Wes Streeting informed backbenchers this week that he is voting against the assisted dying Bill on 29 November, saying that ‘end-of-life care is not good enough for patients to make an informed choice.’
Experience of an issue, and I have too much on this one, can both cloud and inform opinion. I’m glad I don’t have to vote on the Bill but I do know that if palliative care was reliably good many people, myself included, wouldn’t fear the end as they do now.
The current Bill, if passed, would allow terminally ill adults with less than six months to live to end their lives with medical help. Six months is a long time. Many terminally ill cancer patients are still going to the shops and out for dinner at this stage. It’s difficult to predict how long a terminally ill person will live. A woman here in the village was suddenly, with no previous symptoms, diagnosed with cancer in August and died six weeks later.
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