An assisted dying bill that would only allow people with less than six months to live to receive help to die would be no use at all to people facing intolerable suffering, a retired high court judge has said.
Sir Nicholas Mostyn, who has the degenerative condition Parkinson’s disease, said people like him would “be left on the beach” if potentially historic legislation covering England and Wales that is due for publication on Wednesday limits access to help with suicide only to terminally ill people.
The bill is expected to be similar to the laws in the US state of Oregon where helping people to die who do not have less than six months to live remains illegal.
The detail has not yet been published but Mostyn, 67, told the Sunday Times: “Parkies [a term used by some sufferers] will never get a terminal diagnosis so this bill is no fucking use at all. In Spain [where the threshold for legal assisted dying is intolerable suffering from an incurable disease or condition], Parkinson’s is one of the most common reasons for seeing assisted death … There is a cohort of people like us who this is not going to help and we are left with the existing, most unsatisfactory law.”
Current laws in the UK make it a criminal offence to help anyone to die. Parliaments in Scotland and the Isle of Man are considering bills to allow restricted assisted dying for terminally ill adults, and in Jersey legislation is expected to be brought forward next year.
The Labour MP Kim Leadbeater will introduce the proposed bill for England and Wales, which will result in the first Commons vote on the issue since MPs rejected a law change in 2015 by 330 votes to 118.
Polling conducted this month by Ipsos found that two-thirds of UK adults believe it should be legal for a doctor to assist a patient aged over 18 to end their life by prescribing life-ending medication that the patient can take themselves. It found that 64% thought a doctor should be allowed to administer the fatal dose in such cases.
The poll found 57% believe it should be legal for a doctor to help adults end their lives if they are not terminally ill but are physically suffering in a way they find unbearable, and which cannot be cured or improved with existing medical science and where the patient has expressed a clear desire to end their life. The level of support falls to 35% if the person is mentally or emotionally suffering.
Keir Starmer has said he will allow Labour MPs a free vote on the issue, which is likely to happen later this year. The government will remain neutral and cabinet members will be free to vote as they wish.
The health secretary, Wes Streeting, is among cabinet members who have expressed doubts. In July, he said: “Is palliative care in this country good enough so that that choice would be a real choice, or would people end their lives sooner than they wish because palliative care, end-of-life care, isn’t as good as it could be?”
Care Not Killing, a campaign group that opposes a law change, says such a law would place pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives for fear of being a financial, emotional or care burden upon others. It says this “would especially affect people who are disabled, elderly, sick or depressed”.
It argues: “Public opinion polls can be easily manipulated when high media profile (and often celebrity-driven) ‘hard cases’ are used to elicit emotional reflex responses without consideration of the strong arguments against legalisation.”
Mostyn appears on a podcast called Movers and Shakers with several other Parkinson’s sufferers including the former BBC News journalists Mark Mardell, Gillian Lacey-Solymar and Jeremy Paxman and the Vicar of Dibley writer Paul Mayhew-Archer.
In an episode on assisted dying due to be released next Saturday, Lacey-Solymar said: “Let’s look at how bad something like Parkinson’s can get – say you are doubly incontinent, you can’t speak any more, you are in pain, you can’t move. What is the point in living? What terrifies me is the years ahead of this awful vegetative state that does happen to a lot of people with Parkinson’s.”
Mardell said: “I think it’s everybody’s right to kill themselves and that we shouldn’t listen to our western Christian heritage but instead be more like the Romans and Japanese, perhaps, and respect those who want to kill themselves. For me the problem is the only time I would want to die is when I couldn’t bear it any more and couldn’t make the decision. I abhor suicide as someone who finds life very sweet. Even as the lens gets narrower I want to continue living, but I don’t know how you draw that distinction and stop people killing themselves from depression but still allow people with Parkinson’s.”
• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
