Assisted dying was back on the House of Lords agenda again last week. Whilst the bill was rushed through the Commons, opponents in the Lords are trying their hardest to scrutinise it.
Surely poor people are exempt from assisted dying?
On Friday 16 January 2025, the House debated issues including eligibility and motivation. One thing opponents of the assisted dying bill kept raising was the vagueness around financial motives. In particular, whether terminally ill people would be allowed to kill themselves because they couldn’t afford to live.
You’d think this would be a simple answer of “Jesus Christ of fucking course not”. But nothing is that simple (or compassionate) with Lord Falconer.
Crossbench peer Gillian Finlay’s amendment 28 was about ensuring that terminally ill people know about specific benefits available to them. The amendment also wants the benefits fast-tracked so people don’t choose to end their lives for financial reasons.
Choice? What choice?
As Nuala O’Loan said:
In so many cases, the availability of financial support that may be critical is not known about. When my brother died of cancer a couple of years ago, we had no knowledge that such support should have been made available to him.
There are many others in similar circumstances who may opt for assisted death because their situation cannot be improved as it could be if the financial help that should be made available were to be made available.
This was a topic around assisted dying many others also sought clarity on. But when Labour peer lord Charlie Falconer finally got round to answering it, he preposterously said “choice” was more important:
What I think she was getting at is that you have to be sure that financial circumstance—being short of money—is not a relevant reason for an assisted death. I put forward the Bill on the basis that choice is the key thing. Your financial position might be an element in what makes you reach a decision. From the way that the safeguards are put in the Bill, they are trying to ensure it is your decision, freely made.
Spoken like a man who has never had to make the “choice” between heating or eating.
Falconer definitely making a choice – to be an uncaring removed
It was Tory Mark Harper who pulled him up on this. Remarking that he was ‘slightly incredulous’, Harper said during the assisted dying debate:
If you are in a financial position where you feel you are unable to live properly because you have no money, and as a result of that, you decide you want to end your life, that is not a freely reached decision; that is being done because of your circumstances.
Is he really saying that he is okay with poor people ending their lives, with the assistance of others, because they are poor?
It’s worth pointing out here that Harper consistently voted for benefit cuts when he was an MP.
Again though, Falconer can’t be convinced to remember he’s supposed to be a human:
I am saying that what the Bill does is allow you to make your own decision. I am strongly against saying poor people should not have that choice, which appears to be what the noble Lord, Lord Harper, is saying. The evidence from abroad is that it is people from perhaps more financially secure circumstances who make this sort of choice.
A final attempt around assisted dying
Because Falconer attempted to put words in his mouth, Harper made a final attempt:
What I am saying is that if someone is making the decision because they feel pressured because of their financial circumstances, that is not a free choice; that is a choice that is being forced upon someone by their circumstances. They are not in an equal position to someone with resources. That would be very wrong, and I think people would be horrified that he is suggesting that someone, because of their financial circumstances, should be more likely to end their life than someone else.
Surely now it must’ve got through? How much more fucking crystal clear can you make it? But no, Falconer was still content to be stubborn and unfeeling. He shut down the conversation with:
I am saying it is their choice.
It should go without saying that “choice” in assisted dying goes completely out the window when you literally can’t afford to stay alive. But apparently it did need saying.
The mask slips
Finally, later on in the assisted dying debate, the mask slipped. Falconer said:
Do financial considerations apply? They might well apply because there is only a limited amount of money to go around, so they might contribute.
Whilst we all knew that’s what he was essentially saying all along, to hear him actually say it is chilling. It’s absolutely terrifying that in a literal life-or-death bill, those in power can go “well, there’s only so much money”.
It’s the modern equivalent of Scrooge saying, “If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population”. It might be a month too late to hope for ghosts coming in the night to give this ghoul a kick up the conscience, though.
When you’ve never had to worry about money, you will never understand just how debilitating poverty is. And when you’re so determined to push through a bill that will kill so many, what’s a few benefit scroungers anyway?
Featured image via the Canary
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