David Smith MP: ​With assisted dying we are opening a dangerous door

In April I had a warm welcome from the team at HospiceCare North Northumberland.

It was a genuine privilege to sit down with the people who provide most palliative care services in my constituency.

I arrived ready to talk about Assisted Dying – they were ready to talk funding. The two are closely linked.

At present they must fundraise almost all their costs – around £1.5million each year.

The fact that they can do so (just) shows the immense amount of local support and respect for the services they offer. Not just palliative care but bereavement support, dementia support services and a drop-in café service. All free at the point of need.

In the Assisted Dying Bill, I think we find a proposed law that is looking to provide the wrong solution to an issue that concerns us all: how will our lives end?

Instead of creating laws to end life, we should take the opportunity of this moment to ask how we can support life in all its fullness until the moment of death.

It’s a chance to invest in services we already know work really well for families and individuals. Services that many of us will need at some point.

Before becoming MP for North Northumberland, I led a homelessness charity for many years. It taught me more than I thought possible about what it means to be vulnerable, what it means not to be fully in control of your own life. And I saw coercion and power play out in many ways.

With assisted dying, we are opening a dangerous door. A door that will create pressure, not just on those who are terminally ill, but on those who are frail, older or disabled. Those who already feel they are a burden. It also opens a door that will empower those who hope to gain from the death of a relation.

I can clearly see the reasoning and motivation that has driven the Assisted Dying Bill. Those who support it have good intentions.

But we cannot put our own desire to choose the hour of our death above the rights of others to live free from coercion, discrimination and pressure. Instead, I want to see this Labour government restore the NHS and its amazing frontline staff to full power, so they can provide the best possible care to all.

This should include proper investment and strategic planning around palliative care, so that our nation becomes capable and equipped to give those with terminal illnesses and at the end of life a ‘good death’.

If our country can find more resources to fund Assisted Dying – and be under no illusion, it will require new funding – then we can afford to find greater resources for wonderful palliative care organisations like HospiceCare North Northumberland.

Doing so, together, we can truly offer dignity and relief to those in the final stages of their life. It’s for these reasons, and many more, that I will once more be voting against the Assisted Dying Bill.