Assisted Dying

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2024 Westminster Hall

[Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I very much welcome the thoughtful and sensitive way in which my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) opened the debate. I agree with her and others that we need careful reflection on this subject.

The national health service is, rightfully, my party’s proudest achievement. It has delivered freedom from the fear of medical bills, which has blighted the lives of non-wealthy people since time immemorial. I think that changing the nature of the national health service, so that it ends people’s lives as well as sustains them, would be an absolutely fundamental change that we need to weigh very carefully indeed before introducing.

I understand the proposition that people with a diagnosis of terminal illness should be allowed help to die, but it is clear from what happens elsewhere that if that did happen, it would not remain subject to that narrow criterion. It would not end there. Indeed, the campaign to broaden the scope has already begun. Matthew Parris wrote in his column in The Times that we need assisted suicide because old people cost too much. He said:

“‘Your time is up’ will never be an order, but—yes, the objectors are right—may one day be the kind of unspoken hint that everybody understands. And that’s a good thing.”

I cannot see that that would be a good thing. It seems to me that legalising assisted dying would impose a terrible dilemma on frail people, elderly people and others when they are at the most vulnerable point in their lives, especially on conscientious frail people who do not want to die but do not want to be a burden. I do not think that there is any way to avoid imposing that dilemma. The national health service should be there to protect those people.

It is reported that in Oregon since 2017, over half the applicants for assisted dying have applied not because they want to die but because they feel that that they are a burden. The next time we have a Government committed to austerity, the temptation to cut health service costs by allowing people to choose to end their lives in a wider set of circumstances, instead of funding their care, would, I fear, be irresistible. Indeed, in Canada, the Government publish how much they save by ending people’s lives rather than continuing to care for them.

[Sir George Howarth]

I will be brief. Does my right hon. Friend accept that his argument reflects a very bleak view of how assisted dying would work in practice?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I very much agree with my right hon. Friend that it is a bleak view, but it is supported by what we have seen happening elsewhere around the world. Unfortunately, I think it would happen here as well.

The argument I want to set out is that this road is not one that those of us who subscribe to the founding principles of Nye Bevan’s health service should be willing to go down.