BUDGET funding of £2.6 million for the Island’s assisted dying service should instead be invested in improving palliative care services, expanding respite provision or increasing support for carers, a former Health Minister has proposed.
Deputy Karen Wilson has submitted an amendment to the government’s Budget, due to be debated next month, which would remove the proposed growth funding for assisted dying – this money could be more effectively deployed, she argued.
In the report accompanying her proposition, the representative for St Clement stressed that she was not seeking to revisit the debate on assisted dying, which was supported in principle by the States Assembly in 2021, with detailed legislation currently being drafted and set to be debated in early 2026.
“This amendment is not proposing to reopen the debate,” she said. “It merely proposes that it is possible to support someone’s right to assisted dying without agreeing it should be paid for from the public purse when improvements to publicly-funded palliative care services are still required and carers in need of support,” she said, in her amendment.
“The amounts of public money being proposed [for the assisted dying service] cannot be justified on the number of people it is intended to serve,” she added, saying that further time needed to be taken to consider how the service should be funded.
“Spending millions of pounds on a small number of people who want to die at the expense of the many who want to live is not a good use of public money,” she continued.
Deputy Wilson added that Health Minister Tom Binet had committed to ensuring a higher standard of palliative care as part of the development of assisted dying legislation, but said that any improvement achieved so far had been “partial”.
She also said that promises by Social Security Minister Lyndsay Feltham to review the support provided to carers had “stalled”.
The draft Assisted Dying Law proposes a framework for terminally-ill adults to end their lives with the help of medical professionals under carefully defined conditions. The proposals come after politicians voted in 2024 to set up a service for Islanders with terminal illnesses and neurodegenerative diseases, which followed a 2021 decision in which the Assembly supported assisted dying “in principle”.
If the detailed legislation is approved by States Members next year, Jersey would become one of the first jurisdictions in the British Isles to fully legalise assisted dying.
The annual funding sums affected would be £525,000 in 2026, £727,000 in 2027, £688,000 in 2028 and £718,000 in 2029.
Deputy Wilson’s amendment is one of 34 that have been submitted for the Budget, which is scheduled to be debated by States Members during the second week of December.
