Well, well, well. Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill has made it to the House of Lords, where the legislation will be scrutinised by peers before receiving Royal Assent. The bill wracked up intense criticism as it made its way through the Commons – and it seems things will be no different in the Lords. Steerpike can reveal there has been a backlash from across the political spectrum over the ‘deeply troubling’ revelation that the Lords committee has placed restrictions on the written evidence that can be submitted.
The House of Lords committee that was set up to provide further scrutiny of Leadbeater’s legislation has announced that ‘owing to the short timeframe for the inquiry and the limited scope of the Committee as established in the motion to appoint it, the Committee is not seeking or accepting written evidence other than from invited witnesses’. The 13-strong group will instead hear from a select handful of people, starting on Wednesday with Leadbeater herself and the sponsor of the bill in the Lords, Lord Falconer.
It’s a rather odd move: as outlined in Erskine May, ‘select committees rely very largely on written and oral evidence’ when conducting their inquiries. Usually the committee would accept evidence from the public alongside expert testimony which would help scrutinise the legislation. The development has prompted fierce criticism from opponents of the bill, many of whom have taken issue with the level of transparency – or lack thereof – of the assisted dying legislation thus far. Mr S has previously compiledsome of the worst moments of the evidence sessions that left critics more concerned than comforted…
Ex-Lib Dem leader Tim Farron MP took to Twitter to remark that the decision of the Lords committee was ‘deeply troubling’, urging them to ‘reconsider’ – while Nikki Da Costa, former director of legislative affairs at No. 10, fumed:
‘Think you have something useful to tell the Lords about Leadbeater’s bill? Think again… “The Committee is not seeking or accepting written evidence other than from invited witnesses”! Anyone aware of any precedent for this? To actively say “we don’t want to know”?’
The outrage is cross-party: Labour MP Jess Asato wrote on social media that ‘it seems very odd to have a Committee which isn’t able to accept written evidence’. She added: The Bill has changed since it was first proposed and how can a Committee on a Bill of this magnitude come to a reasoned conclusion on just a few sessions of oral evidence?’ Her colleague Antonia Bance raged the restriction was ‘absolutely crackers’, while Tory peer Lord Forst has blasted the move as a ‘great pity’. Quite!
So will the Lords reconsider, as Farron has begged them to do? Stay tuned…
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