PARLIAMENT voted for the law to change on assisted dying “in the face of mounting evidence that it is unworkable and unsafe and poses a risk to the most vulnerable people in our society”, the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, said on Friday.
Responding to the decision by the House of Commons on Friday afternoon to progress the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (News, 20 June), Bishop Mullally, who is the lead bishop on health and social care, warned that, “if enacted, this legislation would come into force amid serious shortfalls in adult social care, a postcode lottery in palliative care and well documented pressures on the NHS, multiplying the potential risks to the most vulnerable.
“It does not prevent terminally ill people who perceive themselves to be a burden to their families and friends from choosing ‘assisted dying’. And it would mean that we became a society where the state fully funds a service for terminally ill people to end their own lives but, shockingly, only funds around one third of palliative care.”
Having passed its Third Reading in the Commons, the Bill will now go to the House of Lords, where Bishop Mullally will be among the peers scrutinising its provisions. It is unusual, however, for substantial changes to be made at this stage of the legislative process.
Francis Martin/Church TimesOpponents of the Bill praying before the result was announced
At the end of her statement, Bishop Mullally, who is a former Chief Nursing Officer, said: “We must oppose a law that puts the vulnerable at risk and instead work to improve funding and access to desperately needed palliative care services.”
Bishop Mullally noted that the majority of MPs voting for the legislation had shrunk since the Second Reading in November (News, 29 November 2024) from 55 to 23. This, she suggested, demonstrated that there were “unresolved concerns” about the specifics of the Bill.
“Every person is of immeasurable and irreducible value, and should be able to access the care and support that they need – a principle that I know is shared by those all faiths and none,” she said.
Many of those who gathered on Parliament Square on Friday to oppose the Bill did so based on their religious convictions. As MPs were voting, some prayed the rosary while others sang hymns.
The Vicar of St Mary Magdalene, Enfield, in north London, the Revd Dr James Lawson, was among those opposing the Bill. After the result of the vote was announced, he said that he was “very disturbed”.
“It seems that this is another step towards the culture of death,” he said.
Many in his congregation were older people and vulnerable, he said, and he expected that they would be anxious about a change in the law. When he had expressed his opposition to the Bill in his church there had been applause, he said.
Dr Lawson said that he was grateful for Bishop Mullally’s open opposition to the Bill, but disappointed by the lack of Church of England presence at Friday’s demonstration.
Among the pink-clad campaigners for a change to the law was an authorised preacher in the Church of England, Pamela Fisher. Her immediate reaction to the result of the vote was relief, she said.
“I don’t know that it will be in time for me. I’ve got terminal breast cancer, and if it takes four years [for the law to be enacted] I’ll likely not be here. But I’m so glad that people coming after me will have that choice at the end of life,” she said.
She welcomed the prospect of the change of law bringing end-of-life decisions “into the open”. It would make people with terminal illnesses safer from coercion, she said, because the “scrutiny will be there, whereas before people were dying, and killing themselves, and there was no scrutiny”.
Ms Fisher said that her faith was central to her position on assisted dying. “My God is a God of love, a God of compassion, and I think he wants us to work together with him to create a more compassionate and inclusive world,” she said.
The sanctity of life was “rightly central” to Christian teaching, she said, but, for her, it meant “honouring every individual, and of course giving them the best care and treatment they could possible have, including the best palliative care, but not torturing them at the end of their life”.
