Another Labour Party MP has said that Andy Burnham is right that the care sector needs to be fixed before any debate around legalising assisted suicide should take place.
Just weeks before Second Reading of the new assisted suicide Bill on 11 September, Douglas McAllister, the Member of Parliament for West Dunbartonshire, has argued in support of the Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s latest statement on assisted suicide, in which he expresses serious reservations about making assisted suicide legal when end of life care is in such a poor state.
McAllister, who voted against the last, almost identical, assisted suicide Bill, said his “concerns have not gone away”.
McAllister’s article came after the Prime Minister said that the debate around introducing assisted suicide should not take place in a context where palliative and social care remains poorly funded, confirming “that’s the position I will stick to”.
“I take the view that that debate – and I don’t say that there shouldn’t be a debate at some point about those issues – personally, I think there’s something that needs to happen first. That is the fixing of the funding of palliative care and social care”, Burnham said.
McAllister argued that it is correct that Parliament should “first aim to provide the care that [terminally ill people] need to live out their last days well” before any possible legalisation of assisted suicide were to take place.
The MP explained that the assisted suicide Bill brought forward in the last session of Parliament by Kim Leadbeater underwent many months of scrutiny in the House of Lords. The recent Bill brought forward by Lauren Edwards is an almost identical copy of the Leadbeater Bill, meaning that, if MPs vote it through at Second Reading on 11 September, “we once again face months debating the same issue that dominated headlines and divided colleagues and communities last year”, McAllister observed.