns about the way that the Assisted Dying Bill would change people’s attitudes towards death, and the legal precedent it may set for future changes in the law. By passing a law to permit Assisted Dying Parliament would send a message that there are circumstances in which suicide can be endorsed, and while there are certainly understandable reasons why a person may wish to end their life, there is also a risk that changing the law would allow vulnerable people to be persuaded – or persuade themselves – to opt for assisted suicide because they believe they have become a burden on others. This would dramatically change the way society views and treats some of its most vulnerable citizens, such as the elderly and the disabled. It is for this reason that disability charities such as Scope have stated their opposition to the Assisted Dying Bill.
It Is also the case that once a precedent has been established for assisted suicide in other countries, the circumstances in which the procedure can be carried out have expanded. Although many would not object to terminally ill patients choosing to end their lives, if the Assisted Dying Bill were to pass it would be difficult to justify preventing those with acute but non-life threatening illnesses from being allowed to make the same decision. This would be a dramatic change to the way our society views life and death, and may lead to a situation like the one seen in Belgium where it is reported that nearly one in twenty deaths is voluntary.
A final reason why I did not support the Bill was the lack of clarity over what safeguards would be in place to prevent the law from being misapplied or abused. While the Bill itself sets down principles, it does not explain how crucial parts of the process would work in practice. For example, the Bill would require doctors to confirm that the patient has not arrived at their decision under coercion, but does not explain how doctors should go about establishing this. The Bill explains that these procedures can be made by the Government at a later stage, but for a change in the law of such importance, this is not sufficient.
I understand that some constituents will disagree, and will be disappointed by today’s result. However, I hope that this has helped to explain my decision.