Rupa Huq explains why her personal experience led her to vote against the Assisted Dying Bill 

“Ethnicity is a glaring blind-spot of the assisted dying bill”

MP for Ealing Central and Acton Rupa Huq explains why her personal experience led her to vote against the Terminally Ill Adults Bill 

In the end the atmosphere in the aftermath of the vote was somewhat flat. The usual jubilation/ backslappery amongst MPs accompanying momentous consequential votes in the House of Commons chamber was absent and while the 55 majority from October was narrowed to 23, the House of Commons comfortably approved state sponsored Assisted Death.

“It feels like Brexit all over again” one colleague who lived through those times with me murmured. Indeed it was the cursed ratio: 52-48 for and against with entrenched positions taken.

On one side arguing for; Esther Rantzen (who extracted Starmer’s pre-election promise for legislation should he win) and Jonathan Dimbleby who wrote in telling me to cast aside my religious hang-ups – thanks!

On the other opposing were multiple Royal Colleges, countless disability groups but also the less affluent, non-organised. I’d insert my own late parents (also those of Konnie Huq) into the latter category.

Their experience, which I’m still haunted by, is why I voted against. While it’s easy to label all those against assisted dying as religious nutcases, my parents’ navigation of the medical world highlighted operational and practical issues which convince me our systems are not robust enough to deal with this major shock to the system.

Losing both mum and dad since 2014 showed me how the elderly with English as a second language are made to feel burdensome by an overstretched NHS… In my mum’s case for seeking a GP appointment. One GP in particular had obvious contempt for her accented words voicing genuine concerns, limiting her to “one question per visit”.

By the time she was hospitalised losing her command of English, which she had spoken everyday of her working life at BT, her medical team clearly saw her as an annoyance and as, that awful word “a bedblocker”. Only when Konnie and I turned up to argue for her was mum taken more seriously. But not everyone has such advocates.

It’s no coincidence that a majority of BAME MPs opposed this bill. Health inequalities pervade the NHS: social class, ethnicity, gender, disability, geography and literacy predict poorer outcomes and life expectancy. Why should we expect end of life to be any different than life itself?

Did we learn nothing from Covid illuminating these via disparities in death-rates? Our vulnerable are frequently considered to be vegetablised and their agency denied as-it-is eg the disabled who some can’t see as people beyond the wheelchair.

Rupa Huq’s graduation picture, with her mum and dad and sister Konnie

Ethnicity is a glaring blind-spot of the assisted dying bill. The blind faith in the equalities impact assessment that it’ll be alright on the night is simply not good enough.

Its “race” section narrowly only considers barriers to accessing Assisted Dying rather than the way minorities are perceived as lower value, so easier dispensed with. The only non native speakers of English this bill seems to recognise are the Welsh, as its supporters pushed ad infinitum in the Commons debates.

Yet our modern multicultural reality goes far further than that. Ethnic minorities are chronically under-represented on NHS Boards. This needs urgent rectification when (as doctors and patients) they are present on NHS wards.

The promised safeguards are only qualifying criteria and not remotely infallible particularly when dealing with a matter of life and death. We know once the assisted dying door is opened just a chink, once narrow criteria widen and widen to the point depressed teenagers can avail themselves of this in the Netherlands.

I really hope I’m proved wrong but once an option, assisted dying could become irresistible given the cost of living. Conducting advice surgeries weekly for last 10 years has opened my eyes to coercion and duress, to the astronomical value of London property and elder abuse from relatives wanting to hasten probate to get a foot on the ladder in a housing crisis.

I fear granny/grandad/ nona/ daadi/ nanima being persuaded or convincing themselves they’d be better off dead to release the equity in the house/ savings put aside given climbing care costs can now happen more easily. Many depend on their kids to interpret for them after all.

There is a case for liberalising the law and the principle of assisted dying has merit but not as framed in this bill. Yes I back autonomy but unlike abortion dealing with a life that’s not started and a woman choosing what happens to her body, the room for error and manipulation to end a life for malign here is manifold.

Why now with no dedicated extra funding, taking clinicians away from clinical need when the NHS has millions on waiting lists? This was not in any manifesto. Surely the incentive to fix palliative care fades once assisted dying is green-lighted. What about fixing adult social care promised by every one of the six PMs I’ve been an MP under?

It fundamentally changes the doctor/ patient relationship from healer to short circuiting the end. It contradicts both the foundational principles of the NHS and ancient hippocratic oath all medics sign up to. The six month prognosis is notoriously impossible to predict as Esther Rantzen herself proves. How can we guarantee checks and balances when so few people are trained to make judgement calls in this field? How lengthy will the process be and what when minds change?

Yes public opinion is for it, but the same applies to bringing back hanging. Yes the status quo is imperfect, but there is danger in going from frying pan to fire with something worse. Yes there are various luvvies who back this, and folk who’ve visited my advice surgery to articulate outrage at the iniquitous cost of a ten grand on a trip to Dignitas, but our role as MPs is in part as voice to the voiceless and vulnerable, like my mum and dad.

The probability of death in life is one but cost cutting should not prevail even with a black hole in the national coffers. It’s over to the House of Lords now and boy do they have work to do to make this rushed and botched bill that’ll divert resource from elsewhere in an already stretched NHS prone to burnout, watertight. I fear like Brexit assisted dying may turn out just  to be easier said than done.

Rupa Huq

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