Before the election, Keir Starmer promised to give MPs a vote on legalising assisted dying in the next Parliament. That vote is coming much earlier than many expected. Kim Leadbeater, a Labour MP who topped the ballot for private member’s bills, choosing to use her slot on October 16th to bring a bill providing terminally ill adults with the opportunity to end their lives assisted.
The alacrity with which the vote is being brought forward may reflect Leadbetter’s luck at topping the poll, the Government’s need to look busy without money to spend, and Starmer’s enthusiasm for the issue.
In 2015, in the last Commons vote on assisted dying, a backbench Starmer supported changing the law. He has spoken about his own mother’s experiences, and his unwillingness to prosecute those involved in assisting suicides as Director of Public Prosecutions.
That proposal was defeated by 118 votes to 330. Now, four Prime Ministers later, Starmer has a majority of 170-odd at his disposal. A decade ago, the bulk of the opponents of the bill were Conservative MPs. 270 were against, with just 27 in favour. By contrast, the bulk of its supporters (73) were Labour.
Yet 92 remain opposed. Angela Rayner and David Lammy were among those who voted against. The Government will remain neutral on the vote, with MPs allowed to vote, in the words of Simon Case, “however they wish”, but they “should exercise discretion and…not take part in the public debate.”
Yet that hasn’t stopped ministers from giving their tuppence. Ed Miliband says he will vote in favour, calling the current law cruel. By contrast, Shabana Mahmood has suggested she will vote against the bill, based on her position that “if it becomes the norm that at a certain age or with certain diseases, you are now a bit of a burden” it is “a really dangerous position to be in”.
Readers will have their thoughts on the merits or lack thereof of legalising assisted dying. It is a shame that Labour’s mooted ‘national conversation’ over this issue will now be truncated. Nonetheless, one hopes that any willing contributors will be happy to offer their thoughts for ConservativeHome.
In the meantime, I will note the most interesting comment on the issue I have yet seen from Cabinet minister. Wes Streeting voted in favour of assisted dying the last time it faced MPs. He says he has watched two people he loved die slowly and painfully and wished it could have ended sooner.
And yet the Health Secretary is conflicted. Having a closer view of the state of the NHS than most, Streeting is worried that end-of-life cares is not good enough at present to avoid people being “coerced” into ending their lives by a lack of available alternative support.
There is evidence that in places where assisted dying has been legalised, up to a third of those who have chosen to end their lives prematurely have done so because they perceived themselves to be a ‘burden’ on their relatives, friends, or society. Is it too hard to imagine an overburdened health service putting pressure, intentionally or not, on the seriously ill? Protect the NHS, and so on.
In the more morbid assessments of where assisted dying can lead, courtesy of Matthew Parris and Mary Harrington, we end up in a country where a conveyor belt of the elderly, the ill, and the depressed are enabled to die to deal with our demographic decline. Dystopian? Certainly. But in a health service with taxpayers attached, rationing is a necessity, if affordability is to be maintained.
Even if the legislation was originally targeted at only those thought to be in the last stages of their lives, the examples of Canada and Belgium show that it can rapidly expand beyond its original guardrails. The number of medically assisted deaths in Canada increased by thirteen-fold between 2016 and 2022.
If Streeting is worried that such pressures genuinely exist, he should be able to speak out for them. That should be equally true for any other Cabinet minister. But as the Secretary of State surely responsible for future medically assisted terminations of life, his opinion is of particular value. Even if they have much else on their plates, ministers should mirror Miliband, and ignore Case.
After all, it is a matter of life and death.
