‘Andy Burnham is right to put care before assisted suicide’

On a recent visit to an elderly care home in Golders Green, Andy Burnham made an important observation about the long-running assisted suicide debate. Before we rush into providing drugs for terminally ill patients to end their lives on the NHS, he asked, shouldn’t we first aim to provide the care that they need to live out their last days well? 

This is precisely the right question to ask, as Parliament soon returns from recess with yet another assisted suicide bill before it for a vote on 11 September. If this feels familiar, it’s because the same Members of Parliament have already spent numerous hours debating this issue during the last parliamentary session. During that time, the earlier version of the Bill, proposed by Kim Leadbeater, did not pass through the House of Lords. If Lauren Edwards’ almost identical Bill passes Second Reading, we once again face months debating the same issue that dominated headlines and divided colleagues and communities last year. 

I opposed the Bill last time because I was not persuaded that the safeguards within it were strong enough to prevent vulnerable people from ending their lives due to feeling like a burden on either caregivers or the state. My concerns have not gone away. But the Prime Minister has made a broader point that should resonate beyond those of us who voted against the legislation. 

Labour was elected on a manifesto promise to “rebuild our country”, with a strong emphasis on restoring broken public services. We promised to strengthen the NHS and tackle the social care crisis, restoring confidence that government stands alongside people when they are at their most vulnerable. The scale of the challenge is clear. Data from Hospice UK shows that two in five hospices had to plan on service cuts this year due to serious funding pressures. Meanwhile, two-thirds of people in rural and island communities are impacted by a postcode lottery as they struggle to access vital palliative and end-of-life care close to home. 

READ MORE: Labour MP to reintroduce assisted dying bill to Parliament

It is difficult to talk about genuine “choice” and “autonomy” over death if people weighing up a potential suicide cannot access specialist palliative care; or if disabled people must still fight for the support that allows them to live independently. Andy Burnham is right: before Parliament changes the law, our first responsibility should be to fix the care system. 

This is not just an abstract argument. One of my constituents, mother-of-four Michelle Anna Moffatt, died in June after becoming one of Scotland’s leading voices against assisted suicide. Following a catastrophic spinal injury that left her wheelchair-bound, Michelle believed her life was over. At her lowest point, she saved money to travel to Dignitas to end her life at Switzerland’s infamous clinic. Thankfully, she never went. 

With the support of a GP who helped her combat her suicidality, a community at Spinal Injuries Scotland that helped her rediscover purpose, and a family determined not to give up on her, Michelle slowly rebuilt her life. She became an advocate for disabled people and inspired many by throwing herself into community life, raising four children, fundraising for charity, and even canoeing down the Zambezi River. 

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If Michelle could have been offered an assisted suicide at her lowest moment, she told friends she would have certainly taken it, cutting her life short by six years. Though her spinal injury itself was not “terminal”, in many jurisdictions where assisted suicide is permitted, she could easily have made herself fit the category required by the legislation. Indeed, it’s frighteningly easy to do so. If an anorexic refuses to eat; if a diabetic refuses insulin; if a paralysed person like Michelle refuses to change a catheter and invites infection that she refuses to treat, anyone could make themselves fit a very loose definition of ”terminal”. Similar cases have already happened in places where assisted suicide is legal. But thanks to the law prohibiting assisted suicide at the time, Michelle emerged from that period of despair, grateful that she had been helped to live rather than helped to die. 

Her experience reflects concerns repeatedly raised by disability organisations throughout this debate: that vulnerable people suffering coercion, depression or feelings of being a burden could be pushed into an early death under this proposal. The Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Psychiatrists have echoed Burnham’s analysis: you can’t offer death to those who might have made a different choice if their care needs (be it palliative care, adaptive housing, mental health support or practical assistance) had not gone unmet. 

Scotland has already wrestled deeply with these questions. When Holyrood considered Liam McArthur’s assisted suicide Bill earlier this year, a proposal very similar to the legislation now returning to Westminster, 85% of Scottish Labour MSPs opposed it, and the Bill ultimately failed. Their decision demonstrated Labour’s core values: support for the marginalised and safeguarding the vulnerable.  

Being an MP in Scotland, I know how carefully Labour has sought to balance a shared UK-wide identity with the distinct political traditions that exist north and south of the border. Dragging the party, and the country, back into another divisive assisted suicide debate risks reopening divisions at precisely the moment when we should be unitedly focused on delivering for people. 

Andy Burnham has offered Parliament a sensible way forward. When he says we should address hospice funding and strengthen social care before revisiting assisted suicide, he is reminding us what government is for. We should be remembered as a party which secured better help and care to those in need, not the party that simply offered them death. 

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