This article is taken from the December-January 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

One of the more depressing elements of being a priest occurs in care homes. Not the time spent with the elderly there; those are often hours of fascinating anecdotes and profound conversations about life and death.

The depressing element is hearing from the staff about the requests many families make. “Does she really need three meals a day?” one asked. Another challenged a monthly haircut for his dad. Also depressing were the farewells, as elderly people were moved far from their friends and families in order not to burn through the inheritance.

My experiences in those care homes play out in my head as the details of Kim Leadbeater’s bill to legalise assisted suicide are published. So do the memories of my father’s last illness and death at the beginning of this year.

His treatment, once it turned to palliative care, was extremely good. His treatment before then was not. I don’t have the space to recount the full litany of indifference and mistreatment, not helped by the junior doctors’ strike coinciding with his decline, but I will draw out some of the highlights.

Having been in hospital for four weeks in the run-up to Christmas he was suddenly released on 22 December. We were surprised, as when this news broke he was waiting for an urgent CT scan. But the nurse came over and told us that his discharge papers had come through and an ambulance was coming to take him home.

The papers had his name at the top, but appeared to be for a different patient, one who was suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. Of the many things my father was suffering, Parkinson’s was not one of them.

Nothing my mother nor I said could compel the nurse to double-check this or to explain when this sudden diagnosis had been made, nor whether the CT scan was now not needed.

He was taken home on the 22nd and blue-lighted back to hospital and straight into the resuscitation unit on the 24th (about 15 minutes before our first evening service for Christmas Eve began).

Just before the New Year it was clear something was wrong with his mouth, and he was not eating. A doctor prescribed food by a drip and pain patches. Neither of these was administered. By day three after this prescription, my mother literally tied herself to her chair using her handbag and refused to leave at the end of visiting time until he was given liquids — which were then administered, but still no pain patch.

That came the next day when we “kidnapped” a doctor (as my mother put it), who came over from another ward and confirmed the original prescription.

The only time I was able to see the senior nurse on the ward was when, having seen the word “sepsis” next to my father’s name on the screen up by the entrance to the ward, I took a photograph of it to prove it was there to a nurse who was refusing to believe it. At this point all hell broke loose as this, unlike anything else, was a serious issue: it was a breach of GDPR.

Having deleted the offending photograph in front of the ward nurse, I took the opportunity of asking whether we might have a printout of the doctors’ decisions each day so we might all be on the same page and not be having to beg nurses to administer things earlier prescribed by a doctor.

She fixed me with a wintery smile, handed me a leaflet, and told me that I could make a request for my father’s medical records and they would be sure to send them within 30 working days. I told her all I wanted was to be sure he was being cared for. She repeated her line word for word. I gave up.

Much of the debate is framed in the expectation that humans will act well. But many of us act appallingly

This experience makes me very afraid of the assisted suicide bill now laid before Parliament. Much of the debate is framed in the expectation that human beings act well in all circumstances. I hate this fact, but we don’t. Many of us act appallingly — especially when there is money in the equation.

The provision in the bill to allow proxies to act on behalf of relatives fills me with dread. How many people who start by asking to reduce their mother’s daily meals will talk themselves into requesting their mother’s early death?

How many would see the pain my father was in, due substantially to failures by medical practitioners, and decide death was better for him? How many busy medics will raise the question of suicide for a patient as an alternative to other solutions they may not have the time, money or inclination to perform?

Whilst we have a health service which is failing to administer the loving care it should, assisted suicide is a temptation we cannot put before it. Whilst we have human beings who are inclined towards the sins of selfishness and greed, this is a temptation we should not put before them.

The former could be resolved; the latter cannot be. I hope Parliament will not lead us down this path.