Nursing leaders have admitted patients could choose a proposed new assisted dying service because of inadequate palliative care.
Professor Nicola Ranger described it as “possible” in evidence to MPs as she warned access to good end-of-life care is not “as good as it needs to be” for everyone.
She also warned training for nursing staff would be key as they would have to be “very vigilant around anyone feeling that they’re a burden” and opting for assisted dying.
Her comments came as England’s chief medical officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty warned ministers not to rush a proposed assisted dying service through – as he cautioned against any “firm deadline”.
Asked about the prospect of implementing the policy within two years, he told MPs: “I would prefer this was not running against a timeline”, saying “this is something best not done at speed if we can avoid it.”
A firm deadline risked making it “much harder to provide a safe, fair and secure service”, he warned.
Campaigners have claimed the proposed law is being rushed through at the expense of elderly and disabled people.
On Tuesday, Ellen Clifford, coordinator of the UK Deaf and Disabled People’s Monitoring Coalition, warned: “Something of this magnitude has to go at a much slower pace.”
Prof Ranger and Mr Whitty were giving evidence to a committee of 23 MPs led by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour backbencher who proposed the legislation, which passed its second reading in the Commons before Christmas.
Asked by Conservative MP Danny Kruger, “So it could be possible that somebody is requesting assisted dying because of the absence of adequate palliative care?” Prof Ranger replied: “I think when you put it in a question like that, it could be possible, but what we would want to strive to do is have a system that doesn’t leave anyone in distress.”
In his evidence, Prof Whitty also warned it would be “extremely difficult” to have a list of illnesses that would apply under the proposed legislation.
Currently, there are no specific illnesses listed in the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. The draft legislation specifies only that someone should be diagnosed as having six months or less to live.
Asked if there could be a list of conditions, Prof Whitty told MPs on the assisted dying Bill committee: “If I’m honest, I think it would be extremely difficult.
“Let’s take cancer – for the great majority of people with the majority of cancers that are diagnosed tomorrow, the doctor who’s seeing them will say: ‘In all confidence, you have cancer, and I expect you to be alive, not just next Christmas, but it’s for many years to come’.
“So the fact they have cancer is not, in itself, a demonstration that they are going to die.”
“Equally, there are people who may not have a single disease that is going to lead to the path to death, but they have multiple diseases are interacting … they’re highly frail and it’s not the fact of one disease that’s the cause, but the fact of this constellation that is clearly leading them, on a path inexorably to a death at some point in the foreseeable future.
“Exact timings are tricky. But, therefore, I think it’s quite difficult to actually specify these diseases are going to cause death, and these diseases are not, because in both directions, that could potentially be misleading.”
Last week an MP who developed type 1 diabetes spoke of her fears that the proposed legislation is so vague her condition could be included as a valid reason to end her life.
Sarah Bool, the new Tory MP for South Northamptonshire, is calling for a list of conditions that should or should not included. Ms Leadbeater has argued against such a list, saying diabetes is “not a terminal illness”.
But Ms Bool told The Independent: “I had a type 1 diabetes diagnosis three years ago, but the way the bill is drafted as it stands, I am caught potentially, because type 1 diabetes is a progressive illness that is not reversible by treatment. It’s something that I can only manage.”
Paralympic athlete turned disability campaigner Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson has also argued that the bill could apply to her if she had a sore that failed to heal properly.
Ms Leadbeater has previously said she is “very open” to hearing how safeguards can be strengthened. She said some 40 people have been invited to give evidence to the committee. Speaking to The Independent, she argued that diabetes would not be considered as a terminal illness so would not be a reason to seek an assisted death.
