Labour MP Rachael Maskell has urged her colleagues to vote against the Assisted Dying Bill in Parliament today, saying their focus must be on improving palliative care.
The former physiotherapist has become one of the leading voices of opposition to Kim Leadbeater’s Bill, telling Metro: ‘There’s absolutely no way I could even contemplate voting for this.’
MPs will decide later if the proposed legislation will move to the next stage of parliamentary scrutiny, almost a decade after the House of Commons voted down a previous effort with a strong majority.
If it eventually passes, terminally ill adults in the UK will legally be able to die with the assistance of medical staff – as long as they get the agreement of two doctors and a High Court judge.
But Maskell, who worked in the acute sector during her medical career, believes colleagues need to consider the wider ramifications of such a profound change.
Among the measures she has concerns over is the idea that doctors would be able to raise the option of assisted death with their patient.
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill allows a ‘registered medical professional’ to exercise their ‘professional judgement to decide if, and when, it is appropriate to discuss the matter with a person’.
Maskell, who investigated assisted dying during a two-year stint on the Health and Social Care Committee, said: ‘That changes medicine completely.
‘You know, “first do no harm” is the kind of strap line of what a doctor has to adhere with. This is doing harm.’
She also said the wording of the Bill opened up the possibilities of various forms of coercion, including from family members and society more generally.
The York Central MP said: ‘I was talking to someone just yesterday in Parliament who had parents in Canada, who were saying they felt they always had an obligation to have an assisted death at the end, rather than putting pressure on health services.
‘We know the health service is under a lot of pressure. People are saying, “I don’t want other people to suffer when I know I’m dying.” So there’s all of these kind of societal pressures which build.’
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has allowed a free vote on the issue in Parliament, meaning MPs can decide for themselves whether to back the Bill without being nudged in a certain direction by party whips.
Cabinet members are split, with Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood coming out early against the proposals.
Meanwhile, former prime minister Lord David Cameron and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall said she would vote for the Bill, arguing it has ‘all the right safeguards’ and would give people ‘as much choice and control as possible’.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy have also said they will be supporting it.
Labour backbencher Kim Leadbeater, who introduced the legislation, argues it has the strongest safeguards of any comparable law around the world.
At a press conference earlier this month, she said no other jurisdiction had introduced a requirement of agreement from a High Court judge and pointed out periods of reflection are written into the text of the Bill.
Streeting has said the introduction of assisted dying could come at the expense of other NHS services, while expressing concern that palliative care in the UK is not at a sufficient standard to give people a fair choice – an argument Maskell agrees with.
She said: ‘If we got the NHS working and palliative care properly funded and resourced in a way that it would meet the needs of the population, I don’t think half the people will be arguing for this bill.
‘And therefore, what I’m saying to people is we’ve got to focus on getting this bit right before we go down this very insecure path, and therefore voting this down at second reading is the only way to be done with this, to focus on that.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
