Disabled campaigners' warning about Lord Falconer's aim to legalise assisted suicide

 

Lord Falconer. Image credit: Chris McAndrew

Yesterday, Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Charlie Falconer) introduced a Private Members Bill (there’s an explanation of what they are here) to make it legal to assist people who are terminally ill to die.

As a group of disability rights campaigners, Not Dead Yet UK are deeply concerned about this course of action.

Like many disabled people, we are conscious that attempts to build legalised suicide into healthcare can be profoundly discriminatory – if a non-disabled person wants to die, their doctor does not give them the means to kill themselves. 

We want the same care and respect to be given to terminally ill people if they are suicidal.

Rather than legalising the suicides of disabled people, we argue that the only safe way forward is better investment in palliative care and a commitment to improving the things that people often cite when they apply to die in other parts of the world, such as a lack of dignity and feeling like a burden.

Can an assisted suicide law ever be “safe”?

Charlie Falconer told The Guardian, “My bill is designed for people who will die in the near future. I don’t think the state should be helping people who are not terminally ill to take their own lives.”

However, this does not reassure us.

We have seen, again and again, across the world, that laws that begin with relatively strict parameters, such as terminal illness, expand and expand until people with treatable conditions, children, and people who simply can’t afford accessible housing end up being approved to die by assisted suicide.

While Falconer assures us there will be “safeguards”, in reality, these safeguards are virtually impossible to implement effectively. Even the idea that doctors can accurately predict when a person has six months left to live does not reflect reality.

And in a world where there is growing awareness of coercive control, and where we know that many do not receive adequate or appropriate medical care, pain management or social care, we are creating the conditions for people to find themselves agreeing that yes, they should probably die, including to avoid feeling like a burden, when providing them with what they actually need to live could allow them to enjoy and participate in their own life again.

What if good care stopped us from wanting to die? Where are the proposed laws to provide everybody with compassionate and appropriate care instead?

Can Falconer succeed?

Falconer has already failed at changing laws in the area of assisted suicide six times, as detailed here, but he hopes that this iteration of the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults Bill will be the one that enables assisted suicide for terminally ill people.

Private members’ bills, especially from Lords, are generally thought to be an ineffective way to create a new law. According to Politics Home, “almost all Private Members’ Bills fail. In all sessions of each Parliament between 1997 and 2015 generally only between three per cent and six per cent of bills succeeded”

What could be different this time is that Keir Starmer, the new Prime Minister, seems to be keen on legalising assisted suicide. Earlier this year, he said that if he became prime minister, he would ensure parliamentary time was made available to debate the issue and he would allow a free vote (where politicians vote according to their conscience and personal beliefs, not according to what their political party wants).

Falconer told LBC that he “strongly feels the time for this reform has come”, but presumably he felt the same when he introduced attempts to change the law in 2009, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2019 and 2022 too.

However, with the Prime Minister on side, this time, disabled people could find ourselves under threat in an unprecedented way in this country.

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