Dignity in Dying homepage (http://www.dignityindying.org.uk/)
The Assisted Dying Bill would relieve suffering, protect the vulnerable, and enhance individual freedom. Conservatives should support it.
The House of Commons last debated a Bill on assisted dying in 1997. It was resoundingly defeated, 234 votes against to 89 in favour. Just five Conservative MPs supported the Bill, and only two of those – David Davis and Crispin Blunt – are still in Parliament.
But there has been a sea change in opinion since 1997. A recent Populus poll found that 82 per cent of people support assisted dying – and that 53 per cent would think more positively about an MP who did too.
Now prominent Conservatives also support a change in the law. Lord Finkelstein is a key advocate for assisted dying in the House of Lords, while Rob Hayward, the former MP who was nominated for a peerage last week, is a board member of the campaign group Dignity in Dying.
In the House of Commons, Crispin Blunt and the new MP for Telford, Lucy Allen, are co-sponsoring a new Private Member’s Bill on assisted dying, alongside six Labour MPs and Lib Dem Norman Lamb.
The modest Bill would allow terminally ill, mentally competent adults to request a life-ending medicine from their doctor, which they would be free to take when they decided the time was right.
The change is overdue. The law as it stands forces some dying people to suffer in pain and distress against their wishes, even with world-class palliative care. It is a muddled and un-conservative settlement, which hands power to doctors over patients and to the state over the individual. And it denies dying people the fundamental liberty to make rational choices about their death as freely as they do about their life.
Opponents of assisted dying tend to argue that people cannot be trusted to make choices for themselves, that they might make the ‘wrong’ choice, or be so gullible as to be influenced by others. But that argument is always advanced – particularly by the Left – whenever anyone proposes extending freedom and choice. Look at the arguments that were made against allowing people to take control over their children’s education, their choice of hospital, and their pension pot, for example. Those freedoms are now taken for granted; people have repeatedly proved themselves more competent than some of our politicians choose to believe.
The Assisted Dying Bill would, in fact, introduce the first set of safeguards to protect individual freedom in death as well as in life. A person wanting to take control of the timing of their death would need to persuade two doctors (acting independently) and a High Court judge that they were terminally ill, mentally competent, and making the decision freely and rationally. Hardly a laissez-faire approach.
When the Bill receives its Second Reading in the House of Commons on Friday 11 September, compassionate Conservatives will have a once in a generation opportunity to give a small number of people the freedom to make the end of their life a little less frightening. If Conservatives support a free society, then choice at the end of life, just like choice during life, is a Conservative goal. There is no need to wait another 18 years. We must support it now.
Nick Hoile is a healthcare policy and government affairs consultant, and is writing in a personal capacity. He tweets @Nick_Hoile
