PARLIAMENTARY EARLY DAY MOTION
DOCTORS AND END OF LIFE DECISIONS (25 January 2006)

That this House congratulates Professor Clive Seale and his team at the School of Social Sciences and Law, Brunel University, on the survey among doctors on End of Life Decisions; notes it is the first in-depth study of its kind in the United Kingdom; further notes that according to the survey, only 2.6 per cent. of doctors favour a change in the law relating to euthanasia and physician assisted suicide; further notes this is in stark contrast to the discredited claims by the Voluntary Euthanasia Society stating that around 50 per cent. of doctors in the United Kingdom wish to change the law to allow euthanasia; further notes that less than 0.5 per cent. of deaths in 2004 resulted from euthanasia but that this nonetheless amounts to 3,000 per annum; further notes that a further 30.5 per cent. of deaths were due to withdrawing or withholding treatment; recognises that in the majority of cases the decision taken would be due to the futility of the treatment concerned or because it would be too onerous for the patient; nonetheless calls on the Government to carry out further inquiries into what the British Medical Association has complained of as a tiny minority of doctors acting illegally in deliberately ending a patient's life; and further calls on the Government to check on patients' lives being deliberately ended through the withdrawal of treatment and to circulate guidance to hospitals to make it clear that this is in breach of the law on homicide.

Sponsored by:
Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench)