Assisted suicide activists can’t stand seeing the Leadbeater Bill finally getting the scrutiny it needs
Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is finally undergoing some proper scrutiny, and its supporters are not happy at all.
They were far more upbeat when they could steamroll through the House of Commons. While MPs including Danny Kruger (Con, now Reform), Rebecca Paul (Con), Naz Shah (Lab) and Sarah Olney (Lib Dem) did their best to highlight the dangers of the Bill during Committee Stage, the cards were stacked heavily against them. The expert witnesses were skewed towards those in favour of the Bill, none of the legal experts asked to give evidence were opposed to assisted suicide, and no experts from abroad gave anything but glowing testimonies of how the laws are working for them – despite the barrage of evidence showing some dreadful practices. Time after time, sensible amendments were proposed, only to be shot down.
By the time the Bill reached Report Stage, MPs were no longer being fed the line that this issue is about delivering pain-free deaths to those at the very end of life. Now it is about personal autonomy. Of course, this turns a completely blind eye to the suffering such a law could cause to vulnerable people – those who would not wish to end their life through assisted suicide, but feel pressure to do so, whether from doctors, family, society, or even from within.
Pro-assisted suicide campaigners were jubilant when it was voted through in the Commons, albeit by a narrower margin than at Second Reading. They are less so now. Because while Kim Leadbeater did everything in her power to rush her Bill through the process and give it as little proper scrutiny as possible, she cannot exert the same amount of control in the House of Lords. At the time of writing, Peers seem overwhelmingly negative about the Bill. So much so, they have tabled over 1,000 amendments in an increasingly vain attempt to make it workable.
‘This Bill is full of holes’
Unsurprisingly, the Peers who have tabled so many amendments have been accused of ‘delay tactics’. On the first of four days set aside for debate, only seven amendments were debated. On the second, a further 21. At this rate, were the Government to allocate every Friday between now and next Easter, there would still not be enough time to clear up the mess left behind by the Commons. And more amendments are being added by the day. The Bill is so bad that it needs them, and ultimately, this could be the legislation’s downfall, as it runs the risk of running out of time.
Bill cheerleaders Humanists UK, Dignity in Dying and My Death, My Decision are all crying foul, with their celebrity spokeswoman Esther Rantzen even claiming opponents are trying to “sabotage democracy”. Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins called for the House of Lords to be scrapped and replaced by a different second house if it obstructs this Bill. Some Peers, including some who have expressed reservations about the Bill, recently signed a letter, saying: “It is not our role to frustrate the clear democratic mandate expressed by elected Members”, although many of them have taken a decidedly different view at other times. This is not even a Government-led proposal – merely a Private Member’s Bill.
And to say there is a ‘clear democratic mandate’ is bending the truth more than a little. While the House of Commons did vote in favour, the majority was small, and was narrowing. Given more time and scrutiny in the Commons, it may not have passed at all. This was also no part of the Labour Party’s manifesto – the British public did not cast their votes in July 2024 with such a seismic change to the law in mind. Supporters of the Bill claim there is widespread support among the public, but the reality is that the more people understand what assisted suicide is about, what it entails, and how the law has been interpreted and widened in other countries, the less they like it. Support falls dramatically among those who understand what it truly is.
Supporters of the Bill, therefore, want the amendments to be ditched, so that the legislation has time to pass before the end of this Parliamentary session, sometime in the spring. But if those amendments are withdrawn and the Bill becomes law, we will be left with a truly horrifying piece of legislation.
In response to the Peers’ letter, Baroness Luciana Berger said: “The Lords select committee took evidence from a wide range of professional bodies and organisations including the EHRC, that strongly refuted any suggestion this bill is either safe or workable, with the EHRC itself strongly criticising the government’s equality impact assessment. We also heard that palliative care developments have slowed in legislatures that have introduced [assisted suicide]. This bill is full of holes which vulnerable people will fall through and be harmed if peers don’t act to change and amend it.”
Assisted suicide at any cost
The Christian Institute would not support any Bill legalising assisted suicide – any such law undermines the dignity of human beings as made in the image of God. But even if you support assisted suicide in principle, the flaws in this ‘licence to kill’, as it has been dubbed, are only too apparent. A responsible legislator would still seek to make it as safe as possible, not the free-for-all that some campaigners want. They talk up the emotive hard cases, but these are just the thin end of the wedge. Dave Sowry, Board Member of My Death, My Decision, said: “The process must be as simple as possible for the vast majority of straightforward cases, whilst being robust and safe for the remaining tiny minority of complex cases.”
But a great many cases are enormously complicated, and the Bill has extremely far-reaching implications, which is why so many amendments have been tabled. One, tabled by Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, intends to specify that the definition of ‘coerced or pressured’ “includes intentional or indirect structural disadvantage including poverty or lack of care”. This amendment would mean that, when assessing pressure, financial hardship would be taken into account, as would the availability of care. In other words, if someone was unable to afford to go into a care home, or receive care at home, they should not feel as though death is their only option. Lord Falconer, the Bill’s sponsor in the Lords, responded to the amendment by saying people should not be barred from assisted suicide because it is driven by poverty.
Another amendment has been put forward to require a woman to return a negative pregnancy test before she can proceed with an assisted suicide. Those of us who value life in the womb will say “Rightly so!”, but Lib Dem MP Christine Jardine says the tabling of such amendments is “immature and potentially dangerous”. In doing so, she lifts the veil on the grotesque underbelly of this legislation.
Those in favour of the Bill want death on demand, no matter the consequences for society, no matter how many end up as collateral damage. And they want everyone with concerns to shut up so they can plough ahead with their licence to kill.