Kim Leadbeater has described her assisted suicide bill as ‘potentially one of the most important changes in legislation that we will ever see’. For Leadbeater and her allies, it is an attempt to make the law merciful: to give relief to those who want to control the manner of their death. But there is another, darker way to see the Leadbeater bill, and last week at the bill committee we got a glimpse of it.
The committee stage was meant to reassure the doubters. At second reading, MPs were told that if the vote – just 18 days after the bill was published – seemed rushed, there would be plenty of time for parliament to change its mind. Layla Moran, one of the bill’s supporters, said: ‘Remember you can vote aye on a bill at second reading and no at a later stage.’ Dignity in Dying, the campaign group, urged MPs to back the bill ‘so that detailed scrutiny can follow’.
The bill squeaked through and Leadbeater selected a committee which – to more cynical observers – looked like it might be designed not to scrutinise the bill, but to make things as easy as possible. Danny Kruger, the bill’s most prominent parliamentary critic, suggested nine names for the committee. Leadbeater chose just two, picking newer and less experienced MPs. And she gave herself a 14-9 majority, significantly less balanced than the Commons vote.
Until that point, Leadbeater had largely evaded criticism. Energetic and down-to-earth, she entered parliament in her mid-forties after a career in the real world as a lecturer and personal trainer. ‘I came into politics to make a difference,’ she said in an interview shortly before the first Commons vote. ‘I didn’t come in here to build a big, fancy career or to get my name in lights.’
But her management of the committee has been consistently jaw-dropping. Having skewed the committee itself, she then excluded dissenting voices from giving evidence: 24 supporters were invited to testify, 20 or so neutrals, and only five opponents. When sceptical committee members wanted to debate that list, she decided that the discussion would – unusually – be behind closed doors, to protect witnesses’ ‘privacy’.
Having skewed the committee itself, Kim Leadbeater then excluded dissenting voices from giving evidence
Subsequently, the sceptics proposed amendments to invite the Royal College of Psychiatrists (given the concerns about coercion and mental illness); disability rights organisations (who say their community would be hugely affected by such a bill); the British Geriatrics Society (which represents healthcare professionals working with older people); and a dozen others. Leadbeater and her allies voted down every single one – though they U-turned on the first two after a storm of negative publicity.
On day one of the evidence sessions, Rachel Clarke, pointed out that the dying are routinely abandoned in their suffering. ‘Every night in my hospital, and every weekend from Friday to Monday, you cannot see a palliative care nurse or doctor, despite the fact that for a number of years that has been an NHS standard. That is an absolute disgrace.’ If that isn’t fixed, Dr Clarke went on, ‘some of those people will “choose” to end their life, because we as a society do not care about them enough to give them the care that might make life worth living. Surely that is a travesty for Britain’.
Clarke’s point can be extended: for all the talk of ‘autonomy’ and ‘choice’, this bill is a blueprint for a far more dangerous society. Those who feel like a burden, who are depressed, who have been let down by the NHS, who are lonely and unsupported, have, suddenly, a short route to the exit. Yes, they need a doctor to diagnose them as ‘terminally ill’; but as Baroness Finlay, the former president of the British Medical Association, has said, the bill’s definition of terminal illness is ‘incredibly broad’. The landscape would be full of trapdoors and cliff-edges; a world where the ill, expensive or inconvenient are constantly quietly aware that, you know, you could always request some lethal drugs.
Leadbeater has never given a coherent response to that point. And if witnesses offered even gently critical remarks about the proposed legislation, she would often jump in to defend her bill. When Sarah Cox, the head of the Association for Palliative Medicine (which opposes the bill), was speaking with poise and authority about the nature of dying, Leadbeater interrupted. The chair, clearly exasperated, called her to order.
The witnesses themselves were unimpressed. When Leadbeater posted on X a highly selective ‘summary’ of the committee sessions, Dr Clarke responded: ‘This is absolutely not a fair representation of the evidence you were provided with last week, Kim.’ Eating disorders expert Chelsea Roff, who argued forcefully that the bill endangers those with anorexia, found the committee ‘at times painfully unaware of the international evidence on this, and even the wording of the bill itself’. The psychiatrist Allan House commented drily: ‘Frustrating format and sense of minds made up. But interesting to be told by Kim Leadbeater that I don’t understand suicide in life-limiting illness.’
As the doubting voices began to predominate, Leadbeater must have looked hopefully towards her international witnesses who had been brought in to brief the committee. Those Australians, especially, with their plain-speaking cheerfulness, their common-law liberal democracy, their five years’ experience of legalised assisted suicide. They would set us right.
In fact they sounded as if they had lost their minds. ‘Voluntary assisted dying,’ explained Alex Greenwich, of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, ‘is a form of suicide prevention.’ Meredith Blake, of the University of Western Australia, hotly denied that people were requesting suicide because they feel like a burden. ‘That is not the evidence that we have got.’ When the evidence was produced (35 per cent cite it as a reason), she hotly denied that there was anything wrong with that. ‘People can feel that they are a burden, and that is part of their autonomous thinking. People have their own views of their own life.’
In about 11 weeks, the Commons is likely to have its all-important final vote on a legislative process that increasingly looks like a car crash. The trouble is that we’re all in the car.
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Rachel Clarke is a palliative care consultant
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