A Church of England bishop has warned that the British Government’s impact assessment on the bill to introduce assisted suicide in England and Wales makes for “chilling reading”. Source: The Tablet.
The main impact assessment and an equality impact assessment on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill were published on Friday.
Bishop of London Sarah Mullally, the Church of England’s lead bishop for health and social care, said: “It highlights particular groups who would be put at risk by a change in the law, including those who are subject to health inequalities, and those vulnerable to domestic abuse.
“It also sets out the financial savings of introducing an assisted dying service, through reduction in care costs, palliative and end of life care costs and state-provided benefits.
“It is crude to see these cost savings set out in this way, and it is easy to see how numbers of this nature could contribute to someone feeling that they should pursue an assisted death rather than receive care.
“Each human life is immeasurably more valuable than the money that may be saved through their premature death.”
She added: “We must oppose any change in the law that puts the vulnerable at risk rather than working to improve access to desperately needed palliative care services.”
David Jones is director of the Anscombe Centre, a Catholic bioethics academic institute in Oxford. He also warned of the dangers of the impact assessment.
“In the view of the Anscombe Centre, the key flaw in these assessments is that the lives of dying people are literally accounted as nought,” Professor Jones said.
“The costs considered are only the cost of implementing this practice – training, assessments – and the cost saved in ‘unused’ healthcare, social care costs and pensions.
“Even to frame this question immediately discloses a danger to vulnerable groups that they are construed as a financial burden on society – which is what is implicitly done in this document.”
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Assisted dying impact assessment makes ‘chilling reading’ says Bishop of London (By Ruth Gledhill and Tabitha Smith, The Tablet)
