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MPs won’t get to view the final version of the assisted suicide bill before voting – and it’s an outrage

More than 50 MPs have raised the alarm over the impending third reading for Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill.

On Friday 20 June, parliamentarians are set to vote on the bill in the House of Commons. However, Labour’s Jess Asato and a cross-party group of MPs has decried one damning red flag about the upcoming stage on the prospective legislation. Specifically, this is that MPs won’t even have sight of the bill in its final form before they’ll be asked to vote on it.

The letter also lambasts the fact that Leadbeater and her allies have made significant changes “at the eleventh hour”. It argues that this should not be considered a “badge of honour”, but instead a dire “warning”.

Assisted suicide bill: no view before the vote for MPs

The letter laid out how:

This is not a normal Bill. It alters the foundations of our NHS, the relationship between doctor and patient, and it strips power away from Parliament, concentrating it in the hands of future Secretaries of State for Health.

Specifically, some doctors will preside over the provision of assisted suicide services. Moreover, medical practitioners and healthcare professionals will be able to raise the ‘option’ of assisted suicide with patients. This drastically changes a doctors’ covenant from that of saving lives and easing pain, to one in which they can sanction and assist suicide.

The Secretary of State will have oversight on many of the regulations around its provision, rather than through future parliamentary acts. Ultimately then, this would circumvent parliament, meaning it would not get a say in how the process is set up.

Despite these enormous implications, the letter underlined that:

MPs will be arriving at Westminster on Friday morning without sight of the final version of the Terminally III Adults (End of Life) Bill.

MPs didn’t debate the majority of amendments

Friday 13 June saw MPs debate a number of amendments. However, the letter noted how:

MPs have had the opportunity to vote on just 12 of 133 amendments tabled at Report Stage.

Specifically, MPs have voted on:

  • An amendment to ensure that employees working for an employer who has elected not to participate in the provision of assisted suicide, cannot do so while under their employment. Not passed
  • An amendment closing a loophole in Leadbeater’s clause about a prohibition on advertising. This would have limited the “exceptions” to the ban. Notably, it would have made it so that doctors and others could only issue literature in response to an individual making a specific request. It also removed the section in Leadbeater’s amendment that alters key protections in Suicide Act 1961 there to prevent coercion. Not passed
  • One which would stop medical professionals from raising the subject of assisted suicide with patients first. Not passed
  • Another which would prevent medical professionals from raising the subject of assisted suicide with under 18s. Passed

MPs debated some further amendments, and put some through without a vote. These were all ones that Leadbeater herself had introduced. It meant that parliament didn’t debate or vote on the majority of amendments. Crucially, these were changes other MPs had tabled to improve the bill’s so-called safeguards.

Lacking vital safeguards: what the assisted suicide bill now leaves to chance

Already, the amendments Leadbeater and pro-assisted suicide MPs (largely at the committee stage) have shot down make for an alarming list:

This includes things like making sure the definition of terminal illness cannot include individuals who’ve made themselves so by voluntarily stopping eating and drinking. That crucial amendment is specifically designed to protect people with eating disorders and mental health conditions in particular. Others revolve around reducing the risk of coercion, ensuring applicants are made aware of side effects and complications of legal drugs, and doctors have “reasonable certainty” on the terminal diagnosis.

As it currently stands then, Leadbeater and her pro-assisted suicide-stacked committee has riddled the bill through with risks to chronically ill, disabled, poor, and marginalised communities. MPs had attempted to bring many of these to debate in the Commons with new amendments. However, the speaker didn’t select most and the House ultimately ran out of time to debate them anyway.

Never about debating the ‘abstract principle of assisted dying’

And as Asato and the letter pointed out, MPs have actually had very little time to debate the bill with such far-reaching implications:

Consequently, the letter therefore stated that:

This is no longer about debating the abstract principle of assisted dying. The Bill before Parliament has created real concern with medical experts and charities. MPs and the Government should listen to their expertise.

Of course, in reality, the bill was never about the ‘principle’ of assisted suicide. This was an argument that the pro-assisted suicide lobby and attempts to rush to a vote through of the bill at second reading. They’ve also disingenuously leveraged this to disparage those who oppose it.

Leadbeater and her supporters have repeatedly dismissed experts and marginalised communities who have raised legitimate criticisms against the bill. Yet, these are the very communities that systemic healthcare failings and rife societal ableist scapegoating will put at risk of coercion to assisted suicide.

A system that treats disabled lives as expendable

Instead, Leadbeater and co have met opposition groups with spurious allegations of funding from illiberal religious sources. Yet, as the Canary has underscored, it’s the assisted dying lobby that has persistently failed to declare its donors. Those that the Canary could glean were a who’s who of corporate billionaires. Some even had long histories in the 20th century eugenics movement.

Today, in a capitalist system that treats poor, chronically ill, disabled, and racially minoritised lives as expendable, legalising it is a clear and present danger. That’s why there’s opposition – not some fundamentalist religious dark money donors. All 350 Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations (DDPOs) object because it could put their communities’ very lives on the line.

You only have to look at the height of the Covid pandemic. It was patently apparent at the time that society was treating chronically ill and disabled lives as lesser. A glaring example of this was when doctors foisted Do Not Resuscitate (DNRs) on chronically ill and learning disabled people. Also see: more than a decade of Tory austerity policy deaths and deliberate DWP ‘reform’ democide of disabled claimants.

An absolute farce in a not fit-for-purpose Private Member’s bill process

Right now, we’re witnessing just how little the new Labour government values chronically ill and disabled people’s lives. As the government gears up to push through the brutal Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) benefit cuts, it’s painfully apparent it’s fully prepared to plunge hundreds of thousands into destitution and ultimately, untimely, unconscionable deaths.

The Canary’s Steve Topple previously highlighted that:

In places like Canada and the Netherlands euthanasia accounts for 5% of all deaths. Therefore, when (not if) the Assisted Dying Bill’s scope is extended (if it becomes law), potentially around 30,000 people a year in the UK could be euthanised with the state’s consent. That’s 29,000 more than Leadbeater et al’s 1,000 a year estimate.

And once again, it’s poor, chronically ill, disabled communities, and people with mental health conditions who the state will invariably catch up in those figures. Leadbeater’s half-baked bill is not the piece of humane and compassionate legislation backers claim. The bill lacks vital safeguards. In tandem with a society set on measuring people’s worth in economic terms, it’s obvious where this leads.

However, despite all this, MPs won’t even get to view it in its entirety before it goes to a vote. That’s not responsible law-making. It’s just another farce in what has been a distorted process from the very start.

By Hannah Sharland

This post was originally published on Canary.