Assisted Suicide Bill: Humanitarian in Form, Nazi-Neoliberalism in Practice

By Ian Donovan

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, introduced into Parliament by the Labour MP Kim Leadbetter, is widely touted as a humanitarian measure which will allegedly help those who are dying from painful terminal illnesses avoid the appalling suffering that frequently accompanies such deaths. Many regard it as a humanitarian measure, and it is being presented as a progressive reform. Those opposing it are being portrayed by supporters of the bill as religious fundamentalists. It has divided the establishment in Britain: former Tory Prime Ministers: May, Truss and Johnson oppose it, as does former Labour PM Gordon Brown. In the current Labour Party, Starmer supports it, but Wes Streeting opposes it.

A parliamentary grouping of Labour’s Anna Spicer, Lib-Dem Munira Wilson and Tory Ben Spicer, has put an amendment proposing that it should not be given a second reading until there is a law commission or royal commission into all scenarios and safeguards, which would torpedo the bill. The bill would make eligible adults with under six months to live, “mental capacity” and “a settled wish to die”. They would have to make two declarations, each approved by different doctors, seven days apart, and then a high court judge would question them, followed by a 14 day wait. The fatal drug would have to be self-administered; doctors would prepare the dose. There is an attempt to include other ‘safeguards’ in the bill, including making it illegal for anyone to “pressure, coerce or use dishonesty” to procure such a declaration or induce self-administering of such a dose, with a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.

There are elements within this that socialists should sympathise with. No one should be forced to suffer agonising death, which is all too common today, particularly as the National Health Service has come under vicious attack by neoliberal politicians. Particularly from some Tory and New Labour politicians who are making sonorous and hypocritical declarations about morality. Tories, Lib Dems and New Labour have all undermined the NHS through various forms of privatisation. The Tories in the last 14 years have done massive damage to the NHS, but New Labour provided them with the means to do so. Private Finance Initiatives, saddling hospitals with massive debt, and foundation trusts, providing the Tories with the means to stick the knife in even more, which they did with austerity attacks. On all these sides, protestations of humanitarian motivations do not ring true.

The principle of allowing all to end their lives in dignity is correct but under capitalism this is highly problematic. Today austerity attacks on the sick, the disabled, benefit claimants, etc. are endemic. This is why virtually the entire medical profession, and disabled organisations, oppose this. ‘Safeguards’ cannot overcome private property, both at a domestic level, where the interests of relatives, e.g. in inheritance, and the material cost of caring, pressure the sick to avoid being a “burden”. Leadbetter’s bill is backed by the Dignity in Dying campaign, which received £700,000 from the Bernard Lewis Trust, which has connections to offshore tax havens, funding Israeli settlements on the West Bank, and the so-called Campaign Against Anti-Semitism – a smear machine against the pro-Palestinian left. Hardly humanitarian causes! Dignity in Dying have the money to buy saturation advertising on the London tube, like at Westminster station foot tunnel where anyone walking through it is assailed by dozens of their electronic advertisements.

This would not be a humanitarian advance, but an accelerating neoliberal ethos of euthanasia, resembling Nazism. As shown in Canada and the Netherlands, where similar laws have been passed and euthanasia amounts to 5% of all deaths. Leadbetter estimates this bill would allow less than 1,000 assisted suicides per year. But the ‘safeguards’ in the bill can easily be amended by a future government. In Canada, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) which passed in 2016, was extended beyond terminal cases in 2021. It is planned to extend it further in 2027 to include people suffering from a solely mental illness. With such extensions, likely at the hands of a future government and secondary legislation, it is entirely feasible that around 30,000 people a year could be subject to state-sponsored euthanasia in Britain in a few years’ time.

Socialists should oppose this bill tooth and nail. Even if it falls this time, they will try again. Far from promoting euthanasia, we should be insisting on a massive improvement in palliative care. The NHS should run hospices and similar institutions to allow all to end their lives without pain and suffering. We should not be supporting a law that clearly presages a cull of ‘costly’ people with health problems, funded lavishly by people who are up to their necks in the barbarism in Gaza. What’s ‘humanitarian’ about that?