Hospital officials cannot be trusted to enact assisted dying, peers told ahead of debate

AN ASSISTED dying law would give “unaccountable power” to doctors and nurses, the bishop charged with investigating the Gosport hospital deaths scandal has warned peers.

The Rt Rev James Jones, the former bishop of Liverpool, who also chaired an independent review of the Hillsborough tragedy, has warned that his experience has taught him that those in positions of power cannot be trusted with the fate of the terminally ill. His intervention in a letter sent to peers today comes ahead of a debate on an amendment, which could force the Government to introduce legislation on assisted dying.

In the letter, seen by The Daily Telegraph, the bishop warns: “To change the culture of caring in favour of providing ‘medical assistance’ for patients to ‘end their own lives’ creates too many risks and leaves us unprotected from the patronising way in which institutions, including, sadly, hospital trusts, can behave towards ordinary people.”

Peers will debate an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill tabled by Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, the former Cabinet minister, next week.

If accepted by both houses, the amendment would force the Government to put before Parliament a draft Bill “to permit terminally ill, mentally competent adults legally to end their own lives with medical assistance” within a year of the health Bill becoming law.

While acknowledging the “good intentions” of the Lords behind the amendment, Bishop Jones has warned his former colleagues: “I do not share their assumption that the treatment of the seriously ill will always be benign in the hands of the state.

“I fear the patronising disposition of unaccountable power in our institutions when treating those who have little power to speak up for themselves.

“I know that noble Lords would expect those with power to act in a benign way but my knowledge of what happened after the Hillsborough disaster and allegedly at the Gosport War Memorial Hospital and elsewhere where ordinary people have been badly treated gives me no such confidence.”

Bishop Jones led the Gosport independent panel, which found that amid a “disregard for human life” a total of 456 people had their lives cut short and another 200 were “probably” given drugs without medical justification between 1987 and 2001.

The policies that led to the deaths were allegedly presided over by “Dr Opiate” Jane Barton, and the matters are currently subject to a police investigation.

Bishop Jones, who left the Lords in 2013 before being asked to carry out the independent reports into Gosport and Hillsborough by the Government, has told peers that he cannot go into further detail on the hospital deaths because of the criminal investigation.

But he noted that since the publication of the panel’s report in 2018 he has been contacted by “bereaved relatives from across the country… with similar accounts and concerns”. He added: “If prescribing such fatal doses could happen with the law and safeguarding as they now stand, then I fear what might develop if the law and culture are changed to permit the ending of life ‘with medical assistance’.”

As the chairman of the Hillsborough independent panel, he “observed, in a different context, the patronising way that a range of state agencies treated ordinary people”.

He said that this was the case “especially when they are under pressure and struggling with diminishing resources”.