Assisted dying cannot be brought in safely while NHS is broken, medics warn
More than 3,400 doctors, nurses, and healthcare professionals have written to the Prime Minister to warn that assisted dying cannot be introduced safely while the NHS is “broken”.
Thousands of NHS clinicians have signed the open letter to Sir Keir Starmer, cautioning that plans to legalise assisted dying are “remarkably out of touch” given the healthcare crisis.
Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP who has proposed a private members’ Bill to legalise the practice, will publish draft legislation in the coming days.
A free vote is scheduled for Nov 29, the first time MPs have debated the issue since 2015.
In an intervention, 2,038 doctors, 905 nurses, and 462 other healthcare workers, have warned inadequate end-of-life care could coerce patients into choosing an assisted death.
Twenty-three medical directors at hospices and NHS trusts signed the letter, as well as 53 eminent medical professors and the former Welsh chief medical officer, Dame Deirdre Hine.
Addressing Sir Keir, who previously voted in favour of assisted dying, they call for investment in the “woefully underfunded” palliative care system rather than a change in the law.
Signatories said they were raising the alarm out of a “legal duty of care for the safety and wellbeing of our patients,” vowing to “never take our patients’ lives, even at their request”.
They say the law “would threaten society’s ability to safeguard vulnerable patients from abuse”.
The letter is the most significant intervention by the medical profession so far. In 2021 the British Medical Association (BMA) controversially adopted a “neutral” stance.
The letter is being organised by Dr Gillian Wright, a former palliative care doctor from Glasgow and Dr David Randall, a nephrologist at the Royal London Hospital, in Whitechapel.
The pair are members of Our Duty Of Care, a doctors’ campaign group set up to oppose assisted dying.
Dr Wright told The Telegraph that 3,405 medical professionals from “across hospital specialties, general practice, palliative, community and hospice care” have signed the letter to make clear to MPs that they “will not help patients to take their own lives, because of the pressure that disabled and dying people may feel under, whether real or perceived”.
The letter to Sir Keir echoes an announcement by Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, that he will vote against the law change because he is worried about palliative care “not being good enough to give people a real choice”.
It warns that “disarray” within the healthcare system renders legalisation fundamentally unsafe.
It says: “The NHS is broken, with health and social care in disarray. Palliative care is woefully underfunded and many lack access to specialist provision. The thought of assisted suicide being introduced and managed safely at such a time is remarkably out of touch with the gravity of the current mental health crisis and pressures on staff.”
Ms Leadbeater claims “robust protections and safeguards” will ensure only mentally competent, terminally ill people can access an assisted death.
But the signatories urge caution, arguing that the only safeguard that can protect the vulnerable is the “prohibition on killing”.
On Sunday, The Telegraph revealed that twelve prominent legal scholars believe the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) could push the Government to expand Ms Leadbeater’s Bill, if enacted, to include those not terminally ill.
In Canada restrictions limiting assisted dying to the terminally ill were removed after a legal challenge, which the letter says “clearly demonstrated that safeguards can be eroded in a matter of just five years”.
In the letter the medics warn that it is “impossible” for any country to introduce assisted dying laws “which include protection from coercion and from future expansion”.
Ms Leadbeater has rejected comparisons to Canada’s “slippery slope,” instead holding up Oregon, which legalised assisted dying in 1997, as a model for the UK.
But the signatories point out that, in 2022, nearly half (46 per cent) of those who chose assisted death in Oregon gave “concern about being a burden” as a reason for their decision.
The letter cautions that the “shift from preserving life to taking life is enormous and should not be minimised”.
It continues: “Any change would threaten society’s ability to safeguard vulnerable patients from abuse; it would undermine the trust the public places in physicians; and it would send a clear message to our frail, elderly and disabled patients about the value that society places on them as people.”