The impact assessment sets out why I cannot support the assisted dying bill
4 min read
When the new assisted dying bill is brought before the House of Commons on Friday, MPs will again be asked to vote on a policy issue charged with immense emotional sensitivity.
Since I was elected, I have listened to constituents describe the agony of watching someone they love approach the end of life. I have experienced that agony myself. When cancer claimed my wife, I witnessed the fear and helplessness that serious illness can bring in its final stages. I know what it means to wish you could do something – anything – to ease the suffering of a loved one.
But having weighed the evidence, heard the experts and watched Parliament grapple with this legislation, I am firmly convinced this bill is the wrong way to achieve it. Legislation should not be built simply around one’s own individual experience – laws must be fair and safe for all, and account for the vulnerabilities of every person who would be impacted. The evidence is now clear that this bill does not adequately account for it.
The government’s own new equality impact assessment on the bill highlights these concerns by acknowledging that, in jurisdictions where assisted dying operates, older people, who are often dependent on others for care, are the main recipients. It also records concerns that older and disabled people may experience subtle or overt pressure to end their lives prematurely. Disabled people are twice as likely to be victims of domestic abuse.
We have spent years assuring disabled people that dependence does not diminish their worth. We should think very carefully before now creating a system in which someone who is old, disabled or dependent and approaching the end of their life might conclude that the most dignified thing they can do for their family is to die.
The equality impact assessment finds ethnic minorities are also particularly vulnerable under this legislation. People from ethnic minority backgrounds are more likely to face structural pressures such as high rates of poverty, poorer healthcare access, lower quality care, and disproportionate levels of domestic abuse committed against Black and Asian women. Where age, disability and race inequalities intersect, the most vulnerable members of society could face enormous pressure to opt for a premature death that they may have otherwise not agreed to.
If we vote through the assisted dying bill this week, we will not be affirming an abstract principle about bodily autonomy, but choosing to accept the status quo that some members of vulnerable groups will almost certainly fall through the net. That danger is fundamentally incongruous with Labour’s entire philosophy.
It deeply troubles me that the government's own impact assessment projects savings of up to £84.8m a year from earlier deaths under assisted dying, treating the death of someone who requires costly care as a fiscal saving for the state.
As legislators, we know that individual “choices” rarely take place in a vacuum. A woman facing domestic abuse or a disabled person navigating social pressure may be legally free to decide, yet not truly free of coercion, so why should that understanding vanish when the decision is whether to die?
And what alternatives are we offering? Access to palliative care is notoriously uneven and subject to a “postcode lottery”.
The better answer to suffering is to care better. Invest in hospices and palliative medicine, support unpaid carers, improve social care, tackle loneliness and protect older and disabled people from abuse. Above all, ensure that nobody approaching the end of life feels that their family would be better off without them.
Andy Burnham’s instincts were right when, at the very start of his premiership, he argued that fixing the broken care system is vital before entertaining further discussion on assisted dying. Our legacy in government should be this: we cared so much about uplifting the vulnerable that we concentrated our efforts on improving current conditions – not introducing a new and questionable assisted dying system that could endanger disadvantaged communities.
Patrick Hurley is the Labour MP for Southport
