On Friday, a rift yawned open in parliament. This divide is not, as the polite fiction has it, a respectful divide between those who support versus those who oppose the principle of assisted dying, but something much darker. This is a black gulf, a river of death and suffering, that separates the weak from the strong, the proudly autonomous from the desperately vulnerable.
The supporters of the assisted dying bill did not merely dismiss or ignore the incredibly cogent and powerful arguments made by its critics, they seemed not even to be able to understand them. Those who support the bill do not live in the same world as those who fear its effects. In the former world, the sun always shines, and tragedy is ever overcome by the assertion of individual freedom. For many establishment liberals, surrounded by privilege and prosperity, the idea of a disabled or dying individual feeling the pressure to take their own life is simply unimaginable. Their lives are defined by ambition and experience, the pursuit of power and pleasure, not the iron laws of duty and survival. Lives like Esther Rantzen’s.
Her role has been one of the strangest in this whole debate. Rantzen, who suffers from a terminal disease, and is a regular media commentator and minor celebrity, has made this debate about her own situation. Indeed, the vote came about due to a “promise” Keir Starmer made to her during the general election. In a bizarre piece of morbid political pantomime, Rantzen and her family have exerted continual pressure on Parliament. In the most recent and most surreal intervention, Rantzen’s daughter appeared to threaten the Prime Minister, saying that he would have to “run for the hills” if the bill didn’t pass.
Continual and unpleasant attacks have been made on opponents of the bill by media proxies, suggesting they must be motivated by a secret religious fundamentalism, a charge levelled by Rantzen herself in her latest letter to MPs.
There has been an incredible level of opposition from the hospice movement, from palliative care doctors, and disabled rights campaigners. Yet not only has the bill gone ahead, vital amendments that would have at least partially assuaged concerns have been brutally shouldered aside by the parliamentary bandwagon that is the Leadbeater bill. Only two amendments were even allowed to go to a vote, and both were rejected, including, incredibly, one that would have allowed individual hospitals and hospices to refuse to participate in euthanasia. Under the current legislation, assisted dying would become a de facto “right”, that even religious charities could be coerced into fulfilling. Absent rejected amendments, the mentally ill, people with learning disabilities, and anorexia sufferers would all qualify for doctor-assisted death. Not only that, but there would be no bar on doctors actively recommending or raising the subject of assisted dying with frightened or vulnerable patients.
Yet many supporters of the bill simply could not seem to believe that not everyone shared their ironclad faith in authority and the untrammeled autonomy of patients. Dr Shastri-Hurst, a former GP, appeared rather offended by the suggestion that some patients distrust the medical profession. “We are at real danger of treating our clinicians as though they have no care for their patients”, he lamented. Indeed, there were many fears that Dr Shastri-Hurst had, from the risk of “infantalising” terminally ill children by not having their doctors discuss euthanasia with them, to his worries that the “moral clarity” of doctors killing their patients might be buried under “legal clutter”.
What is the common factor between all these rejected amendments? They arise from those who live in, or can understand living in, a different sort of world than the one inhabited by Esther Ranzten or Dr Shastri-Hurst. For those who struggle to imagine this world, it was vividly laid out by the dozens of valiant MPs advocating for the vulnerable. In this world, there are boyfriends and husbands who have no use for dying wives, and would like to see them disposed of. Siblings, children and grandchildren gaze resentfully at care bills, and impatiently await their depleting share of the inheritance. Abused women are bullied into suicide by controlling partners. Black patients are treated unfairly by their doctors, their lives weighed differently than other patients. Disabled people, continually and desperately, rely on family to fight doctors who see no value in their lives. This is the world as it is if you are poor, weak, bullied or vulnerable. Anyone who has ever been picked on at school, chosen last for teams, or singled out by their boss at work should have some inkling of what some people experience throughout their lives.
The inability of so many in the halls of power to grasp this world stems not from a lack of empathy or personal kindness. It is simply that they are living in the moral universe of secular liberalism. They too have their vision of human dignity — but it is one rooted in individual freedom and autonomy, and thus, ultimately, power. As good, compassionate egalitarians they wish to empower the weak, even adjusting society to assist them, but they struggle to see a life of dependence and vulnerability as truly dignified, or genuinely worthwhile. Many feel, strongly, that if they were to be paralysed, lose their memory, or come to rely on constant care, they would rather die. Freedom and self-direction are such fundamental parts of our modern vision of the good life that those who find them impossible are figures of pity, and an unspoken shame.
This leads to a strange combination of sentimentality and callousness — a combination well summed up by the hapless figure of Kim Leadbeater herself. Her poor political instincts and grasp of policy have been continually evident throughout the passage of her bill, from her error ridden speech during the second reading to her decision to leave the chamber during a significant part of Friday’s debate. A former personal trainer, she only came to be an MP because of the tragic killing of her sister, and as much sympathy as we must have for her family, it has proved a poor basis for elevating her to parliament. Indeed her most notable parliamentary intervention before this was the suggestion that online anonymity be made illegal in order to protect MPs from digital harassment, an early indication of a willingness to advocate reckless policy on the basis of emotion.
Parliament must reject this madness, while it still can
One reason the process has been so poor is that the government has effectively outsourced this process to Leadbeater, seeking to avoid the controversy of the debate whilst taking credit for what they believe to be a popular and progressive issue. Leadbeater’s handpicked committee has been given help from civil servants whilst sceptics have had to draft amendments without either official support or adequate time to present them in parliament. And although I doubt it is intentional, the decision to allow this poorly thought through bill to stumble through parliament at a time when disability benefits are being cut and winter fuel payments scrapped sends a chilling message to the most vulnerable. Combine this with a health system which is increasingly breaking down and failing patients, and the potential for inhuman cruelty is vast.
There is still a chance to stop the bill. In its current form, even those who support the principle of assisted dying must be starting to wonder if they can countenance it in practice. A growing list of professional bodies have expressed doubt and opposition to the legislation. Ahead of Friday’s vote, the Royal College of Psychiatrists voiced serious concerns about its impact on vulnerable patients. MPs have been promised, time and time again, that the bill could be improved and should be allowed to continue on principle. The rejection of crucial safeguarding amendments marked the last opportunity to do so, and it was not taken. Parliament must reject this madness, while it still can.
