radiofree.asia

MPs pass the assisted suicide bill – and betray disabled communities in the process

MPs have passed Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill at third reading – ignoring the warnings of hundreds of groups representing chronically ill and disabled people, palliative care specialists, as well as organisations that represent older people, people with eating disorders, and domestic violence organisations, respectively.

Just earlier in the day, MPs had again voted down a number of amendments. These amendments would have offered basic safeguards to marginalised communities the bill will invariably disproportionately impact.

Commons votes yes to dangerous assisted suicide bill

Outside parliament, huge numbers of anti-assisted dying campaigners turned out to call on MPs to reject the bill:

As proceedings commenced in the Commons, on X, former independent MP Claudia Webbe underscored a vital point:

Ultimately however, in what was a painfully close vote, parliament passed the bill 314 to 291.

Many expressed their devastation on social media. Coercive control expert Dr Emma Katz was one of them:

Others, like disabled activist Abi Broomfield were defiant and called for the community to continue to support each other going forward:

Another X user highlighted Marcia’s story from Canada, who the Canary reported on earlier this week:

Disability rights advocate and Canary writer Rachel articulated in a word what the vote signifies:

Amendments offering bare minimum safeguards voted down again

Ahead of the vote on the bill as a whole, parliament also voted on a number of additional amendments selected by the speaker.

One particular amendment would have stopped a person being eligible for assisted dying if they were “substantially motivated” by feeling a burden on public services, or had a non-terminal disability or mental health condition. Notably, this also set out how individuals’ decision must not revolve around “financial considerations”, including a “lack of adequate housing”, or a lack of access to healthcare.

MPs voted this down.

Essentially, parliamentarians have said that even if individuals are seeking assisted suicide because they’re disabled, poor, depressed, homeless, or have limited access to care, they can qualify for the state to kill them.

What’s notable is that Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) ministers abstained on this:

Perhaps their spineless abstentions were a quiet admission that their welfare cuts bill is going to drive countless chronically ill and disabled people into just such circumstances.

Changing the principles and purpose of the NHS?

Another focused on preventing the definition of terminal illness within the context of the bill from including those who make their condition life-threatening by voluntarily stopping eating and drinking. In this instance, parliament passed this amendment. However, as ex director of legislative affairs at Number 10 Nikki Da Costa pointed out, MPs previously rejected a crucial amendment that would have closed the loopholes in the bill that put people living with eating disorders at risk:

A further amendment would have stopped the bill from enabling the Secretary of State to unilaterally amend the National Health Service Act 2006. The Act sets out the NHS’s purpose to “secure improvement”:

(a) in the physical and mental health of the people of England, and

(b) in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of physical and mental illness.

To ensure the assisted dying bill doesn’t alter the NHS’s core function, the amendment stipulated that the government can only make changes to it through an act of parliament. But once again, parliament rejected this.

On top of these, a further amendment parliament debate revolved around capacity. Specifically, it removed the presumption that a person has capacity – making it so that the bill requires clinicians to establish this. Again, MPs voted this down.

The appalling state of palliative care

The last non-Leadbeater amendment mandates an assessment into how assisted suicide services impact the:

availability, quality and distribution of palliative and end of life care services.

This would need to be conducted within the first year after parliament passed the act.

Liberal Democrat Munira Wilson put this forward – and the House passed it. However, in the debate, she noted that:

a report on its own is not going to improve our palliative and end-of-life care.

And we have had no commitment from ministers as yet that they will do so. The result will be either people choosing to end their lives before they want to, or those who already have a huge distrust in the system, particularly from minority and disadvantaged communities whose voices have been heard the least in this debate, choosing not to access the care they need, dying an even more traumatic death.

She also made the key point that a singular marginalised life lost due to this legislation is unacceptable:

How many lives taken in error is too many? One? One in ten? One in a hundred? The House, this House, clearly supports the principle of an assisted death, as does the public, but not at any cost. This Bill is not fit for purpose and the experts have told us the safeguards in it will not adequately protect those who most need, indeed expect us as legislators to protect them.

Cognitive dissonance on an unconscionable scale

One aspect of this result that’s hard to reconcile is how many of the same MPs who have been vociferously opposing the welfare cuts, supported this bill. For instance, Green Party MPs who are fighting the benefit cuts, all supported the bill. Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay tried to tell the social media-sphere that he’d listened to the concerns of marginalised communities:

Meanwhile, independent and long-time supporter of grassroots disability groups, John McDonnell, also spoke out during the debate confirming he would vote for it.

It demonstrates a staggering cognitive dissonance. Parliamentarians in their Westminster bubble have failed to join the dots.

They’ve failed to acknowledge that chronically ill and disabled people will now likely face the very alarming prospect of the twofold danger from this bill and the benefit cuts bill.

They might argue that they’re intending to vote against it, but this doesn’t change the fact the government is trying to ram it through – and are concerningly likely to succeed. It’s a galling disconnect: MPs imagine we live in an ideal world when they take their moral beliefs into Westminster. But, as many MPs pointed out, including mother of the House Diane Abbott, parliamentarians can support the principle of assisted dying, but still oppose this particular bill.

That fact seemed lost on many who voted it through – or more likely, obtusely ignored.

Assisted suicide bill passed the Commons in less than a hundred hours

Conservative MP for North Dorset Simon Hoare noted the shocking fact that the previous parliament:

spent 746 hours discussing the death of a fox, and about 98 hours discussing the death of fellow humans.

With such minimal time allotted to a bill with such enormous ramifications, parliament has shown just how little it values the lives of marginalised communities.

Meanwhile, in a society soon to strip hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of chronically ill and disabled people’s vital benefits:

Both sum up in a nutshell how dehumanising the whole process has been. MPs have voted through a bill that lets physicians raise assisted suicide with their patients. They’ve voted through a bill that says, if you feel like a burden, you can seek out assisted suicide. There’s no protections to ensure people aren’t turning to assisted suicide because they can’t access palliative care.

Parliament does not represent chronically ill and disabled communities

It will now move into the House of Lords. However, as many MPs who opposed the bill outlined, peers will be able to do little to plug the glaring gaps in this bill riddled with unconscionable risks. What MPs voted on today is broadly how the legislation will operate. What’s more, in essence, assisted suicide will now become law. Lords cannot block the bill, only amend it and delay its course to royal assent and then law.

Disabled campaigners mounted a fierce fight against it – but ultimately, big money talks. And the pro-assisted dying lobby, the likes of the opaquely funded Dignity in Dying, drowned out the voices of those very communities who know they’ll find themselves at the sharp end of this.

Parliament might have passed it in the name of supposed ‘dignity’ and ‘personal choice’ in death, but it will come at an indefensible cost. Today, Westminster politicians sent a resounding message that they back the state-sanctioned culling of chronically ill and disabled lives. The MPs who passed this bill can never again claim to represent our communities.

Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Sky News

By Hannah Sharland

This post was originally published on Canary.