Author Archives: A retired medical doctor

The civil service impact statement for the Assisted Dying Bill could be very inaccurate

By A retired medical doctor | Wed 18th June 2025 - 5:31 pm

Editor’s note: This article contains details of terminal medical procedures which some readers may find upsetting.

The Civil Service has done an ‘impact assessment’ for what the NHS and hospice sector will look like if Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying (AD) Bill becomes law.

It’s chosen a sample of a few ‘comparator’ US jurisdictions and New Zealand to show how many cases of AD there are (expressed as percentage of total deaths). The population of the sample is equivalent to England and Wales.

The projection estimates a few hundred AD cases here a year initially, rising annually. However, New Zealand, in its first year of AD, recorded an AD rate six times the rate that was recorded in the first year in California – equivalent to 4,000 England/Wales deaths if we scale up for population size. The maximum Civil Service estimate for the first year in England and Wales is 1,600 deaths. So what has gone wrong ?