Uh oh. Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill appears to have hit another bump in the road as it now transpires there may not be enough psychiatric doctors in the profession to make it work. Last week, an amendment put forward by the bill’s sponsor proposed that, instead of having a high court judge investigate each case, a panel of social workers and psychiatrists among others should oversee applications. But experts have warned that there may not actually be enough psychiatrists for this to work. Nice to see the pro-euthanasia crowd has done its research…
Professor Allan House, professor of liaison psychiatry at Leeds University, and Professor Gareth Owen, honorary consultant psychiatrist at King’s College London, have both given evidence to the committee scrutinising the legislation. Whether their advice is being listened to is quite another matter, however. Speaking to the Telegraph, House remarked that it was ‘not at all clear’ whether there would be enough doctors to sit on expert panels and oversee cases, while Owens warned that it was ‘probably not’ feasible for every case to be seen by a psychiatrist ‘given the current workforce’. Indeed, in NHS England and Wales there are just over 3,000 substantive consultant adult psychiatrists according to records from the Royal College of Psychiatrists – a third of whom work part time.
One might query why Leadbeater did not consider this issue before she suggested swapping out high court judges for psychiatrists. It transpires that not only did the Labour MP not consult the Royal College of Psychiatrists before putting the profession at the centre of her legislation, the Spen Valley politician relied on a rather thin RCPsych survey to guide her decision-making. The poll had a 10 per cent response rate with only a third of psychiatrists saying they would participate in an assisted dying service. It hardly bodes well, eh?
Professor House remarked scathingly:
Does psychiatry have the capacity for this? Well, one of the other things that the Royal College census shows is that, across the UK, 28 per cent of all consultant jobs are either vacant or filled by non-substantive staff. So you are asking a profession that can’t fill a quarter of its consultant jobs with full-time consultants if they want to release 30 people to do this work.
Is there sufficiency capacity? It is not at all clear that there is.
Crikey. It’s a rather damning indictment on the fastidiousness of Leadbeater’s legislation. Last week’s removal of the high court judge safeguard has left MPs who supported the bill at its second reading a little uneasy. This latest revelation is hardly going to help matters…
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