Meeting of the Parliament 17 March 2026 [Draft]
One of my colleagues suggested to me that he would rather that religious people be up front and say that they oppose the bill because of their belief in God. As that is one of my reasons, I am happy to say a little from that angle. However, I have other reasons for opposing the bill, including reasons from a financial perspective, given my background as an accountant.
On the financial front, when we debated amendments to the bill last week, Michael Marra questioned whether the financial memorandum fully covered the estimated costs. However, another angle that relates to finances is whether there is an opportunity to save money if someone chooses an early death. It seems to me that the public purse has the potential to save on hospital places, on care home fees, on pensions and, perhaps, on other costs if assisted dying becomes an option.
Clearly, if someone chose to die just a few days before their natural death, that would not make much difference to cost. However, if someone had a life expectancy of six months but could perhaps go on for a year, the savings could be considerable. That is not to mention the fact that, for a family who have a well-off elderly relative, getting their hands on the estate more speedily could be very attractive. We know that power of attorney is abused by some families and that it is not well policed. Therefore, it seems likely that a range of players could potentially benefit financially if assisted dying became an option.
That is why last week I deliberately chose to talk about “encouraging” rather than just “allowing” an early death, which was the phrasing that Lorna Slater objected to. Sure, we are talking right now about giving people more choice—of empowering them and using words such as that. However, we need to look further ahead at what could happen and at what—I think—is likely to happen.
We have discussed how difficult it is to stop coercion or pressure on someone to end their life prematurely, especially when that pressure could be very subtle. How much more could that be the case when financial incentives are added in?
What about the angle from a Christian perspective? At its core, our belief is that God gives life and God decides when life should end. Clearly, there are also human reasons for both birth and death, but we believe that, behind all that, God is guiding and directing. I should say, to be fair, that not all Christian believers oppose assisted dying; just on Sunday, one of my friends at church told me that he supports it.
What about the question of suffering? Surely a loving God would not allow suffering, would he? That is a question that folk often ask and have asked for many years of people of faith. There is not exactly an easy answer to that question, but, yes, actually, God does allow suffering.
We believe that, because human beings chose to go their own way rather than following God’s way, suffering came into what God had made to be a perfect world. Suffering is happening all over the world, and there can be suffering with a natural death and with an assisted death. We all want to reduce suffering as much as we can, whether we have religious belief or not, so I absolutely support the many calls for better palliative care and encourage the provision of more resources for the hospice movement, as others have said.
At the end of the day, no one really wants declining health or a death, yet they are part of the human condition. One big difference for those of us with a Christian belief is that we are promised life after death, so however hard our lives might have been—and, for that matter, however hard our deaths might have been—there is something better available to look forward to.
Perhaps not surprisingly, I am currently reading a book about retirement, and it makes the point that older people have so much to offer. We all have so much to learn from people who are older than us and also to give to people who are younger than us. So, please, colleagues, let us not undermine the older people, their value and what they still have to contribute. They are valuable, and I think that we are duty bound to oppose this bill.