A retired High Court judge has said that Parkinson’s sufferers are being left out of the debate for a new assisted dying law.
Sir Nicholas Mostyn has argued that because people with the neurodegenerative disease are not terminally ill, they would not be covered by any change to the law.
The 67-year-old co-presenter of the Movers and Shakers podcast, which focuses on issues surrounding Parkinson’s, told the show in a forthcoming episode: “Parkies will never get a terminal diagnosis, so this bill is no f***ing use to us at all.
”In Spain, Parkinson’s is one of the most common reasons for seeking assisted death. We are going to be left on the beach here. There is a cohort of people like us who it is not going to help and we are left with the existing, most unsatisfactory law.”
The comments, as reported in the Sunday Times, come as a Bill to give choice at the end of life is set to come before Parliament for the first time in almost a decade.
MPs will be able to make their opinions known in the Commons on the controversial subject when they debate the bill on choice at the end of life for people with terminal illness on November 29.
Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s private member’s bill (PMB) is due to be formally introduced in Parliament on Wednesday.
A new study by the Policy Institute and the Complex Life and Death Decisions group at King’s College London (KCL) found that a fifth (20%) of people asked said they did not want assisted dying to be legalised in the next five years while 63% said they did.
Co-host Mark Mardell, a former BBC presenter who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2022, added: ”I think it’s everybody’s right to kill themselves, and that we shouldn’t listen to our western Christian heritage, be more like the Romans and Japanese, perhaps, and respect those who want to kill themselves.
“For me the problem is the only time I would want to die is when I couldn’t bear it any more and couldn’t make the decision. I abhor suicide as someone who finds life very sweet.
“Even as the lens gets narrower, I want to continue living, but I don’t know how you draw that distinction and stop people killing themselves from depression but still allow people with Parkinson’s.”
Co-presenter Gillian Lacey-Solymar, who was diagnosed 12 years ago, said that a six-month life expectancy rule would not cover the symptoms of Parkinson’s.
She said: “Let’s look at how bad something like Parkinson’s can get – say you are doubly incontinent, you can’t speak any more, you are in pain, you can’t move.
“What is the point in living? What terrifies me is the years ahead of this awful vegetative state that does happen to a lot of people with Parkinson’s.”
However Labour peer and former chancellor Lord Falconer, who withdrew his own assisted dying bill last week, said that there should be safeguards put in place within any new law.
The 72-year-old explained: “I am strongly of the view the state should not be providing assistance to people to take their own life unless they are dying imminently.
”If you allow the state to provide assistance when you are not terminally ill but depending upon unbearable suffering, the lines of what is appropriate become very difficult to draw.
“For example, people suffering from unendurable mental agony, perhaps in their mid-30s, should the state be providing assistance for them to end their lives?
“There need to be safeguards to prevent you being either over-persuaded, or doing it when you are not of sound mind. This is not a euthanasia bill.”
The Movers and Shakers episode discussing the issue will be released on Saturday, October 19.
