Letter to the Observer from Baroness Claire Fox
I was glad to hear the new prime minister state last week that, before there’s a wider debate on the principle of assisted dying, “there’s something that needs to happen first and that’s the fixing of the funding of palliative care and social care”. This was the core point of many of the amendments tabled to the flawed Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) bill when it arrived in the House of Lords.
Consequently, I also hope that Andy Burnham’s comments might finally counter the ubiquitous misinformation posited by the bill’s supporters – most recently in a letter here from my noble colleague Lord Dubs (“Dirty tricks scuppered the assisted dying bill. It must not happen again”, 19 July) – disparaging those Lords’ amendments as a cynical, filibustering “dirty tricks” exercise.
I have many criticisms of the second chamber, but in this instance it rose to the challenge of effectively scrutinising a private member’s bill that was simply not fit for purpose. Poor drafting, its status as a Trojan horse for a wide range of unintended consequences, a lack of clarity about what would constitute terminal illness, and its indifference to discussing the need to prioritise improved investment and support for palliative and hospice care rather than assisted suicide – all these led to an eclectic and impressive group of peers across all parties and none rightly tabling amendments attempting to probe, improve, and add adequate safeguards. Our aim was to ensure that, if the law did pass, it would not become a threat to our fellow citizens when they were most vulnerable, or undermine the ethos of the NHS and suicide prevention per se.
Lord Dubs went on to stress that he supports changing the law as a humanist. I, too, am a humanist. My qualms about the bill are driven by a very secular commitment to a humane approach to people who are dying, that is to ensure each and every human being knows that as they approach their end if life, society rallies around them, offers support and encouragement, provides the best possible medication and care, and does it utmost to alleviate suffering. It is hard to comprehend how anyone might consider that the state-sanctioned provision by doctors of lethal doses of drugs to assist a patient to end their life is an act of humanist compassion.
If many Labour MPs and peers were swayed by the former prime minister’s support for changing the law, here’s hoping his successor’s more nuanced approach will give them pause. Rather than backing Labour backbencher Lauren Edwards’s attempt to reintrodruce the bill, we should use our energies more productively to fix social care and make end-of-life care as humane and comfortable as possible.
Baroness Fox, House of Lords, London SW1A