A change in the law letting people demand help from the state to kill themselves is the sort of thing any government ought to take a great deal of time over. It’s an area where thoughtful delay is entirely desirable, with committees of the great and the good encouraged to take a deep breath, hear as many views as possible and take their time over any conclusions. Unfortunately this is the exact opposite of what is happening with the Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill.
It’s increasingly apparent that this proposal is being treated more as if it were some urgent infrastructure project that needs to be cleared and got under way as soon as decently possible. We have already seen this in the short notice given to parliament of the Bill’s terms and the minimal time allocated for debate. It was also visible in the determined efforts by those in charge of the private member’s bill committee to seemingly skew the evidence it receives towards those in favour of the Bill and limit as far as possible the number of opponents it is prepared to listen to. (The committee had to be shamed into hearing even from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, having previously voted to exclude it because of alleged shortage of time.)
It’s increasingly likely that this plan to railroad the Bill through will not work
Yesterday there was another bizarre development. The committee has now apparently proposed using a panel of experts, possibly composed of social workers, psychiatrists and retired judges, to sign off on every request for assisted dying. This comes after the plan to require a High Court judge to sign off on each request was rightly criticised as an egregious waste of court time. It was also seen as being aimed more at outward respectability than effective restraint, since the judge’s function would, it seems, have been largely one of confirming that the doctors had got the forms correct rather than applying his own independent scrutiny.
Although such a move would admittedly free up family division High Court judges for more important work, this is a pretty preposterous proposal. If approval by the panel remains essentially an exercise of checking that the doctors have got the paperwork right, it’s not clear why you need a collection of experts to do this. And if the panel is supposed to go further and make its own decision on the merits of every case, then the potential for every case to potentially give rise to long-winded arguments between legal, psychiatric and social work professionals – with the possibility of further judicial review of any decisions they take – leaves the mind boggling.
But really, this misses the point. One suspects that those putting forward the new proposal know pretty well that it is for show more than anything else.
Kim Leadbeater and her supporters are getting worried. Their previous plan had been simple. They would say that since the House of Commons had agreed to give the Bill a second reading, it was too late for anyone to argue about anything more than points of fairly minor detail. It was therefore just a matter of getting as many reliable supporters onto the committee as possible, hearing from a sufficient number of witnesses to make the process look respectable, accepting the odd minor amendment and presenting the House with a fait accompli.
Unfortunately, however, it’s increasingly likely that this plan to railroad the Bill through will not work. Worrying numbers of MPs have said they remain unconvinced; many of these precisely on the basis that the provision for High Court judge approval is a mere fig-leaf, and the protection against undue pressure non-existent.
Hence this new proposal, which is pretty clearly aimed at giving the naysayers an opportunity to gracefully withdraw their opposition by saying that their concerns have now been met. The hope, I suspect, is that even if they know that the change will actually make little difference they will take the easy way out; after all, they are only human and, like all MPs, they will have other matters in their intray and will warmly welcome the opportunity to move on.
Increasing numbers of MPs are unhappy not only with the Bill as such, but with the determination of the bill committee to suppress as much argument as possible and get it through come what may with as little argument as possible (a determination quietly shared by the government, which would love an opportunity to get the matter off its own plate). We can only encourage them to continue to see the issue as one of principle, reject the invitation to accept a plausible excuse to back off, and vote according to their conscience. Opponents of this wretched measure owe it to us as voters to stand firm and assert their independence.
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