Kim Leadbeater has earned plenty of praise for her Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life), or assisted suicide, Bill. The Labour MP even won a gong for Political Speech of the Year award for her opening contribution to the parliamentary debate.
If we cannot trust Parliament to debate life-and-death decisions responsibly, how can we trust it to implement them?
“We saw Parliament at its best because the tone, the compassion, and the understanding that was shown was something we can all be proud of,” says Leadbeater, who has also described the bill as “Parliament at its best”. If only this were true. The reality is that the bill – which enters the Report Stage this week – shames parliament. Its distortions, rushed judgments, and procedural failures should embarrass those who are responsible.
The failings go back to when the bill was published last year, barely two weeks before an initial vote. This was scarcely enough time for proper debate. The scrutiny committee – made up of a group of MPs in Parliament that examine and debate each part of the bill – was stacked with supporters; those who opposed assisted dying were sidelined. The committee initially excluded the Royal College of Psychiatrists from giving oral evidence. When the hearings started, many witnesses were pro-assisted suicide, including Australian and American doctors who actively practise and campaign for it.
Among the most egregious moment was Australian politician Alex Greenwich’s claim that assisted suicide is a form of “suicide prevention”. Meanwhile, the committee called no opposing witnesses from Canada, where assisted suicide laws have spiralled far beyond their original scope (which was not dissimilar to what Leadbeater is proposing), nor from any other jurisdiction, such as the Netherlands or Belgium, that has decades of experience with ‘assisted dying’. Some committee members were regularly disengaged, even seen scrolling through their devices during sessions, or only participating to call an adjournment.
When MPs were paying attention, their contributions were not always helpful. Tory MP Kit Malthouse, who supports assisted dying, repeatedly interrupted Sarah Olney as she raised concerns about financial incentives for doctors, dismissing her warnings about profit-driven pressures in assisted suicide provision. Malthouse also attempted to persuade the Chair to silence opponents, arguing that their critiques, even when directly relevant, were “misrepresentations” of the committee’s work. This extended to policing Danny Kruger’s contributions, with Malthouse pushing to curtail his scrutiny of gaps in safeguards. Malthouse controversially appeared to seek to suppress criticism from Down syndrome advocates after the committee rejected protections for vulnerable patients, arguing that dissenting voices were misrepresenting the debate and should be “corrected”. His apparent attempts to control the narrative suggest a pattern of stifling legitimate debate while fast-tracking a flawed bill.
Concerns about depression, anorexia, and financial pressures were brushed aside by committee members. Neil Shastri-Hurst suggested that depression shouldn’t disqualify applicants who wanted to end their lives. When Kruger asked if we should allow someone to die to spare their family medical costs, Leadbeater hesitated, then fell back on a familiar catchphrase: “autonomy”.
Naz Shah, a committee member with hearing difficulties, had to leave early after sessions were extended late into the evening, despite Shah’s warnings that her hearing aid batteries would not last long enough. In April, Leadbeater reversed her stance on scheduling. Initially, she had insisted that the Report Stage of the bill should proceed as planned, but she later delayed it, announcing this change the day before the Easter recess began.
This pattern of making changes while MPs are likely to be distracted has been repeated. Last week, the impact assessment of the bill, that was widely believed to have been initially planned for release in April, was slipped out while Westminster was distracted by the fallout from the May elections. Did Number 10 hope no one would notice it? It certainly felt that way.
Assisted suicide opponent Meg Hillier said that publishing the assessment while MPs were distracted was “another example of the failure of this process to live up to the promises made to MPs at second reading.” She’s right: MPs are already halfway through the fortnight between its publication and the Report Stage. This simply isn’t long enough to thoroughly examine a 149-page document on such an important issue.
Despite the plaudits that Leadbetter has received, the assisted dying bill has been nothing short of shambolic. Rushed scrutiny, biased hearings, rejected safeguards, and questionable claims have defined this bill’s journey. If we cannot trust Parliament to debate life-and-death decisions responsibly, how can we trust it to implement them?
Far from a triumph of compassion or democratic rigour, the assisted dying bill has shown Parliament at its worst. Unless MPs recognise this swiftly and step back from the brink, the consequences will be deadly.
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