The NHS is broken - I don't trust it to make assisted dying work without creating yet another scandal

25 November 2024, 12:55

I oppose the assisted dying bill on moral grounds, but also for pragmatic reasons - I don’t trust the NHS to do this competently.

The assisted dying bill, which will get its second reading this Friday, is already provoking a bitter back-and-forth between its backers and those who oppose it.

A key sticking point is the religious and moral argument against assisted dying.

Shabana Mahmood, the Justice Secretary, has said she would vote against it because her Muslim faith would not permit her in good conscience to support a ‘state death service’.

Yet this has already provoked a backlash from assisted dying’s proponents. Charlie Falconer, who proposed an assisted dying bill in 2015, essentially told Mahmood to pipe down - deeming her religious arguments irrelevant to the wider public who don’t share her convictions.

I disagree that this is the case - many people in the UK are still religious and would share Mahmood’s views on the sanctity of life, including many healthcare workers.

I don’t think we have got to the stage yet where an individual’s religious concerns are merely an interesting curio and inadmissible in the court of public opinion.

In fact, the objections of Mahmood and others like her are especially relevant given that MPs have been given a free vote on the bill, rather than being whipped by their parties.

But even if we discount the moral arguments - which also include the need to improve the dire state of palliative care in the UK - the practical failings of the NHS are unavoidable and make this bill unpalatable.

To be clear, if the bill did pass, it is not certain that assisted dying would be made available on the NHS. But it’s a possibility: Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said that giving terminal patients the option to kill themselves would affect other NHS services.

Why should we accept that an organisation that paid some £2.8 billion in medical malpractice compensation last year alone isn’t going to get something horribly wrong when it comes to assisted dying?

Why should we believe that the health service that brought us the infected blood catastrophe, a series of maternity care crises, and a catalogue of other smaller scandals won’t serve up a repeat its old, familiar failings?

Many British people appear to agree with me - even though a poll this weekend found majority support for assisted dying, nearly three-quarters of respondents were concerned about the NHS’ ability to deliver it satisfactorily.

I simply don’t trust the NHS - and for that reason, even if I supported assisted dying on moral grounds, I would be very wary of backing it in the UK in 2024.

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