Ahead of the votes on Report Stage (continuing on 13 June 2025) and Third Reading (possibly 20 June 2025) on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, the Anscombe Bioethics Centre has released two new papers. These complete the Centre’s analyses of three documents that the Government has produced on the impact and implications of legalising assisted suicide in England and Wales through this Bill.
The first document was an impact assessment of the financial costs and cost reductions of implementing the Bill. Professor Jones’ analysis, already released, highlighted how that document states explicitly that over time the Bill could help cut spending on the NHS, social care, pensions, and benefits, if sufficient numbers of people end their own lives. It is a sinister document from a Government Department.
The second document focuses on the potential impact of the Bill on those with protected characteristics. In his new paper Professor Jones shows how the Government document fails to give sufficient weight to the prevalence in society of abuse of disabled people, of women and of elderly people. People with these characteristics would be at much greater risk of ending their life under the Bill as a result of pressure or coercion by another. They would also be at much greater risk of ending their lives as a result of social pressure or of barriers in accessing the means to live and thrive. The provisions of the Bill are a threat to their equal opportunity to live.
The third document, called a ‘Memorandum’, is the Government’s view on whether the Bill is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Professor Jones shows in his third paper that the Memorandum fails to consider whether there is a human right to suicide prevention under article 2 of the ECHR. It fails especially to consider the right of suicide prevention of people who seek to end their own life in decisions influenced by mental illness. The experience of other countries also shows how the article 14 right to non-discrimination could be used to expand assisted suicide to other patients or even to introduce euthanasia.
Professor David Albert Jones, Director of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, said:
‘The Government, which has shown how getting patients to end their lives could help cut NHS spending, has also shown how “equal opportunity” could be interpreted as equal access to assisted suicide, rather than equal access to suicide prevention. These Government documents show just how dangerous assisted suicide would be for people who are vulnerable due to mental illness, abuse, inadequate healthcare or lack of social support. They show why this Bill is fundamentally unsafe and why it needs to be defeated at Third Reading.’
For more information, please see the Centre’s full Guide on ‘Assisted Dying’ (euthanasia and assisted suicide), which includes a guide to the latest evidence concerning EAS internationally, the Centre’s series of briefing papers on EAS since 2021, and videos on subjects relating to EAS.