Seemingly gliding to passage, John Rentoul asks, “Why have MPs suddenly got cold feet about assisted dying?”.
He adds, “Following publication of the private members’ bill to allow the terminally ill to request help in ending their life, parliamentary support for this popular issue of conscience appears to be fast ebbing away.”
A proposal to legalise assisted dying was defeated by a three-to-one margin some nine years ago when last the House of Commons voted. “It was a free vote, and the Conservatives, who tended to be opposed to the idea, had a small majority, while Labour MPs, who were more likely to support it, found themselves easily outvoted,” Rentoul writes.
But the balance of power has dramatically shifted with Labour enjoying a huge majority.
What is more, public opinion seems to be overwhelmingly in favour of assisted dying. Supporters of changing the law like to quote an opinion poll from 2019 that found 84 per cent of the public supported it.
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But as you might expect, support is a mile wide and a foot deep. Undeterred, Kim Leadbeater, the independent-minded Labour MP, sensed “that the time had come for the next great step forward for liberal reform.” Time had come to introduce her Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill.
But as Right to Life UK wrote, introduced on November 29 it left “MPs with barely two weeks to scrutinise this complex and wide-ranging legislation.”
Opposition quickly coalesced:
Over 3,400 medical professionals have warned that assisted suicide cannot be introduced safely while the NHS is broken. …
A large group of medical professionals have written an open letter to the Prime Minister expressing their concerns about the introduction of assisted suicide in the context of a struggling NHS, which, they argue, could put pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives.
In the open letter, 2,038 doctors, 905 nurses, and 462 other healthcare workers warn that the “NHS is broken, with health and social care in disarray. Palliative care is woefully underfunded and many lack access to specialist provision”.
The letter signatories include 23 medical directors at hospices and NHS trusts, as well as 53 eminent medical professors and the former Welsh chief medical officer, Dame Deirdre Hine. It addresses the Prime Minister, who is supportive of a change in the law on assisted suicide.
Moreover, Rentoul writes,
But then came the doubts. Wes Streeting, the health secretary, who voted for reform in 2015, said he had changed his mind. He told Labour MPs privately that he thought palliative care in the NHS “isn’t good enough” to give people a “genuine choice” at the end of life. Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary and a practising Muslim, repeated her opposition to it on grounds of the sanctity of life. As did Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, who is a practising Christian.
At this point, Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, intervened to remind ministers of the convention that they do not campaign for or against issues put to a free vote. He was too late. I am told that Streeting’s words had quite an effect on many of Labour’s new MPs.
Most of them are instinctively in favour, but take their responsibility to make the right decision seriously. Many of them feel that they are being rushed to decide an immensely complex and difficult issue, with only two weeks between the publication of the bill and the first vote.
While Peter Prinsley, the new Labour MP for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket, “who is the first ear, nose and throat surgeon to be elected to parliament,” spoke in support of Leadbeater’s bill, he also said
“What I have observed, because I’ve had many conversations about this over the last few weeks, is that older MPs are more inclined to support this and younger MPs are less inclined. And I think that is just a feature of this parliament – we have a lot of new young MPs. So I’m not as confident of this thing passing as I was before I started having these conversations.”
The other wrinkle is that Streeting, the Health Secretary, defied the advice of Case, the cabinet secretary. He explained why he thought the bill would divert resources from other NHS services: “To govern is to choose. If parliament chooses to go ahead with assisted dying, it is making a choice that this is an area to prioritise for investment.”
The fate of the bill is uncertain. But Rentoul concluded his story this way:
It is beginning to feel as if support is ebbing fast. Nine years ago, nearly one MP in three failed to take part in the vote at all. There may be more abstainers this time, as new MPs shy away from committing themselves, while others will do what they should do if they are unsure that the legislation will make life (or death) better for people, and vote against.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
