“We've misplaced our values. We've misplaced our kindness”: George Fielding on the wider context of the assisted suicide debate

 George Fielding is 29. Through being the first wheelchair user at his mainstream schools to encouragement from his mum to be self-reliant, George developed self-advocacy skills. He became involved in mentoring others through his role as chair of the Board of Young Trustees for Whizz Kids.

He talked to Philippa Willitts about his fears and concerns about assisted suicide legislation.

The disabled community is a very hard one to define. One in six people are disabled. But we are a resilient bunch of entrepreneurial, creative people.

The greatest revolution a disabled person can successfully achieve is to live an independent life. That is the revolution. That's the protest. And you have to fight for it, as this assisted dying bill demonstrates.

So I couldn't be more against or worried about this assisted dying bill, for a number of reasons.

Nobody on either side of this debate wants somebody they that they love to die in pain or to die without dignity. I don't want anybody to even live in pain or live without dignity.

We can agree on that.

Disabled people are being let down

So we should be investing in a system and a society that enables these things to happen: better pain management, therapy, an accessible social infrastructure and an accessible transport network.

These are ways of improving the lives of people, as well as better hospice and palliative care.

But this upcoming bill in Parliament worries me. We have a threadbare NHS. We have a broken social care system. And we have an inhumane benefits system.

Those three things are the barriers to people living independent lives. We do not have the social infrastructure or the culture for people to live independent lives.

"We have a threadbare NHS. We have a broken social care system. And we have an inhumane benefits system"

What we have is millions of families who, through no fault of their own, live in a tinderbox environment.

They can't access the health care that they need, they can't access the social care that they need, and they can't access the benefits they need.

So who ends up doing the work? Unpaid carers, who are the biggest workforce in the country. If unpaid carers went on strike tomorrow, our public services wouldn't cope without the things that a lot of people do for free for their loved ones. But Carers Allowance, PIP, they don't even touch the surface.

So there's a lot of stress, a lot of strain, and a lot of tiredness and burnout.

There was a report recently that said that if you have a learning disability and you are a person of colour in this country, your life expectancy is 34. And then you talk about Do Not Resuscitate orders during COVID.

We can strive for equity, but let's not lie, we do not live in an equitable society. It's not equitable for people who are black, who are gay, who are disabled. And the disabled community encompasses all of those people.

Problems with the assisted dying debate

We are not conducting the assisted suicide debate on an equitable footing. So the argument that you can have assisted dying and also champion the rights of people with disabilities is incongruent to me.

There are already 54 MPs who are reported to want to loosen the legislation, to make it eligible for people living with conditions such as dementia, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, and that's exactly what's happened in Belgium, Canada, Australia.

Within this is, I think, quite an ableist perspective. To conduct a conversation that says, “I recognise that you live in pain and that you don't have the life that you want and are not supported. Therefore, I'll do the kind thing and let you die”.

I think it's profoundly worrying to move to that argument without showing and investing in the hard bureaucratic, important work of redesigning our public services.

"We do not live in an equitable society"

We've been talking about a better NHS, a better social care service all of my life. But there's never the appetite to do it because I don't think our society and systems value the lives of people that receive these services, at least until it's somebody that you love that's in them.

You can't, in my eyes, legalise assisted dying before building a society in which people with disabilities have equity and live joyful lives.

Our parliamentary system isn't set up to actually deliver what people with disabilities need. This is decades in the making, and it hasn't been helped by austerity and COVID.

I worry immensely that somewhere in Westminster, somebody has thought, “I know it's questionable, but it will save us: getting rid of all these vulnerable people will save us a lot of money in the long run”.

To have that conversation is going to require quite a lot of people to look themselves in the mirror. I worry that they're not willing to do so.

Have you misplaced your kindness?

For me, it's profoundly chilling. No man is an island. We're all interdependent. We need our community.

We've defeated a version of this bill a number of times in the past.

For politicians with a vote on November 29^th I just ask: Is it possible that you've misplaced your kindness? We all want people to live lives in which they can flourish.

So do you commit to long-term planning that acknowledges the inequity of our world and the unfairness? Or is the kind thing to do to just put people out of their “misery”, as they see it?

I think the argument there is quite clear when you frame it like that.

"You can't, in my eyes, legalise assisted dying before building a society in which people with disabilities have equity and live joyful lives"

If somebody is terminally ill, is it kind to just simply ignore the mental strain and trauma that they're probably going through?

There seems to be this assumption that nobody who is at the end of their life can be suicidal. No doctor, no nurse, would ever treat a suicidal person like this in any other context. You would signpost them to therapies, antidepressants, walking groups, social prescribing.

We've got to trust, when we are in front of doctors and nurses, that they want to make us better. And if they can't make us better, they want to limit our pain.

What do we value?

The second question for me is: have we misplaced what we value? Is life all about pounds, shillings, and pence and productivity?

I know it's not to me. Our friendships, our connection, our hobbies, our interests, and the memories we create are what make life valuable.

You are more likely to acquire disability when you're older. But there's going to be a lot of people in Parliament and a lot of people in this debate whose instinct it is to perhaps not give our side of the argument a fair hearing because they've never lived it.

We have a duty not to just be on the side of the argument that suits us now. There are going to be people on the other side of this debate who, in a week's time, in 6 months' time, in 10 years' time, are disabled.

There's going to be thousands of people who supported this legislation only to find in 10 years' time their circumstances have changed and the support that they thought was in place actually isn't.

And it is more likely not to be in place if we pass this bill.

We've misplaced our values. We've misplaced our kindness.

If you're on our side of the argument, write to your MP, go down to Parliament Square, make a placard, text your mates, put it in WhatsApp groups, send a voice note. If you need support, ask someone to help you write an email.

Put on record what you think - for yourself, but also so we can have a debate.

Because that's what democracy is.