Gordon Brown declares opposition to assisted dying

Former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown has gone public with his opposition to a new law on assisted dying.

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which would allow some terminally-ill people to have a medically-assisted death, is set to be debated by MPs on Friday next week.

Labour MP Kim Leadbeater has introduced the bill, saying it could prevent harrowing deaths, following a long campaign by supporters of the position, including Esther Rantzen, who believe the law needs to be changed.

Brown told BBC Radio 4's Sunday programme that "people want to know what the evidence is for the scale of the challenge", and called for more debate on the issue.

Brown stood down as MP in 2015 so will not get a vote but his voice still carries weight in the Labour Party.

MPs will get a free vote on Friday, meaning they can follow their conscience rather than party orders.

Brown joins health secretary Wes Streeting, justice secretary Shabana Mahmood and the two longest-serving MPs in the Commons in speaking out against the bill - although many MPs' views remain unknown.

In an opinion column for the Guardian on Friday, Brown writes of the death of his first daughter, Jennifer Jane, aged only 11 days, and how this strengthened his belief "this is not the right time to make such a profound decision".

"The experience of sitting with a fatally ill baby girl did not convince me of the case for assisted dying; it convinced me of the value and imperative of good end-of-life care," he said.

Calling for a commission on palliative care, Brown acknowledged that both sides in the assisted dying debate share a common concern and "genuine compassion felt for all those suffering painful deaths".

But with "the NHS still at its lowest ebb", he said "we need to show we can do better at assisted living before deciding whether to legislate on ways to die".

He added: "An assisted dying law, however well intended, would alter society’s attitude towards elderly, seriously ill and disabled people, even if only subliminally, and I also fear the caring professions would lose something irreplaceable – their position as exclusively caregivers.

"Add to that the slippery slope with lawmakers, undoubtedly out of compassion, finding the erosion of safeguards and the extension of eligibility hard to resist."

In his interview with the BBC's Sunday programme, Brown echoed many of the points raised in the opinion column, and called for citizens' assemblies - where a group is brought together to learn about and discuss a particular issue - to help peoples' understanding.

"People want to know what the evidence is for the scale of the challenge," he told host Julie Etchingham, adding: "I don't think we’ve had this debate in full, in this country yet."

Brown is a longstanding critic of assisted dying, and in a 2008 interview with the Archbishop of Westminster told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme he was "totally against laws" allowing assisted suicide or euthanasia, saying they could put vulnerable people under pressure.

In the BBC interview, Brown also spoke about how his faith has informed his life and beliefs, saying: "I see life as a gift. I see it as something to be valued."

He added that while religious views came into his stance on the issue, "it's important to put the secular argument that people can understand - that it is possible to avoid so much of the pain that people are experiencing and we haven’t invested enough in doing that".

MPs last considered the issue of assisted dying in parliament in 2015, after Brown had stepped down as an MP, when plans to change the law were overwhelmingly rejected.

Public opinion shows a majority support of changing the law, with the latest YouGov poll showing 73% of Britons support allowing assisted dying in principle.

Campaigning for both sides continues in the run-up to Friday's vote, which will be the first public expression of MPs' support.

With a week to go for minds to change and hundreds of new MPs who have never put their views on the record, the result is difficult to predict, although there are some indications it could be close.

Responding to the opinion column, Leadbeater said she was moved by Brown's words and agreed on the need for better palliative care - but she stressed the decision on Friday was not a case of one or the other.

"I was deeply touched by Gordon Brown's description of how he and Sarah surrounded their new-born daughter with love as her life slipped away," she said.

"I know how hard it is to talk about loss but it's important that we have these conversations.

"He says that baby Jennifer's death convinced him of the value of good end-of-life care and I agree with him completely."

Britain already has "probably the best palliative care in the world", she said, stressing that her bill also includes the need for a government report on the availability and quality of palliative care.

She said: "He [Brown] 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."