Kim Leadbeater MP has faced backlash for promoting an article that romanticised a joint assisted suicide.
Critics pointed out that the Australian couple, who died under New South Wales’ assisted suicide law, may not have met the requirement of being terminally ill, and that the article itself suggests they faced coercion from family members.
The Labour backbencher’s increasingly unpopular assisted suicide Bill would allow patients deemed to be terminally ill and with less than six months to live to receive help to kill themselves. MPs are expected to vote on the proposals for the final time on 20 June – at least 28 MPs would need to switch their vote to stop the Bill proceeding to the House of Lords.
‘Dystopian’
Leadbeater shared the story on social media along with a quote from the family: “When they chose to die together, my grandparents wrote the final chapter of a love story spanning 70 years”.
Fellow Labour MP Paul Waugh responded: “I have the utmost sympathy for this family. But this article is precisely why more MPs are turning against the Assisted Dying Bill. Neither of the couple involved appears to have had a terminal illness, yet their deaths went ahead despite ‘strict’ eligibility rules.”
Palliative care practitioner Dr Rachel Clarke noted that, while the article romanticised assisted suicide, it actually showed “a textbook case of how doctors subvert the rules to help patients without any terminal illness whatsoever to die by suicide. It could not highlight more starkly the dangers of the law we are currently debating.”
Dear @kimleadbeater,
Your AD bill is very similar to the law in use in New South Wales. Yet here is a case of doctors there ignoring the “6 months or less” rule to give two old people – without terminal diagnoses – lethal drugs to end their lives by suicide.
Safe? Really? https://t.co/RzPHyc7W8R
— Dr Rachel Clarke (@doctor_oxford) June 8, 2025
She commented: “It’s dystopian, dishonest & so deeply worrying. Please let’s not sleepwalk into this in the UK.”
‘Safeguarding collapse’
Commenting on Leadbeater’s post, one reader noted that a medic involved had ‘proactively’ suggested assisted suicide to the husband: “when he was not their patient; in a totally offhand way; without him seeking it out in any form; in front of his family; while he was having a panic attack, and; knowing he was losing his wife. Appropriate? Not pressured?”
Lawyer Dennis Kavanagh stated: “We’ve now reached the point of romanticising suicide pacts.”
Think tank The Other Half observed: “Exactly the kind of assisted dying safeguarding collapse we fear. A couple – NOT terminally ill – find drs willing to sign them off for dual euthanasia. Possibility of coercion glossed over: ‘he didn’t want to live without his love’. Family fears ‘what if one changed their mind at the last minute’ – when everyone had gathered and booked the meal! And the whole thing romanticised in media.”
Growing opposition
There is growing opposition to the Westminster Bill among those expected to deliver its provisions, including pathologists, doctors and psychiatrists.
The Royal College of Pathologists announced this week that it cannot support “the current version of the Bill”, explaining: “Lawyers, not doctors, are the most appropriate professionals to review these deaths. The medical examiner system was implemented to detect problems with medical care, not to identify discrepancies or malintent in the legal process required for assisted deaths.”
More than 1,000 doctors recently warned MPs that the Leadbeater Bill widens inequalities, provides inadequate safeguards and “is simply not safe”.
Last month, the Royal College of Psychiatrists urged Parliament to prevent Leadbeater’s “inadequate” proposals from becoming law.
Royal College of Pathologists ‘cannot support’ Leadbeater Bill
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