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Usdaw overwhelmingly backs legalising assisted dying at annual conference
Paddy Lillis

USDAW delegates overwhelmingly backed a motion calling for the legalisation of assisted dying in Britain at their annual conference today.

General secretary Paddy Lillis supported the motion on the condition that any provision has significant safeguards to protect vulnerable people, acknowledging the proposed change is “something that feels instinctively wrong to many people.”

Delegate Les Perry said: “If this would have been in power and in place, [my father] would not have suffered as much as he did.”

Dr Andrew Green, deputy chairman of the British Medical Association’s (BMA) ethics committee, called for assurances that legislation would provide doctors a choice to opt-in to carrying out assisted dying.

He told the Radio 4 Today programme: “The main requirement was that we would want doctors to be given a real genuine choice about whether and to what extent they would be willing to participate.

“There would need to be an opt-in arrangement. It wouldn’t be part of any doctor’s normal job to provide physicians’ assisted dying.”

The BMA has shifted from a position against assisted dying to one of neutrality.

He said: “As a representative organisation we have a duty to represent all those people’s views and that’s why we changed to a position of neutrality.”

 
Liberation webinar, 30 November2024, 6pm (UK)
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