'Palliative care is the deal-breaker': MPs change their minds ahead of final assisted dying vote

West Country
Assisted dying
Politics
A number of West Country MPs who supported legalising assisted dying last year are now planning to vote against the bill, because of concerns over palliative care and a lack of "genuine choice" for terminally ill people.
ITV News understands that the bill, which will be up for its third and final reading on Friday, will pass through to the next stage, albeit with a narrower majority than it had in November.
Steve Darling, the Liberal Democrat MP for Torbay, says he voted in favour of changing the law because he was "keen to have a further conversation", but now has a "real fear" that people without access to sufficient palliative care will feel they have no other option but to choose an assisted death.
"I want to see that people have genuine choices at the end of life, but you've got to make sure the environment is right and the safeguards are there," he tells ITV News.
"Without appropriate social care and palliative care being in the right place, people might end up in 'Hobson choice', and that is my real fear."
The Lib Dem says it's the "deal-breaker" for him, despite being "sympathetic" to the principle of assisted dying.
An historic vote last year saw a majority of MPs back a change in the law, which would allow terminally ill adults in England and Wales, with fewer than six months to live, to apply for an assisted death. This would be subject to approval by two doctors and a panel of three experts, featuring a social worker, senior legal figure and psychiatrist.
Since the vote in November, the bill has undergone a number of significant - and controversial - changes.
If it passes the next hurdle on Friday, it will progress to the House of Lords where it will undergo further scrutiny - meaning any change would not be agreed for months yet.
Brian Mathew, the Lib Dem MP for Melksham and Devizes, has also changed his mind - in part due to personal experience but also because of similar concerns over social care.
"I voted for it to start with because I felt it needed proper discussion," he explains.
"After going through that discussion personally, with friends and with my constituents, you've really got to look at these things deeply, and I just don't think that end of life care is sufficient in this country at the moment."
He has also drawn on the memory of his sister's death in deliberations over the final MPs' vote.
"Things can happen," he says. "My sister, for example, she'd been battling cancer for a decade and towards the end she was out of consciousness most of the time. But just literally a few days before she died, she suddenly became lucid.
"This was a lady who had been profoundly deaf her whole life, so communication had never been easy. She wanted to speak to her then young sons, and she did. They came and she wanted to give them advice on life, telling them to do the best in their lives, precious things."
The MP adds: "If she had clocked out early, that would not have been able to happen."
In May, MPs returned to the Commons for a second emotional debate. In it, they voted for one new clause to be added to the bill, which will ensure 'no person', including any medical professional, is obliged to take part in assisted dying.
Stroud Labour MP, Dr Simon Opher, has been on the bill committee - a panel of MPs that has scrutinised the legislation line-by-line and has put forward several amendments. In this case, the committee has often worked into the early hours, debating and going through the bill in close detail.
Dr Opher describes the "polarising moment" in his clinical career that led him to backing the right of some terminally ill people to choose to end their own lives. He has now been in favour of changing the law for more than a decade.
After a recently diagnosed patient took their own life, Opher says "it seemed like we'd really let down that family. It was awful, absolutely awful".
He adds: "People are taking the law into their own hands now. People are going to Dignitas, people are committing suicide as well.
"And also around the world now, this is not unusual. We are not ahead of the game here. We've actually learnt quite a lot from other jurisdictions.
"This is the safest assisted dying legislation in the world that we are presenting, and that's because we've gone through a very, very robust process."
South West Devon MP, Rebecca Smith, was one of the 275 who rejected it last November, along with Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Bristol North West MP, Darren Jones.
"The principle of assisted dying I'm not in favour of full stop, anyway," she tells ITV News.
"I don't think there can ever be enough safeguards to make sure people don't fall through the cracks, that there isn't a slippery slope to more extreme or liberal forms of what we see happening in other countries."
The Conservative MP admits she has a "public faith" but is critical of the intervention from Dame Esther Rantzen, who argues that many have fought against changing the law because of 'secret religious views'.
"It's really important to remember that none of us go through life without a world view that impacts how we make decisions," Smith says.
"For people who don't have faith to accuse those who do of somehow being tarnished by that, is really disingenuous.
"Everyone has experiences in life that shape the decisions they make... to say religion is worse than any other lens is really quite offensive."
The last time MPs voted on the issue in 2015, the bill was defeated by 330 votes to 118, but the composition of the Commons has significantly changed following last year's general election.
Assisted dying is currently banned in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.

Hashtags

Politics

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Opponents of assisted dying vow to fight on as MPs back Bill

North Wales Chronicle

5 hours ago

North Wales Chronicle

Opponents of assisted dying vow to fight on as MPs back Bill

Ms Leadbeater's Bill passed what could be its final Commons hurdle by 23 votes, down from the majority of 55 it secured when MPs first voted on it in November. The Spen Valley MP declared 'thank goodness' after the result while Rebecca Wilcox, daughter of campaigner Dame Esther Rantzen, said it was 'wonderful' the result had come ahead of her mother's birthday. But opponents vowed to fight on against what they called a 'deeply flawed Bill'. A group of 27 Labour MPs who voted against the legislation said: 'We were elected to represent both of those groups and are still deeply concerned about the risks in this Bill of coercion of the old and discrimination against the disabled, people with anorexia and black, Asian and minority ethnic people, who we know do not receive equitable health care. 'As the Bill moves to the House of Lords it must receive the scrutiny that it needs. Not about the principles of assisted dying but its application in this deeply flawed Bill.' But Ms Leadbeater told the PA news agency she hoped there would be no 'funny games' in the Lords, as her Bill faces further tough hurdles in the upper chamber. She added: 'I would be upset to think that anybody was playing games with such an important and such an emotional issue.' Meanwhile, one of the leading opponents of the Bill, Conservative Danny Kruger, described its supporters as 'enemies', saying he felt 'like Evelyn Waugh at the time of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939'. In a series of tweets on Friday night, the East Wiltshire MP accused assisted dying campaigners of being 'militant anti-Christians' who had failed to 'engage with the detail of the Bill'. He added: 'It's the revenge of the middle-aged against their dependents.' Ms Leadbeater's Terminally Ill Adults (End Of Life) Bill will now proceed to the House of Lords, where it will undergo further scrutiny before becoming law, should peers decide to back the legislation. But some peers have already spoken out against the legislation, with the Bishop of London, Dame Sarah Mullally, saying they 'must oppose' the Bill as 'unworkable and unsafe'.