Statement by Sir Nicholas Mostyn in response to the proposed amendment to the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill to allow those with neurodegenerative illnesses to access assisted dying when they have twelve months or fewer to live, rather than six, as currently stipulated in the Bill.
I welcome the proposed amendment to include a 12-month mortality estimate for people who suffer from neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s. Such an amendment would mean that if things get very bad for me in the advanced stages of the disease, I will have a better chance of being able to have a good death here in my home with my loved ones, rather than in Switzerland with the pall of an assisted suicide police investigation hanging over my family.
I want to emphasise that I love life, and I earnestly hope that I will be granted a long and active remaining shift and that my ending will be quick and painless. I am strongly supportive of the principle of assisted dying however, in the event that things do not turn out that way.
I am at a loss to understand the vehemence of the opposition to this measure. It is not as if we are pioneering it. Over 30 separate jurisdictions have adopted it. I do not believe that there is a real risk of criminal violation of the Bill’s conditions. I am not aware of any evidence of, let alone prosecutions for, such conduct in any place where assisted dying is permitted. I respectfully suggest that the opponents of this reform have not explained why people with progressive, degenerative, incurable diseases such as Parkinson’s are to be expected to endure in its advanced stages a potentially painful, unpleasant, degrading and prolonged demise.
I have noted that some opponents of the Bill have misattributed arguments to me that I did not make, and have then criticised me for those inaccuracies. For instance, RightToLife has claimed that I wish to expand the Bill's scope to include individuals who are “not terminally ill”, which is unequivocally false. On the contrary, I have argued that the right should certainly be restricted to people who are terminally ill, but that terminal illness should be defined as having two elements namely (a) an irreversible progressive condition (as the Bill provides) together with (b) consequential intolerable suffering. The latter criterion would replace the Bill’s second element of a consequential reasonable expectation of death within six months.
I maintain that my proposed second element of intolerable suffering is (a) a less subjective exercise for an assessor than estimating whether life expectancy is more or less than six months and (b) will almost certainly cover fewer people than the present proposal. Indeed, the evidence received by the Committee from the palliative experts was to the effect that the majority of deaths do not involve such suffering. I would suggest that it is almost a truism that for the cohort of people experiencing an irreversible progressive condition such as cancer, cerebrovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease or ischaemic heart disease, a far greater number will be more likely than not to die within six months than the number of those who can objectively be said to be suffering intolerably in consequence of the condition.
Having spent much time as a judge ascertaining the wishes and feelings of children and incapacitated and vulnerable adults, I would suggest that it is far easier for an assessor to ascertain intolerable suffering than to guess whether a patient will live for more or less than 6 months.
It is therefore a false argument to suggest that my proposed definition of terminal illness would widen the scope of the Bill to include a greater number of people. On the contrary, I suggest that the opposite is the case.
Sir Nicholas Mostyn
8 February 2025
Note: This statement reflects the individual perspective of Sir Nicholas Mostyn and does not convey the collective opinion of the Movers and Shakers.
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