There was a markedly different feel to today’s debate on Assisted Dying. The last time the House debated Kim Leadbeater’s Bill at the end of November, there was plenty of pep and self-congratulation among the speeches. But today, it was a decidedly more bad-tempered affair, as MPs met for the first day on the Bill’s report stage, ahead of its Third Reading in a month’s time.
There are four obvious reasons why today saw a shift in the mood of the House. The first was the chop-and-change of the Bill’s safeguards during committee stage, with roughly 150 changes since the last vote. Labour’s Florence Eshalomi gave one of the most powerful speeches, declaring she was ‘even more worried now’ about the Bill than before, citing coercion fears. Rebecca Paul, a Tory, claimed there had been a ‘massive shift’ in the Bill’s emphasis from ‘pain’ to ‘choice and autonomy.’
The second reason was Esther Rantzen’s last-minute letter, published last night, accusing some MPs of being influenced by ‘undeclared personal religious beliefs.’ That prompted a series of scornful remarks from various MPs. Eshalomi called her intervention ‘frankly insulting’; fellow Labour opponent Jess Asato invited Leadbeater to condemn Rantzen’s comments ‘distasteful and disrespectful’. The Bill’s sponsor demured, suggesting she had not seen the letter.
The third reason was the lack of time for various MPs’ speeches. The Deputy Speaker was forced to tell MPs to reduce their interventions to just five minutes, with Meg Hillier – the respected chair of the Treasury Select Committee – raising a Point of Order to raise concerns. Jeremy Wright was forced to wrap up his remarks on the panel process which replaced the previous High Court safeguard. That is despite the ex-Attorney General warning that these panels will sit in private and might consider each case with as little as three hours’ thought, without proper investigation.
But the fourth reason was due to the behaviour of the Bill’s sponsor itself. Debating assisted dying without Kim Leadbeater might be considered akin to a performance of Hamlet without the Prince – or first gravedigger, depending on your perspective. Yet there is no doubt that Leadbeater irritated some in the chamber today, not least by her curious disappearance from the debate mid-way through. As Tory MP Simon Hoare noted in a Point of Order, it was a discourtesy to the House not to listen to arguments made in response to her own legislation.
The five-hour debate concluded with a series of votes on amendments put down on the Bill. Asato raised the farce of MPs casting votes without actually hearing speeches from those sponsoring the amendments in question. But, nevertheless, the House voted 288 to 239 to conclude debate. The closest of the rejected amendments was Rebecca Paul’s effort to allow hospices to opt out of assisted dying – opposed by 279 votes to 243. That suggests that there will be no hospice, nor care home, where a family can be certain ending the life of the terminally ill will not be suggested nor normalised.
Still, opponents of the Bill can take heart from one thing: the half-a-dozen MPs who have flipped this week from backing Leadbeater’s legislation to opposing it. Among them include Labour’s Jonathan Hinder, who raised the question of private providers profiting from assisted dying. With a month to go until the next stage of the Bill, there appears to be a shift in momentum. But whether enough minds will be changed to overturn the Second Reading majority of 55 remains to be seen.
Listen to James’s analysis on today’s Coffee House Shots podcast:
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