The deceptively-named Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill will have its Second Reading tomorrow, on 29 November, as MPs vote on whether to legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales. Concern is mounting over this Bill and for very good reason.
Kim Leadbeater MP, the Bill’s sponsor, recently came up to me while I was walking through Westminster Hall and asked if I would support her Bill if it reaches the Lords.
I said no and politely explained why I hope the Bill is defeated at Second Reading but also hope that in the best traditions of Private Members’ Bills it opens a national debate about the comprehensive provision of end of life care rather than euthanasia.
I come at this having had the privilege of serving in @UKParliament for 45 years – nearly two decades of which were in the House of Commons
I have taken part in literally thousands of votes on legislation and have promoted Private Members’ Bills and numerous amendments to laws.
Let me try to set out for Kim why I would have supported a Bill based on care but oppose a Bill which focuses on the taking of life – which will endanger the lives of vulnerable people and lead to the incrementalism to which similar laws have led elsewhere.
Act in Haste, Repent at leisure
When MPs last voted on the issue, MPs and the public were given almost two months to scrutinise the Bill before it was voted on. Having had sufficient time to scrutinise the detail of the Bill, it was overwhelmingly rejected by MPs by 330 votes to 118.
Similarly, earlier this year Lord Falconer introduced an assisted suicide bill in the House of Lords (his seventh attemptat a law change) and gave almost four months for scrutiny of the Bill before Second Reading was scheduled to take place.
More than half of the current sitting MPs were newly elected at the General Election this year, and have spent much of that time since the election on recess. This means they have had very little time to hear from both sides of the debate on this significant change to the law – and have been given barely two weeks to scrutinise the Bill since it was published on 11 November.
A Bill riddled with problems
Some of the Bill’s proposed “safeguards” are being called into question. One of Britain’s most eminent retired judges and former head of the High Court’s family division has slammed the assisted suicide Bill describing it as “defective” and saying it is not the “proper function” of a judge to rule on whether someone is eligible for assisted suicide.
The Bill requires High Court approval to prove that the requirements of the Bill have been met. However, in a stunning intervention in the debate, Sir James Munby has said it is “not what judges do and not what judges are for”.
Sir James accused her of promoting a “profoundly unsatisfactory scheme” open to abuse. “All in all, in relation to the involvement of the judges in the process, the Leadbeater Bill falls lamentably short of providing adequate safeguards,” he said.
Senior medics have also pointed out the arbitrary and subjective nature of the Bill’s requirement that a patient have only six months left to live. Professor Katherine Sleeman, a specialist in palliative care, told The Telegraph “It is not possible to accurately determine someone’s prognosis as a number of months, say six months or 12 months”.
“As a doctor, patients do ask me, ‘How long have I got left?’ and I would never say, ‘Six months or fewer.’ I might say, ‘Your prognosis is probably measured in months, or “long months”.’ That’s as precise as I would be”.
Research indicates that over half of patients expected to die within six months to a year outlive those expectations. Based on over 25,000 clinicians’ responses, the results showed that on 6,495 occasions when a doctor thought a patient would likely die at any point in the following 12 months, they were incorrect in more than 54% of cases.
In other concerning developments, Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, has ordered a review of the costs of implementing assisted suicide if Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill is passed later this month, warning of a “chilling” scenario in which patients are pressured into ending their lives, and saying assisted suicide would “come at the expense of other choices”.
“I would hate for people to opt for assisted dying because they think they’re saving someone somewhere money, whether that’s relatives or the NHS. And I think that’s one of the issues that MPs are wrestling with as they decide how to cast their vote”, he said.
Lessons from abroad
Similar changes to legislation overseas have been a disaster. In Oregon – a model often cited by UK assisted suicide campaigners – the latest official data shows that 47% of people who had an assisted suicide said they were doing so because they were concerned that they were a “burden on family, friends/caregivers”. The eligibility criteria in the law have expanded via the interpretation of ‘terminal illness’ so that assisted deaths have been granted for anorexia, diabetes, hernias and arthritis.
In Canada, army veterans with PTSD are being offered ‘Medical Assistance In Dying’ (MAID). Patients are citing poverty or housing uncertainty as their main reason for seeking to end their lives through ‘MAID’. On top of that, the numbers are spiralling out of control: in 2016 when ‘MAID’ was introduced, there were just over 1,000 cases but by 2022 this escalated to 13,241 deaths, accounting for 4.1% of all deaths in Canada. Canada is now on the verge of introducing euthanasia and assisted suicide for people with mental health issues, with this change in the law coming into effect in March 2027.
Closer to home, in the Netherlands and Belgium, euthanasia laws and/or practice have been extended to allow euthanasia for children and newborn babies.
Troubling priorities
A recent landmark poll reported in The Telegraph found that the public does not support making legalising suicide a priority, with the general public placing legalising assisted suicide at 22nd out of a list of 23 possible priorities for this Government.
More than 3,400 medical professionals have signed an open letter to the Prime Minister warning that assisted suicide cannot be introduced safely while the NHS is “broken”.
In particular, there is strong opposition to introducing assisted suicide from doctors who specialise in working with people with incurable conditions at the end of their life.
A survey of palliative care doctors who are members of the Association for Palliative Medicine found that 82% oppose the introduction of assisted suicide. The results of the Association for Palliative Medicine survey have been mirrored in a more recent survey of doctors by the British Medical Association, which found that 83% of palliative care doctors oppose a change in the law to introduce assisted suicide, while only 6% supported such a change.
The vote on the Bill comes as many elderly people go into winter with their Winter Fuel Payment cut by the Government, as palliative care services are in crisis, with Marie Curie reporting that 100,000 people are dying each year needing palliative care but not receiving it, and a wider healthcare system also in a state of crisis, with Labour’s own Health Secretary describing the NHS as “broken”.
Act Now
Your actions can make a difference. Many MPs are still undecided, and there is growing opposition to this Bill from across the political spectrum. The Leader of the Liberal Democrats Sir Ed Davey opposes the Bill as does the former Leader of the Party Tim Farron and four former Prime Ministers.
Opposition to the Bill cuts right across traditional political divides with MPs such as Sir John Hayes and Danny Kruger effectively joining forces with MPs considered to be on the left of the Labour Party such as Diane Abbott.
High-profile members of the cabinet who are not supporting the Bill include the Health Secretary Wes Streeting and the Secretary of State for Justice Shabana Mahmood.
Just occasionally a parliamentarian has to vote on matters of life and death. This is one of them.
I hope that if you haven’t already done I that you will urge your MP not to give this Bill a green light. You can do this via the excellent link at https://righttolife.org.uk/ASthreat
It’s not to late to act – and who knows, your actions may one day save a vulnerable person’s life.
Let your MP know where you stand.
