Why is the UK Labour party putting assisted suicide ahead of social care?

This article was published by Spiked on January 14, 2025.

Elderly and disabled people need a national care service, not a national suicide service.

Kevin Yuill

By Kevin Yuill

The British government has announced a new commission that it hopes will build a ‘national consensus’ on social-care reform. Yet despite Labour’s talk of the ‘critical issues’ that face the social-care sector, the commission won’t deliver its first report until 2028, which is around the time of the next election. In other words, despite decades of debates, commissions and reports about social care, Keir Starmer and Co are kicking the can even further down the road. Plus, given the government’s already deep unpopularity, it may well be leaving the urgent problem of social care to whoever is next in power.

This offers an illuminating insight into Labour’s attitude towards the ill, elderly and disabled – particularly when contrasted with the government’s haste in legislating for assisted suicide. PM Starmer boasts an enormous parliamentary majority, and as a result has little trouble navigating the passage of bills. So why is Labour prioritising assisted suicide over social care?

After all, social care poses far fewer ethical concerns than assisted suicide. While MP Kim Leadbeater’s private members’ bill has already proven deeply controversial, a national consensus has long existed on the issue of social care. We all agree that care for elderly, ill and disabled people needs to be provided as widely as possible. The only real points of contention concern the amount of resources and public funds that should be allocated to this end, and how those funds should be raised.

The Leadbeater bill is far less straightforward. If it becomes law, it will fundamentally alter the UK’s moral terrain. By legalising ‘assisted dying’, it will transform the relationship between doctor and patient forever.

And this is far from the only problem with Leadbeater’s bill, which passed its second reading in the House of Commons back in November. Unlike assisted-suicide legislation in most other countries, the bill contains no conscientious-objection clause for doctors. In jurisdictions that have already legalised assisted suicide, only Canada, where euthanasia is now the fifth-leading cause of death, requires doctors to participate regardless of their views.

These details, and many others, bear thinking about – not least by our elected law-makers. But the assisted-dying bill was rushed through after just five hours of debate. Leadbeater herself betrayed a limited understanding of her own bill, and its implications, when she was arguing for it in parliament. MPs were given only 16 days to digest one of the longest private members’ bills in parliamentary history. What’s more, a committee stacked with assisted-suicide supporters and inexperienced MPs is now responsible for combing through the bill at break-neck speed.

The skewed priorities are grotesque. A third reading of Leadbeater’s shoddy legislation is already scheduled for April. Assisted suicide could be law by 2027, bringing in what Tory MP Danny Kruger has branded a ‘national suicide service’. Yet, at the same time, more than 10 and a half years after it was first proposed, a national care service looks no closer to becoming a reality.

It seems that this is a government keener on helping people to die than on ensuring they are cared for while they are still here. 

Kevin Yuill teaches American studies at the University of Sunderland. His book, Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalisation, is published by Palgrave Macmillan.