Tanni Grey-Thompson has warned that if parliament passes a law allowing assisted dying it will enable unscrupulous families to go “doctor shopping” to end the lives of elderly, disabled or sick relatives.
The 11-time Paralympic gold medallist, now a disability rights campaigner and member of the House of Lords, spoke exclusively to The Independent about her fears of the consequences if MPs and peers pass the controversial legislation.
The private members bill brought forward by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater is due to have its second reading in the Commons on 29 November.
But already both ministers who will be responsible for overseeing its implementation if it is passed – health secretary Wes Streeting and justice secretary Shabana Mahmood – have indicated that they will oppose the legislation.
Baroness Grey-Thompson dismisses claims by Ms Leadbeater and her supporters that the Bill contains the strictest safeguards in the world, warning that “the reality ... is very different”.
The cross-bench peer’s intervention comes after a warning from Sir James Munby, former president of the family division of the High Court, who also raised serious concerns about the Bill’s safeguards.
In a forthright interview, she questions the myths behind assisted dying and highlights the loopholes in the Bill, which she believes will open the floodgates to abuse.
She argues that section 4 (5) of the bill means that if one doctor refuses to sign a request, another can then be found who will – as two doctors and a judge are needed to provide permission for the procedure.
“It is fair to say that it kind of allows doctor shopping,” she said. “The first doctor can refer you to the second one, but then, if they don’t approve one, they can carry on until they find one that is willing.”
The cross-bench peer said that where assisted dying has been legalised in Canada there is “a shortlist of doctors” willing to sign the paperwork and at least one is responsible for around 400 deaths, referring to Dr Ellen Wiebe who is a prominent practitioner in the field.
And despite her enormous success in the sporting world and subsequent life in politics, Baroness Grey-Thompson tells The Independent: “I have been told in the building [Parliament], ‘if my life was like yours I would kill myself’. I’m like ‘wow! I’ve had a really good life.’”
These exchanges lie at the heart of her concerns about the Bill. She believes people will come under pressure to end their lives prematurely because of disability, age or other reasons.
While the bill specifically states that terminal illness is not “a disability, within the meaning of section 6 of the Equality Act 2010”, Baroness Grey-Thompson believes that this is no guarantee it will not be stretched over time to include people with disabilities under other reasons.
She sees a culture where people with a disability already face a series of prejudices.
“There’s education, healthcare, work, transport, there's discrimination [against people with disabilities]. So you could just see where some people will think, well, you know, I'm better off dead. Or the other side... disabled people are told, ‘You'd be better off dead.’”
One of her concerns is that section 15 of Bill would allow for someone else other than the patient to sign the relevant document as a proxy requesting termination of their life. This, she believes, opens the door for abusive “bad families”.
“The Bill says you can have a proxy signature, but also the Bill says that it’s a bit vague on you having to take [the pills] yourself. But if you can’t sign the form, how do you take the medication yourself? That's kind of euthanasia.”
She added: “I’d be really worried about someone signing the form on my behalf [because of] the work I’ve done around coercive control in a domestic setting, I was arguing with ministers because the government was saying that carers aren’t part of a domestic setting. But actually, we know there’s carer abuse. We know there’s elder abuse.”
Elder abuse is believed to affect one in six elderly people in the UK. Baroness Grey-Thompson argues this proves how vulnerable they are to “bad families”.
“The coercive control bit doesn’t mean anything in the bill that we’ve got because when someone’s gone, they’re gone, and the bad families aren’t going to say, ‘Oh, I tell you what do you want to investigate this for coercive control?’”
She also has concerns over what is meant by terminally ill, noting that while many people believe it is something like late stages of incurable cancer, the Bill is much more open than that.
“If I got a pressure sore and it didn’t heal, I could very easily fit into the six-month diagnosis.”
She also warns that it could be extended to conditions like severe depression or eating disorders such as anorexia.
And once the principle of allowing assisted dying is established she believes that it could be extended on equality grounds in the courts including the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Baroness Grey-Thompson says at least 50 MPs did not believe the current bill goes far enough.
The peer also questioned “the fantasy” that assisted dying allows “a last glass of champagne in a family picnic” and is a quick end.
”People think it’s this Hollywood death. Well, that’s what you hope, isn’t it? Yeah, you know that you sort of throw a pill and you just slip away, and all your loved ones are around you crying. But actually, it’s like 100 pills.
“You’re either swallowing that number of pills, which is really difficult, or you’ve got to break them open and put them into a mixture, which apparently tastes absolutely disgusting, then you’ve got to have anti-sickness [medication] to stop you throwing it back up. Then what happens if it doesn’t work straightaway.
“There’s just one case where it took a minute but in Oregon half the cases took at least 53 minutes. The longest one took 137 hours (more than five days).”
She noted that the alternative to the pills was intravenously “which again really blurs the line between assisted dying and euthanasia”.
Baroness Grey-Thompson has been asked to allow the Bill to go to committee stage to be amended if it makes it to the Lords, but she warns “it is unamendable”.
She emphasises that as an atheist she is not coming from this issue on religious grounds, but adds: “I just think once you change that relationship with society, you can't pull it back.”
The second reading of the assisted dying Bill is set to take place in the Commons on Friday 29 November, with MPs voting after a five-hour debate.
