Former prime minister Gordon Brown has declared his opposition to legalising assisted dying, which will soon be debated by MPs.
The former Labour PM said the death of his newborn daughter in 2002 did “not convince me of the case for assisted dying; it convinced me of the value and imperative of good end-of-life care”.
In a rare intervention ahead of the Commons debate on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on Friday, November 29, Mr Brown shared a glimpse of the time he and his wife Sarah spent with their baby, Jennifer, who died when she was only 11 days old.
Writing in the Guardian newspaper, Mr Brown said: “We could only sit with her, hold her tiny hand and be there for her as life ebbed away. She died in our arms.
“But those days we spent with her remain among the most precious days of my and Sarah’s lives.”
While he acknowledged that at the heart of the assisted dying debate is a “desire to prevent suffering”, the former Labour MP called for a commission on end-of-life care to be set up, instead of the law change which MPs will consider.
This commission, he said, should work to create a “fully-funded, 10-year strategy for improved and comprehensive palliative care”.
“When only a small fraction of the population are expected to choose assisted dying, would it not be better to focus all our energies on improving all-round hospice care to reach everyone in need of end of life support?” he said.
Mr Brown added: “Medical advances that can transform end-of-life care and the horror of people dying alone, as with Covid, have taught us a great deal.
“This generation have it in our power to ensure no-one should have to face death alone, uncared for, or subject to avoidable pain.”
Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP sponsoring the assisted dying Bill through the Commons, said she was “deeply touched” by Mr Brown’s decision to share his story.
The Spen Valley MP said she agreed completely with his calls for better end-of-life care.
But Ms Leadbeater added: “He and I agree on very many things but we don’t agree on this.
“Only legislation by Parliament can put right what Sir Keir Starmer calls the ‘injustice that we have trapped within our current arrangement’.
“The need to address the inability of the current law to provide people with safeguards against coercion and the choice of a better death, and to protect their loved ones from possible prosecution, cannot wait.
“So for me it isn’t a case of one or the other. My Bill already includes the need for the Government to report back to Parliament on the availability and quality of palliative care, and I strongly support further detailed examination of its provision. We need to do both.”
Though Ms Leadbeater made reference to the Prime Minister as she set out her difference from Mr Brown’s position, Sir Keir has opted not to say whether he will support the Bill.
MPs will be given a free vote on the legislation, meaning their political parties will not require them to vote for or against it, and it will be a matter for their personal consideration.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is the latest senior minister to disclose her position on assisted dying, signalling to broadcasters on Friday that she may support the Bill.
“I continue to support the principle of needing change but also to ensure that we’ve got the proper safeguards and systems in place,” she told ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
Asked if that meant a “yes” when the Bill comes to the Commons, she replied: “I think I last voted on this about 20 years ago and so I have supported the principle in the past and continue to believe that change is needed but we do need to have that debate on the detail and I’ll continue to follow that debate next Friday.”
