{"id":328295,"date":"2025-03-22T13:17:14","date_gmt":"2025-03-22T18:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=328295"},"modified":"2025-03-20T00:23:35","modified_gmt":"2025-03-20T05:23:35","slug":"uk-paralympian-suicide-bill-cuts-disabilities-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/uk-paralympian-suicide-bill-cuts-disabilities-die\/","title":{"rendered":"UK Paralympian: Assisted suicide bill and benefit cuts will push people with disabilities to die"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(Right to Life UK<\/a>) Former Paralympian, Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, believes the combination of legalising assisted suicide and introducing significant benefit cuts will make the lives of many terminally ill people with disabilities \u201cintolerable\u201d and force them to end their lives early.<\/p>\n

As Government plans<\/a> to cut between \u00a35bn and \u00a36bn from the welfare bill through cuts to disability benefits have come to light, wheelchair racing legend Grey-Thompson has argued<\/a> that the combination of these cuts, along with the introduction of Kim Leadbeater\u2019s assisted suicide Bill, is \u201cextremely worrying\u201d. She told<\/a> Times Radio \u201cIf you are disabled and terminally ill and your benefits are cut, making life intolerable, it\u2019s obvious more people will feel forced down this route to end their lives early\u201d.<\/p>\n

Baroness Grey-Thompson also argued that the recently introduced panels on the assisted suicide Bill that will approve assisted suicide applications, dubbed<\/a> the \u2018death panels\u2019, which will include a more junior legal figure, a social worker and a psychiatrist, will be happy to enable disabled people to end their lives, saying <\/a>\u201cAnd when you understand that we live in a relatively able society, there will be people who sit on the panel who will decide that a disabled person has nothing to offer society and will allow them to end their lives\u201d.<\/p>\n

Concerns about being \u201ca financial burden\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Olney, who is a member of the assisted suicide Bill Committee scrutinising Kim Leadbeater\u2019s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill<\/a>, said<\/a> that the combination could be a \u201cperfect storm\u201d for people with disabilities who may feel pressure to end their lives and that the cuts to living costs \u201cmight well contribute to their feelings that they might be a financial burden on their relatives and that will influence them in terms of how they feel about assisted dying\u201d.<\/p>\n

Olney added \u201cIt\u2019s absolutely a concern of the committee that people might be seeking an assisted death for that reason\u201d.<\/p>\n

Olney\u2019s concerns about being \u201ca financial burden\u201d have been a constant theme throughout the assisted suicide Committee\u2019s deliberations. In a revealing exchange, MP Danny Kruger asked<\/a> Leadbeater whether she would \u201cbe content if somebody who had capacity chose an assisted death for the purpose of saving their family money?\u201d. Leadbeater replied saying the situation was more complicated than he suggested.<\/p>\n

He followed up by asking<\/a> \u201cIf they have been judged to have capacity, choosing to have the assisted death in order to save their family money would be acceptable under her Bill, would it not?\u201d.<\/p>\n

Leadbeater again refused to rule out this possibility, saying<\/a> that \u201cWe are oversimplifying a complex situation and a difficult conversation\u201d and calling for \u201cexpertise\u201d that would be achieved \u201cby providing serious amounts of training around this issue\u201d.<\/p>\n

Rebecca Paul MP also attempted<\/a> to elicit a specific response from the Bill\u2019s sponsor on this point.<\/p>\n

\u201c[W]ould someone be allowed to access assisted dying if it was clear that they had capacity and their reason for it was simply not to cost their relatives financial expense or be a burden[?] It is important to be honest about what the Bill does. Is the answer to that yes?\u201d.<\/p>\n

In her answer, Leadbeater appeared to confirm that as long as the other criteria were met, if someone requested assisted suicide due to concerns about being a financial burden on relatives, this would be a legally acceptable reason for assisted suicide.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, it comes down to a question of autonomy, dignity and choice for patients, but they are not simple conversations\u201d, she said<\/a>.<\/p>\n