Three weeks ago, the House of Lords assisted suicide Bill Select Committee set out to test whether the UK could introduce assisted suicide laws and maintain its conscience. By the final day, those weeks of evidence revealed a nightmare of dangerous consequences and an industry of suicide. However, this nightmare does not have to come true.
In the committee’s third and final week, in an apparent admission of a looming suicide industry in England and Wales, Health Minister Stephen Kinnock refused to rule out the possibility of private companies making a profit from assisted suicide. His statement was a revelation of the potential for monetised suicide within Britain’s care sector, a market that would surely target the most vulnerable.
Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner for England, delivered a litany of fears about how legalising assisted suicide would impact children. She cautioned peers against the “unintended consequences of a quickly pushed through PMB”, noting that gaps in palliative care leave children contemplating mortality and that there are real risks of adult decisions impacting youngsters. De Souza shared a story of a child with a disability in care who felt the government would pay for them to die, but not to live. She echoed Baroness Berridge’s worry that if this Bill passes, people in authority and online platforms could introduce children to assisted suicide even if medical professionals cannot.
Greg Lawton argued that classing drugs intended to kill as “medicines” was orwellian. The pharmaceutical expert and barrister insisted that the definition of a medicine cannot include something designed to end a life. Baroness Finlay highlighted that unpredictable complications and patients waking up after ingesting lethal doses of the drugs used for assisted suicide remain common. Clinical trials cannot even be run, because the metric for a successful outcome is always final and silent.
Perhaps the most damning evidence came from New Zealand’s witnesses. Former MP Simon O’Connor blasted through the myth that laws stay narrow. Barely three years post-legalisation, New Zealand had already moved to loosen the law, launched an organ programme for harvesting organs from euthanised patients, and the select committee highlighted that it has now dropped from 3rd to 12th in global palliative care rankings. “Once you start … expansion will occur,” warned O’Connor. Professor Sinéad Donnelly testified that trust among the vulnerable deteriorates wherever assisted suicide is introduced.
The week’s other flashpoint: both Chris Whitty and Baroness Hayter seemed to dismiss suicide prevention arguments, claiming that attempting to talk a loved one out of seeking assisted suicide is “coercion” and “imposing your view”. This stance upends the ethics of suicide prevention and sets a dangerous precedent. Baroness Berridge skewered Whitty’s reasoning, noting that his “simple” approach would leave the vulnerable exposed, especially given the conflict with expert legal testimony.
Peers were treated to the now familiar cycle of their pro-Bill fellow parliamentarians reacting inadequately to warnings. The government failed to provide clarity; a Treasury minister refused to testify.
Legal experts shredded the Bill’s framework: Alex Ruck Keene KC denounced it as unfit for purpose, while Professor Charles Foster warned that it fails to inquire why a person wishes to die. Families might only learn of a loved one’s assisted suicide after the fact. At the same time, it is possible that someone would seek assisted suicide due to homelessness, poor palliative care, untreated pain, and other tragic circumstances. This Bill doesn’t even mandate that we ask why someone wants to die. The Bill flirts with violating the ECHR’s right to life and would likely face legal pressure to expand eligibility; thus, expansion is a virtual certainty.
Peers received neither comfort nor clarity on the final day. Week three left no safe territory: whether profit motives, children’s wellbeing, drug safety, or international precedent, every avenue led to peril. The Lords must now decide whether to endorse a suicide industry, jeopardising the vulnerable with the false securities of bureaucratic “safeguards,” or instead reject a Bill that experts have lined up to warn will expand and devastate trust in our institutions.
