Assisted Dying

Debate between Danny Kruger and Lucy Allan

Monday 4th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Danny Kruger]

I recognise the force of that point, but the fact is that Parliament has debated the topic repeatedly over the last 20 years. We have devoted considerable hours of parliamentary time to it already.

[Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)]

We had the opportunity to vote on the matter in 2015, but that was a great many years ago and many people who are Members of Parliament today were not present. Does my hon. Friend agree that “repeatedly” was perhaps the wrong word to use in that context?

[Danny Kruger]

As I understand it, we have had 14 hours of parliamentary time devoted to the topic in this Parliament alone. I suggest that there are other topics that we could address. I recognise that assisted dying is worth discussing, but there is something that we should do first, before we consider it. I will come to that point in a moment.

Members who think we can prevent people from being put on the pathway to assisted dying by good drafting, or because doctors are good people—obviously, they are—should think about the “do not resuscitate” scandal we had during the pandemic, and about the Liverpool care pathway, and then suggest there is no risk. I think there is a risk. I know that doctors are good people who want the best, but if we force them to make utilitarian decisions about the best use of resources, will they not push people in this direction?

As well as the pressure on the healthcare system to take this route, I worry even more about the pressure on patients themselves to request assisted dying if it is an option. It will be an option for almost everybody approaching death—that is the proposal. Clinical guidelines for many terminal or chronic illnesses will likely require doctors, at an early stage of planning treatment, to ask patients whether they would wish to have assistance in taking their own life. What a question to ask. Whatever the guidelines, every family will be required to have the conversation, in whispers or openly. In some families, we know how that conversation could all too likely go.

Over half the people in countries where assisted dying is legal choose it because they feel they are a burden to their family. Tragically, a lot also say that they are lonely. Is that not terrible—people getting the state to help kill them because they do not want to be a burden on a family that never visits them? Talk to any hospice manager about relatives and they will quietly confirm it. There are a lot of people who want granny or grandpa to hurry up and die.