The assisted suicide bill gets more deadly

Daniel Dieppe comments on life-saving amendments being rejected in the Assisted Suicide Bill Committee this week

The assisted suicide bill is now on life support.

In a dramatic last-minute manoeuvre, Kim Leadbeater has removed the “extra layer of safeguarding” High Court judge, and replaced it with a secretive, unscrutinised panel. The watering down of bill’s safeguards and lack of proper scrutiny has seen The Times call it “irrevocably flawed”.

One has only to look at the sitting of the bill’s scrutiny committee to see the gaping problems of the bill’s processes. This week, MPs repeatedly voted against life-saving amendments that would protect the most vulnerable. They voted against:

• Sarah Olney’s amendment to require higher levels of mental capacity for an assisted suicide, 15-8
• Rebecca Paul’s amendment to prevent patients being ‘unduly influenced’, 15-8
• James Cleverly’s amendment to ensure the primary purpose of an assisted suicide is the avoidance of physical pain and is the patient’s own decision, 15-8

The constant voting split of 15-8 reveals the dubious political intentions of Leadbeater’s bill committee: getting the bill passed with as few additional safeguards as possible. It is no surprise that 14 of the committee members are supporters and nine are opponents (one of those nine, Jack Abbot, is only practically opposed and has so far always voted with Leadbeater). They also voted 14-8 against hearing from the Royal College of Psychiatrists last month – despite the crucial mental expertise of psychiatrists – and of course chose to sit in private with no recording to discuss witnesses.

As I pointed out at a fringe meeting at the Church of England Synod this week, the bill committee is fatally flawed because Kim Leadbeater chose all its members – including the opposition MPs scrutinising her legislation. This is without Parliamentary precedent, as usually an independent Committee of Selection will choose the MPs. This explains the stubborn rigidity of the votes and complete lack of free-thinking from Leadbeater’s MPs so far.

The committee, however, has been exposed to be even more biased than expected this week.

Committee exposed to be biased

Danny Kruger, the leading opposition MP, questioned why the ‘Independent’ ministers were voting on conscience-based amendments as supposedly neutral ministers. The Health Minister’s reply was that he was only neutral on what he said, not on his voting.

Nikki da Costa, a former No.10 Director of Legislative Affairs, described this as an “extraordinary interpretation of government neutrality”.

The few opposition MPs on committee have begun to raise their concerns about the numerous absurdities. Labour MP Daniel Francis complained that all the amendments debated this week could not consider the new planned panel of experts – and instead had to expect a judge, even though Leadbeater had publicly gone to press about removing the judge. How can MPs scrutinise the bill when they are not even sure what it will look like?

Worse, it was revealed this week that Chris Whitty, England’s Chief Medical Officer, gave false evidence to the bill committee. “Too late”, commented Danny Kruger – MPs had already voted against the capacity amendment that Whitty evidenced was unnecessary. Now Whitty has retracted his evidence but there is no process to re-do the vote which utilised what he said.

Leadbeater and her supporters have also made a number of remarkably unpalatable comments during the committee process. On Wednesday, Leadbeater was unable to rule out patients choosing an assisted suicide to save money on care. Kit Malthouse, a leading supporter, believed prisoners should have assisted suicide because they deserve “access [to] the same healthcare as everybody else”. Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst, another MP supporter, said that patients with depression should be able to qualify. Finally, Kim Leadbeater described her opponent’s arguments as “noise” on X/Twitter.

This is a complete cataclysm of errors, to say the least. It is no wonder that momentum has now decidedly turned against her bill.

Momentum turns against the bill

The Independent has reported a list of 142 MPs likely to change their minds at third reading, when it returns to the full House of Commons for the final time. The Sun, neutral at second reading, has called the bill a “rushed, slapdash effort” that needs to be killed. Labour MPs are murmuring about civil servants ‘deciding on life and death’ while one leading barrister has said the new secretive panel could mean, “The first that the parents of a young woman with anorexia might find out about the process could be the fact that she had died.”

It is now increasingly obvious to Britain’s political community that this bill was never going to be safe. It is impossible to protect the vulnerable while offering the right to take your own life – as Nikki and Merv Kenward powerfully testified at General Synod.

We were promised a committee that would scrutinise the assisted suicide bill. We were promised important debate and discussion. So far, neither of those things have happened.

I can only urge you to contact your MP and tell them your very real concerns about this bill and to pray for its defeat at third reading in April.