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Streeting reverses stance on assisted dying as NHS ‘not good enough’ to provide real choice
Prime Minister Keir Starmer (left) and Health Secretary, Wes Streeting during a visit to the University College London Hospital (UCLH) where they saw how Proton Beam Therapy is used and met the staff who operate it, September 11, 2024

HEALTH secretary Wes Streeting will vote against the assisted dying Bill, raising concerns that palliative care is not good enough for patients to make an informed choice on ending their life.

The Health Secretary told Labour MPs this week that he had reversed his previous stance because of the state of the NHS.

MPs will debate backbencher Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on November 29 and an initial vote is expected that day.

“Wes said that palliative care isn’t good enough,” one Labour MP told the Times.

Another MP said that Mr Streeting had been “explicit” that he would vote against, saying that the focus should be on palliative care.

Mr Streeting’s reservations echo the concerns of disability rights groups who rallied against the Bill last week.

Disabled People Against Cuts’ Ellen Clifford told the Disability News Service that “our support services – palliative care, the NHS, social care and mental health – are currently broken,” and this could make legalised assisted suicide “very dangerous both for individual people vulnerable to abuse and society as a whole.”

But Gemma Williams, a member of My Death, My Decision, said she wants to be able to choose for herself when “enough is enough.”

The 46-year-old from Carmarthenshire, who has multiple sclerosis, said: “The turning point for me was my grandmother.

“She was 99, she was bed-bound, and it was just awful, and she used to cry and beg for it to end, and she said that ‘there’s no dignity in this, when will it be over?’”

 

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