Streeting says NHS 'has no budget' for assisted dying and warns MPs have made 'wrong choice'
Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who opposed the Assisted Dying Bill, has publicly voiced concerns over a lack of resources and other risks involved in setting up the service.
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In a statement issued on Facebook after MPs voted to approve the Assisted Dying Bill on Friday, Wes Streeting said: “Setting up this service will take time and money that is in short supply.”
"There isn’t a budget for this. Politics is about prioritising. It is a daily series of choices and trade-offs. I fear we’ve made the wrong one."
In the statement, which laid out the Health Secretary's reasons for voting against the Assisted Dying Bill, he wrote that the process of introducing the new laws could divert resources from the NHS and other public services.
Under the terms of the new bill, the NHS will be expected to deliver assisted dying procedures.
Mr Streeting wrote that "creating those conditions will take time and money."
Each death will cost the taxpayer about £15,000, analysis suggests.
The implementation of assisted dying could cost the NHS almost £425 million in the first ten years.
In the statement, Mr Streeting, who is a Christian, also raised concerns about other risks involved in the bill.
"I can’t get past the concerns expressed by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of Physicians, the Association for Palliative Medicine and a wide range of charities representing under-privileged groups in our society about the risks that come with this Bill," he wrote.
He quoted former Prime Minister Gordon Brown's comments earlier this week, which read: "There is no effective freedom to choose if the alternative option, the freedom to draw on high-quality end-of-life care, is not available."
"Neither is there real freedom to choose if, as many fear, patients will feel under pressure to relieve their relatives of the burden of caring for them, a form of coercion that prioritising good end-of-life care would diminish."
Streeting added that he agreed with the former Prime Minister's view.
The Health Secretary is the first cabinet minister to publicly voice concerns about the bill since it passed its third reading last week with a slim majority of 23 MPs. He was one of six cabinet ministers to vote against it.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer voted in favour of the bill, and rebuked the Health Secretary over earlier interventions opposing the bill. Cabinet ministers have been ordered to remain neutral on the legislation's passage.
Several cabinet ministers are believed to feel similarly to the Health Secretary, The Times reported.
One said: “The government is under so much pressure … everyone knows money is so scarce and we have to prioritise the things we do with it. Assisted dying is going to eat up a lot of our bandwidth and will undoubtedly mean we won’t be able to do some of the things we wanted to, given the massive competition for resources.”
Another cabinet minister said: “Rachel Reeves voted for assisted dying. I hope that means she has found the money for it.”
The impact assessment of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill estimates up to 28,317 people will die by state-assisted suicide within the first ten years of its introduction.
It is forecast to rise from 647 cases in the first year to more than 4,500 by 2038, and could mean costs of £425 million for the NHS over the decade.
That figure includes educating staff, training doctors and nurses involved in the assisted dying service, setting up a regulator and the costs of the lethal drugs used in the procedure.
Overall, the assessment suggests the government could save more than £640 million because of those who would have been in hospital or in care dying earlier. Some of these savings could be made by the NHS.
Of these potential savings, the Health Secretary wrote: "Even with the savings that might come from assisted dying if people take up the service - and it feels uncomfortable talking about savings in this context to be honest - setting up this service will also take time and money that is in short supply."
Opponents of the bill have pledged to use "every means possible" to stop the bill from passing through the House of Lords.
Dame Esther Rantzen, the veteran TV broadcaster who is diagnosed with terminal cancer, urged peers not the block the bill. She said on Friday that the job of the House of Lords “is to scrutinise, to ask questions, but not to oppose”.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the former lord chancellor who supports the bill and is expected to take a leading role in passing the bill through the House of Lords, suggested in The Sunday Times that it was unlikely the bill would be blocked.