A new initiative opposing the campaign to legalise euthanasia has been launched at Westminster.
The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Dying Well – Dying Well, for short – says it wishes ‘to promote excellence in palliative care and stand against the legalisation of doctor-assisted suicide’.
Its leaders include evangelical MPs Danny Kruger, a Conservative, who is chair, and Lib Dem Tim Farron who is a vice chair. Former Bishop of London Richard Chartres is another vice chair.
In a video launching the new group, Kruger declares: ‘There is a well-funded, well-organised campaign here in Parliament to end the ban on assisted suicide …
‘It would put huge pressure on elderly and vulnerable people who might think they’re a burden on their families or on society to end their lives early. We’ve seen from the small number of countries where this is already legal that the scope for who is eligible for assisted suicide is constantly expanded, and it becomes more and more normalised.
‘This country leads the world in end-of-life care, and in recent years there have been huge developments in pain management, in the science of managing pain; and it’s now possible to all but eliminate physical suffering for people in the last stages of their life.’
More than 70 MPs backed a letter initiated by Kruger which has been sent to the Lord Chancellor, Robert Buckland. It voices the signatories’ ‘grave concerns about the renewed calls to change the law on assisted suicide and euthanasia’.
On its website, dyingwell.co.uk, the new group says: ‘The fundamental reason why we oppose assisted suicide is that it replaces a clear and rational boundary that protects vulnerable people, with a “slippery slope” that could lead to widespread abuse and distress.
‘The current, clear boundary is the principle that we do not involve ourselves in deliberately bringing about the deaths of other people. The legalisation of assisted suicide would replace this with a weak, artificial and arbitrary boundary – the principle that such actions are permissible for certain groups of people.’
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