Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown criticises move to legalise assisted dying which would “undermine the sanctity of life” and lead to a slippery slope in which the frail are pressurised to end their lives.”
Tom Whipple, Science Editor | Kaya Burgess, Religious Affairs Correspondent
Thursday October 21 2021, 12.01am, The Times
Gordon Brown has given warning that passing a bill to allow assisted dying would “undermine the sanctity of life” and lead to a slippery slope in which the frail are pressurised to end their lives.
The former prime minister joined the Chief Rabbi, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the most senior Roman Catholic cardinal in Britain in opposing the private member’s bill, which is due to be debated for a second time in the House of Lords.
Writing in The Times Brown, the former Labour prime minister, said that the focus of the medical profession should be in alleviating suffering, and that the “cold, bureaucratic directives” of the bill could change the way we view doctors and nurses.
“If death were to become not just an option but something close to an entitlement through the bureaucratic processes that an Act of Parliament’s provisions impose, we would, in my view, be altering fundamentally the way we think about mortality,” he said, writing for The Times’s politics email, Red Box.
“The risk of pressures, however subtle and indirect, on the frail and the vulnerable, who may feel their existence burdensome to others, cannot ever be entirely excluded. And the inevitable erosion of trust in the caring professions – if they were in a position to end life – would be to lose something very precious.”
The private members’ bill, introduced by Baroness Meacher, proposes allowing those with less than six months to live to be assisted in killing themselves, provided there is a sign-off from two doctors and a high court judge.
Brown said that members of the Lords on both sides of the bill were making arguments through genuine compassion but that in his opinion allowing the bill to pass would risk a “slippery slope” in which “legislators – undoubtedly out of compassion and a desire to avoid suffering – would be unable to resist the erosion of the safeguards against the taking of life”.
His arguments echoed those of Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, and Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis. In a rare joint letter, they opposed the bill.
“All people of faith, and those of none, can share our concern that the common good is not served by policies or actions that would place very many vulnerable people in more vulnerable positions,” they said, adding that better palliative care was needed. “We believe that the aim of a compassionate society should be assisted living rather than an acceptance of assisted suicide.”
