The dreadful assisted suicide Bill is still continuing its slow progress through the House of Lords despite certainty from all sides that it will not become law in this Parliamentary session. Throughout the abhorrent life of this flawed Bill so far, we have seen Peers argue that everyone from disabled people to those with autism should be allowed to end their lives with the assistance of the state - provided that they are thought to have six months or less to live.
Such is the gruesome reverence with which the proponents of assisted suicide uphold their dangerous doctrine that journalist Simon Caldwell remarked recently that Harold Shipman would have loved this cruel piece of legislation.
Shipman famously remarked that “the old are a drain on the health service”, echoing what many assisted suicide proponents have been arguing as a utilitarian reason to save ourselves some money by seemingly reducing our liabilities.
Last month, Dr Vernon Coleman warned that assisted suicide was being pushed so fervently because, “it’s much cheaper to slaughter the weak and the people the conspirators call the ‘useless eaters’” than to expend resources ensuring they live happy, comfortable lives.
“A nation can save billions by killing off the sick and the poor and the weak,” he added. “And, of course, killing the elderly will save billions because pensions won’t have to be paid.”
This kind of argument may seem radical and almost unbelievable – surely it is too grim for even the sadistic Labour Government to consider it. Unfortunately, it is not simply hypothetical; proponents of assisted suicide are actively arguing in favour of its introduction due to these economic arguments.
“It’s a doctor’s job to make sure no one dies too early, but do some of us die too late?”
Oli Dugmore, at the time editor of the entertainment and news website JOE, posed this question recently in an article for the New Statesman, in which he tried to make a convincing case for assisted suicide.
The article, in attempting to make the economic case for assisted suicide, said the quiet part out loud, claiming that elderly people ending their lives by assisted suicide would reinvigorate the public coffers by “curbing the pensions bill, the NHS bill and the care bill.” Dugmore highlighted that elderly people can be expensive, and offered a simple solution, saying that “[m]ost of the money spent on your healthcare by the state will fall in the final months of your life. Assisted dying would appear to mitigate some of those problems”.
Assisted dying, or assisted suicide, as it is more accurately referred to by its opponents, is the name given to the act of assisting someone to end their own life. It is currently a crime in England and Wales, but the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which is currently making its way through Parliament, aims to change that.
The arguments made in the article are not only grotesque but also don’t hold up to scrutiny. Hospices are already facing intense struggles financially (two in five are having to make cuts this year), without also needing to find extra funding to set up, train, and implement the as-yet-unknown procedures that the assisted suicide Bill would likely require. One in five hospices has a budget deficit of over £1 million, and many are having to reduce the services they offer.
This is a crisis, but the solution is not the hastening of death. Assisted suicide is not a priority for the public, who, according to recent polling, would prefer the NHS to be given the support it needs to cut waiting times instead. As health and care services are already overstretched, funding should be directed towards facilitating existing services and increasing their standards and capacity, rather than being funnelled into a state-sanctioned death programme.
Dugmore’s article, needless to say, was not well received. The Telegraph published two separate pieces critiquing Dugmore, one for “condoning state-sanctioned elder abuse”, the other praising his “honesty” in saying “exactly what he really thinks”. A piece in The New World, formerly The New European, disparaged the article as well as its publisher, stating that “[g]iven the demographic of much of its remaining readership, it may be considered odd that the New Statesman wants oldies to shuffle off this mortal coil.”
Despite this, senior figures at The New Statesman were clearly impressed. Dugmore was hired by the outlet shortly afterwards and given the senior role of executive editor (digital), subsequently hanging up his JOE hat.
Sadly, Dugmore is not alone in publicly sharing these egregious views. Last year, former Member of Parliament Matthew Parris wrote a piece for The Times that conveyed many of the same arguments as Dugmore’s piece. In plain language, Parris outlined his support for placing pressure “on the terminally ill to hasten their own deaths so as ‘not to be a burden’ on others or themselves”. His reasoning for this madcap misanthropy? Vulnerable people are expensive.
“A proportionately ever-smaller working population carries an ever-larger cohort of elderly and retired citizens, supported by state pensions and advances in medical science that sustain us into ever-longer retirements”, Parris states. While this may be true, what is shocking is viewing life-prolonging and life-enhancing advancements in medicine as somehow negative, as things to be countered with encouragement to end one’s life when things get bad.
The assisted suicide Bill is now in the midst of its committee stage scrutiny in the House of Lords. Despite the Bill only being a Private Member’s Bill and the Government supposedly remaining neutral on it, the legislation has been afforded a substantial number of extra sitting Fridays in the Lords to allow the farce to continue.
With consideration of the Bill not yet over, it is worth amplifying the viewpoints of the likes of Dugmore and Parris, since they are exactly the kind of people advocating most enthusiastically for this law change. For all the cries of care and compassion, a significant number of people exist who want to see this Bill become law for truly grotesque and utilitarian reasons. We cannot let them win.
