Meeting of the Parliament 27 May 2015
My general argument is that the issue is very difficult. If we are changing the atmosphere on suicide and moving from a position where suicide is always regrettable and a tragedy to saying that it is sometimes acceptable, it is difficult to go somewhere else and say that sometimes it is okay and sometimes it is not.
I did not read out paragraph 276, which says that we could send out a message
“both to society at large, and to vulnerable individuals—that not all lives are equally worthy of protection, or equally valuable or worthwhile”.
That is my main concern in that area.
The second issue that I want to focus on is coercion. Paragraph 194 of the committee’s report says:
“the Committee notes the observation by the BMA that there is no way to guarantee the absence of coercion”.
Paragraph 186 refers to Professor David Jones saying that there is also the wider area of influence. That concerns me more. In particular, the point about some individuals, especially elderly ones, not wanting to be a burden rings true with me from my experience. The danger in normalising suicide is that that opens up possibilities for vulnerable older people whom we should be constantly reassuring that they are not a burden.
When it comes to coercion or influence from third parties, let us be blunt: there have always been people who have wanted to end other people’s lives for a variety of reasons. Families stand to get an inheritance if an elderly relative dies earlier, and even the national health service and social work departments of councils stand to make financial savings in care costs if a patient dies sooner rather than later. Will every accountant who works for those organisations be totally non-pressurising on staff or patients? We do not know.