Streeting Orders Cost Review of Assisted Suicide

Health Secretary Wes Streeting delivering a keynote speech on the second day of the 2024 NHS Providers conference and exhibition, at the ACC in Liverpool, England, on Nov. 13, 2024. Peter Byrne/PA Wire

Health Secretary Wes Streeting has ordered a review into the costs of implementing state-run assisted suicide.

Streeting, who has said he will vote against the Private Members’ Bill on assisted suicide later this month, also said that there was a “chilling slippery slope argument” if people felt obligated to end their lives in order to save money.

Labour MP Kim Leadbeater published the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on Tuesday, barely three weeks before it is due to be voted on on Nov. 29.

The health secretary said that now the wording of the bill has been released, “I’ve asked my department to look at the costs that would be associated with providing a new service to enable assisted dying to go forward, because I’m very clear that regardless of my own personal position or my own vote, my department and the whole government will respect the will of Parliament if people vote for assisted dying.”

He added that work was under way and he could not give a date of when those figures would be available for review.

Saving Money

Streeting was commenting after delivering a speech to the NHS Providers conference in Liverpool, where he was asked whether there might be potential savings if patients with a terminal condition opt for assisted suicide instead of continuing treatment.

The minister, who has expressed his concern over how factors such as coercion and inadequate palliative care might influence people to opt for assisted suicide, said that the question touches on the “slippery slope argument.”

“I would hate for people to opt for assisted dying because they think they’re saving someone somewhere … money, whether that’s relatives or the NHS,” Streeting said.

The Labour MP for Ilford North said he believes that is one of the issues MPs are wrestling with when considering how to cast their vote.

“But this is a free vote, the government’s position is neutral,” Streeting said, adding, “The prime minister is very clearly studying the bill before deciding on his own position.”

The Canadian government has previously highlighted the savings of its medical assistance in dying (MAiD) programme.

Canada’s Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer projected in its October 2020 report that the deaths from MAiD would save $86.9 million, compared to the costs of providing health care to those people.

At the Expense of NHS Services

There are also potential cost implications for introducing state-administered suicide.

Earlier on Wednesday, Streeting told Times Radio: “There would be resource implications for doing it. And those choices would come at the expense of other choices.”

When asked if a change in the law would require finding money from somewhere else, the minister replied: “Yep. To govern is to choose.”

“If Parliament chooses to go ahead with assisted dying, it is making a choice that this is an area to prioritise for investment. And we’d have to work through those implications,” he said.

Asked about Streeting’s comments suggesting a new law legalising assisted suicide could impact NHS services, a Downing Street spokesman said, “Ultimately this is a matter for Parliament to decide and that is why it is going to be a free vote, and Parliament will debate the principles and merits of assisted dying and the issues surrounding the bill.”

Scepticism

Others in the Labour Party have also come out against the assisted suicide bill. Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has said she would be voting against it on religious grounds, adding, “I don’t think that death is a service that the state should be offering.”

On Wednesday, leader of the Liberal Democrats Ed Davey wrote an opinion piece for The Times where he announced that he would not be backing assisted suicide.

Davey described watching his mother battle with breast cancer for three years before succumbing to the disease, saying, “It’s precisely because of those years spent caring for mum that I will be voting against it.”

The Liberal Democrat leader continued: “My fear is that, if we make assisted dying a state-sanctioned option, some people would inevitably feel an enormous psychological pressure to take it up, even if it’s not what they really want.

“No matter what safeguards are in the law, it seems unavoidable to me that some people would sadly feel like they are too much of a burden.”

While only a minority of Private Members’ Bills become law, the issue has been receiving significant public attention in the past several months, notably since Dame Esther Rantzen, who has stage four lung cancer, has been campaigning for a change in the law.

Another Private Members’ Bill had been put forward in the House Lords. But its author, Lord Falconer, said last week on social media platform X he will not proceed with it, since Leadbeater’s has a date for its reading.

PA Media contributed to this report.