Sympathy only goes so far, bereaved man tells MPs on assisted dying committee

A man whose father, brother and sister died “in dreadful circumstances” has told MPs their sympathy “only goes so far” as he urged them to get on with the process to legalise assisted dying.

Pat Malone made the statement after Conservative MP Danny Kruger, who is opposed to the Bill going through Parliament, offered his sympathies and said he was sorry to be “fighting against you in this matter”.

Mr Malone said his father had “asked me to help him kill himself” while he suffered with pancreatic cancer in hospital aged 85, something he “obviously” was not able to do.

Mr Malone’s brother, who also ended up with pancreatic cancer, died by suicide while his sister, who had motor neurone disease, went to Dignitas in Switzerland for an assisted death.

He told MPs: “In all three cases, it (a law in the UK) would have improved their lives and their deaths.”

He said all three had died “in dreadful circumstances”, noting that his brother’s family had been questioned by police about his death, while his sister “died 1,000 miles from home (when) she should have died in her house with her family, and her dogs on the bed”.

Mr Kruger offered his sympathies to Mr Malone, saying: “May I say how greatly I sympathise with what you’ve been through, and I’m very, very sorry to be fighting against you in this matter. I really can’t imagine how that feels.”

Later in the session, Mr Malone spoke of his brother’s case, in which a coroner had concluded he died by suicide.

He said: “The coroner was very sympathetic. Danny Kruger is very sympathetic. But sympathy only goes so far, and I’m glad that this committee is now looking exactly at the people who matter in this issue, the people who matter first in this issue, who cannot be here to talk for themselves.”

The Bill could see terminally ill adults in England and Wales with less than six months to live legally allowed to end their lives, subject to approval by two doctors and a High Court judge.

Mr Malone accepted his sister would not have been eligible under the current Bill but, asked about expanding its scope to take in people with a prognosis longer than six months, he said he did not want to suggest changes as he did not want to see the proposed legislation delayed.

He said: “You’ve moved mountains to get to this point, and the last thing in the world I’d want to do is pile more requirements on this Bill.

“I’d like to see some stuff stripped out of it, actually, to make it easier. But I’m not going to ask for that, because we desperately need to get away from the status quo, and this Bill gets us away from the status quo.”

Liz Reed, whose brother had an assisted death in Australia, said it had been “a gift” to have their last moments with him and praised the hospice care there as “sensational”.

She said that while the family had initially wanted him to come home to the UK when he became unwell, she now wonders what might have happened to him in terms of his care and how he died had he returned.

She said: “I think from a personal perspective, whenever he was diagnosed, we said, ‘you’ve got to come home’.

“But actually, I just think, oh my god, what would have happened to him? How long would he have had to go on?

“How long would his children have had to watch him? He was only 39, his children were young, and actually they didn’t have to, they still remember their dad. And so for us, for him and for his wife and our family, I wouldn’t change anything.”

Describing their last hours together, she said: “We weren’t sitting around there thinking, ‘I wish I’d said this. I missed it, or I was off doing something with the kids’. We were all there, my mum, my dad, me, his wife, we sat there and held his hand and actually, what a gift.”

Meanwhile, learning disability charity Mencap warned of their concerns around how the subject of assisted dying would be broached with people.

Dan Scorer, head of policy and public affairs at the charity, told MPs: “How that initial conversation, how it’s initiated, is potentially an extremely risky and dangerous moment for people with a learning disability who are terminally ill.”

He said there are concerns it could be “highly suggestive and push people in a course that they don’t, they may not want to go down” and that Mencap believes initial conversations would have to be “incredibly well supported and structured” with an advocate present.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists raised concerns around stretched psychiatry and mental health services not having the “resources to add a significant number of capacity assessments” to their workload.

In written evidence to the committee, they also said the college’s members are split on whether psychiatrists should be involved in every assessment of capacity for someone seeking an assisted death, or whether they should be involved only when requested for “more complex determinations or for those in which a person has, or is suspected to have, a mental disorder”.

MPs on the committee scrutinising the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill have heard from some 50 witnesses in the past three days, as they prepare to go through the proposed legislation line by line next month.

While the Bill passed second reading stage after a lengthy debate in the Commons before Christmas, some MPs who voted yes said they might not continue their support if they are not convinced of strong safeguards around aspects including potential coercion.

The Bill will face further scrutiny and votes in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, meaning any change in the law would not be agreed until later this year at the earliest.

After that it would likely be at least another two years before an assisted dying service was in place.