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Church leaders continue to express concerns as Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill passes first stage

02 December 2024

ALAMY

Anna Dixon MP speaking during the debate of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on Friday

Anna Dixon MP speaking during the debate of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on Friday

CHURCH figures have expressed concern after the first steps towards making assisted dying legal in England and Wales were taken on Friday.

MPs voted for the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill to progress to committee stage, after a debate punctuated with personal stories, but with few explicit invocations of religious arguments (News, 29 November).

In a statement shortly after the vote, the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, said that she had been “deeply moved watching proceedings unfold in the House of Commons today. My prayers are with all those who have been affected, who have shared and heard their stories, and facilitated this debate.”

Bishop Mullally, who is the C of E’s lead bishop for health care and a former Chief Nursing Officer for England, said: “The Church of England believes that the compassionate response at the end of life lies in the provision of high quality palliative care services to all who need them.

“Today’s vote still leaves the question of how this could be implemented in an overstretched and under-funded NHS, social care, and legal system. Safeguarding the most vulnerable must be at the heart of the coming parliamentary process; today’s vote is not the end of the debate.”

The Archbishop of York was reported in the Guardian as saying: “I regret this decision. It changes the relationship between the state and its citizens, between doctors and their patients, and within families between children and their terminally ill relatives. Once begun it will be hard to undo and control.”

On social media, the Bishop of Norwich, the Rt Revd Graham Usher, wrote that the result of the vote was “bleak for all who feared this, including the vulnerable, disability groups and those working in palliative care. The state should not be sanctioning death. Instead, better palliative and hospice care, so we can die with care and dignity.”

In a statement posted later on the diocese of Norwich website, Bishop Usher referred to other countries where assisted dying had been legalised, and the scope of those eligible later expanded.

“Concerns about how it will work in practice have not disappeared. When the Bill eventually reaches the House of Lords, I will want to see how it has been amended from what MPs had before them today,” he said.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey has been one of the few prominent C of E voices in favour of the introduction of assisted dying. On Friday, he was quoted in The Times as saying: “Now is not the time for celebration from supporters but for serious work across the House to get this law right so it protects the vulnerable, as well as reducing pain, suffering, and indignity at the very end of life.”

He told The Sunday Express that he hoped that peers in the House of Lords would not use “dirty tricks” to stymie the Bill, but would show that it respected that the Commons had “spoken clearly”. He said that improving palliative care should not be disregarded, and called on the Government to invest in the hospice system.

Several Roman Catholic bishops expressed their dismay at the Bill’s passing its first parliamentary hurdle. The Roman Catholic lead bishop for life issues, the Rt Revd John Sherrington, an auxiliary bishop in the archdiocese of Westminster, said that the Bill was “flawed in principle, and also contains particular clauses that are of concern.

“We ask the Catholic community to pray that Members of Parliament will have the wisdom to reject this Bill at a later stage in its progress,” he said.

The RC Bishop of Shrewsbury, the Rt Revd Mark Davies, was quoted in the Catholic Herald on Friday saying that it was “a dark day for our country when the Christian witness to genuine compassion and the value of human life is more needed than ever”.

The RC Bishop of Portsmouth, the Rt Revd Philip Egan, said: “I am really sorry this has happened, even though in a way it was not unexpected. It leaves me sad as it will put an intolerable pressure on the elderly and the terminally ill, and undermine the trust normally placed in doctors and carers.

“I fear, too, the ever growing expansion of eligibility to other categories of people. Britain has now crossed a line: things will not be the same again. May God help us.”

The chief executive of the Evangelical Alliance, Gavin Calver, said on Friday that the Bill would “normalise suicide in our society as a positive option and places the most vulnerable at risk of abuse and coercion”.

He said that the Evangelical Alliance would “continue to work to ensure that the Bill does not become law”.

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