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  • 14 hours ago
The Welsh Parliament has cleared the way for assisted dying to be introduced amid fears of creating a two-tier system. Campaigners supporting and opposing the law gathered outside the Welsh Parliament, including Dr Victoria Wheatley, a palliative care consultant, and Karen Harries & Gemma Williams from 'My Death, My Decision'.

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00:00At the moment it's not about the principle of whether you think assisted dying should
00:03be possible or not, it's about the specifics of this bill. The bill is really unsafe,
00:10the safeguards are illusory and introducing assisted dying in the way that's currently
00:15proposed is really risky for the population of Wales. It might be sensible to look at all
00:20the places in the world where assisted dying is legal, look at all the safeguards in any
00:24of those places and bring them all together to make what actually might be the safest law in
00:29the world. But instead of doing that, supporters of assisted dying have chosen not to do that
00:35because it's a private member's bill, hasn't really considered or hasn't at all considered the needs of
00:39Wales, of Welsh citizens, the difference set up within Wales. Wales is just an afterthought and
00:44that's part of what makes it so dangerous. I think the core principles of the bill,
00:48the safeguarding, are stronger than a lot of the other legislations that is out there.
00:53You know, this is assisted dying is operating in 34 other countries or autonomous zones.
01:02We're not, if we were the first country to be leading on this, then I would understand the concern,
01:08but there's lots of other countries that we can reference. And from what I understand,
01:13we've taken, for example, the safeguarding issues further, you know, they're even greater.
01:21There is a lot that's going to need to be discussed.
01:24One of the safer ways to provide assisted dying would be to do it outside of healthcare services,
01:29outside of the NHS. And that's something that the Senedd could consider if the law was changed.
01:35We receive loads of services outside of the NHS that we don't have to pay for.
01:39We send our children to school, we don't pay for that. We get our bins collected, we don't pay for
01:44that.
01:44So there's no reason why, if it was felt appropriate to bring in such a service,
01:49there's no reason why it would need to be in the NHS. We do anticipate if the law was changed,
01:54we do anticipate private providers springing up, both in England and Wales. But if it wasn't in the
02:00NHS, there is plenty of scope for other ways of providing services outside of the NHS. Not just public
02:06services, but we have a wealth of voluntary sector organisations in Wales. We're the birthplace of the
02:11social enterprise. So there's absolutely no necessity for this to be within the NHS, which is
02:16the most dangerous way of providing this service. Last month, the First Minister asked for greater
02:23devolution of powers to the Senedd. Well, this is a great opportunity to message to Westminster and say,
02:30we can do this, we want more autonomy, give it to us. We've always supported it. But the turning
02:38point came when I witnessed my grand suffer horrendously at the end of her life. She was
02:43terminally ill. And it was just cruel to make her go on. And people should be able to have the
02:47choice
02:47to say, enough is enough, when there's no other alternatives, there's no treatments. Why prolong it,
02:54make it suffer? We are not going to stop campaigning. We are not going to stop looking at options.
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