Assisted Suicide Law Could Be Next Infected Blood or Post Office Scandal, Says Labour MP

Naz Shah said specialists do not think the scenario where patients could be inadvertently coerced into assisted suicide by doctors was a hypothetical danger.

Members of Distant Voices, Christian Concern, the Christian Medical Fellowship, and SPUC gather to protest the assisted suicide bill in Westminster, London, England, on Oct. 16, 2024. Lucy North/PA Wire

Labour MP Naz Shah has warned that unless safeguards are put in place to protect vulnerable people, the assisted suicide bill could be the next Post Office or infected blood scandal.

Shah, a member of the committee currently scrutinising the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, was speaking in support of an amendment which would prevent doctors from discussing the option of assisted suicide unless their patient raised it first.

Speaking to MPs on Wednesday, she highlighted evidence already heard by the committee from palliative care specialists who said vulnerable people—particularly those without social support networks or who are “too scared” to challenge doctors—might perceive that when a doctor raises assisted suicide, “they will hear it not as a neutral comment, but as a suggestion.”

Shah put to colleagues: “The question we have to ask ourselves is: are we going to be that committee that ignored the evidence of experts who deal with this on a daily basis, on the front line with those very people [...] that this bill is actually aimed at?

“Are we going to potentially risk being part of a future assisted dying bill scandal because we placed ourselves above those experts?”

Ignoring Experts

The MP for Bradford West went on to warn that “we cannot ignore the testimony of those who have the most relevant experience,” as other governments and councils have done in recent decades with other issues.

She gave the example with the Post Office scandal, where hundreds of subpostmasters were wrongfully convicted for embezzling money from the Post Office based on incorrect data from the Horizon accounting system.

Shah said “for years” subpostmasters had said that the system was not working, but successive governments “said they were wrong time and time again. They were dismissed.”

She then pointed to the infected blood scandal, where for three decades several thousand NHS patients, mainly haemophiliacs, said they had been negligently given blood infected with HIV and hepatitis, but “ministers upon ministers” had “insisted there had been no such thing happening.”

“It turned out that the patients were right and the ministers had been wrong,” she said.

‘Form of Pressure’

Shah said that palliative care specialists who gave evidence, like Dr. Rachel Clarke and Jamilla Hussain, do not think the scenario where patients could be inadvertently coerced into assisted suicide by a doctor was a hypothetical danger.

Giving evidence during a committee session on Jan. 28, Clarke had raised it as a safeguarding issue, telling MPs: “If you say to a vulnerable patient who’s just been told they have a diagnosis of terminal cancer, ‘Have you thought about assisted dying?’ I would suggest that stating it broadly like that is a form of pressure.”

She added that, “potentially, you are unintentionally coercing that patient” and they would be prompted to question whether the doctor is telling them that their life is not worth living.

Shah said: “We cannot ignore the concerns those doctors have raised. If any one of us accepts the concerns of the experts that a vulnerable person would not hear it as a possibility being discussed but instead would hear it as a suggestion from a powerful person, then I sincerely hope committee members will vote in favour of this amendment.”

‘A Choice’

The Private Members’ Bill, put forward by Labour MP for Spen Valley, Kim Leadbeater, would allow terminally ill adults who have been given a life expectancy of less than six months to access assisted suicide.

Undated handout photo issued by UK Parliament of Naz Shah who is the Labour MP for Bradford West. PA Picture Desk

Conservative MP for East Wiltshire, Danny Kruger, similarly voiced concerns that if doctors were to introduce the idea of assisted suicide to a terminally ill patient who had not brought it up themselves, the patient might take it as a recommendation, rather than an option.

Responding to Kruger, Leadbeater said that assisted suicide was “a choice, in the same way that the other options are a choice” and that it “would not be informed consent for a person to suffer a horrible death if they were not told about this option.”

Kim Leadbeater (L) is joined by daughter of Esther Rantzen, Rebecca Wilcox (R), after hearing the result of the vote in parliament for her Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill in Westminster, London, England, on Nov. 29, 2024. Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

The Spen Valley MP has previously argued that her bill, which covers England and Wales, has “layers and layers of safeguards and protections,“ including against coercion, and she believes it will probably be ”the most robust piece of legislation in the world.”

The committee will reconvene on March 4 where MPs will continue line-by-line scrutiny and vote on amendments prohibiting doctors from raising assisted suicide as an option, unless the patient does so first.