Campaigners for a change in the UK law started off with enthusiasm when Kim Leadbeater MP announced that she had selected Assisted Dying as the chosen subject for her forthcoming Private Member’s Bill. Armed with opinion polls showing that more than 75% of the voting public supported such a change, the campaigners thought their task of persuading enough MPs to join them would be straightforward.
That is not proving to be the case. Surprising resistance is coming from Labour MPs who were previously thought to be in favour. Their argument is frequently that the reform may be right in principle but that the financial constraints upon the NHS make it impossible at the moment. Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, has said just that. His view is echoed by Darren Jones at the Treasury. They are supported by several of the political Law Officers, on the grounds that the whole UK Judiciary cannot take on any further work – this refers to the expected requirement that a High Court Judge should sign off any voluntary assisted death decision.
You would have thought that these arguments would have been well-anticipated. But they appear to have caught pro-Bill campaigners off-guard. One airily dismissed such opposition with the words “No, that’s ridiculous. If MPs vote for the right to die then the NHS will simply have a duty to arrange it. It’s as simple as that”. Obviously, in the current economic climate, it is not as simple as that. What planet are they on ? Mars ?
In the view of this website, a change in the law is desperately required. But some serious modelling of how the change should be provided and paid for will need to be considered if the Bill gets into its Committee Stage.
