This is Prospect’s rolling coverage of the assisted dying debate. This page will be updated with the latest from our correspondent, Mark Mardell. Read the rest of our coverage here
25th November
5pm
Yet another opinion poll suggests a clear majority of the British public want the law to change, but supporters of Kim Leadbeater’s bill on assisted dying must be feeling increasingly nervous.
This week marks a pivotal moment in the debate over assisted dying—and whether or not the UK will join the 11 countries, 10 US states (as well as Washington DC) and six Australian states, where it is legal.
By early Friday evening we should know if the bill is on its way to becoming the law of the land. The debate, beginning at a few minutes past 9am on Friday 29th November, will culminate in a crucial vote, with full coverage available here. It promises to be quite the occasion, given that the fractious disagreements among Labour MPs seem to be getting hotter and hotter all the time.
If Keir Starmer’s recent intervention was intended to lower the temperature and cool tempers, it seems the justice secretary Shabana Mahmood didn’t get the memo. In a letter to her constituents, she used language so emotive that Wes Streeting’s remarks pale by comparison.
She wrote: “Sadly, recent scandals—such as Hillsborough, infected blood and the Post Office Horizon—have reminded us that the state and those acting on its behalf are not always benign. I have always held the view that, for this reason, the state should serve a clear role. It should protect and preserve life, not take it away. The state should never offer death as a service.”
Then for good measure she added: “We must never accept the wrongful deaths of some in exchange for the desired deaths of others. That line, once crossed, will be crossed for ever.
“The right to die, for some, will—inexorably and inevitably—become the duty to die for others. And that is why I will be voting against this bill.”
Headlines about “state death service” were inevitable.
If Streeting was thought to have overstepped the mark, Mahmood has pole-vaulted over it, while sticking two fingers up at Starmer. Just as inevitable as those headlines are questions about his authority and political nous.
Work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall generously told the BBC and Sky News that although she would vote for the bill she not would criticise “good colleagues [who] have strong opinions about this”. Nor would she speculate if they could keep their jobs if the bill passed.
I will though. Streeting has given himself plenty of wriggle-room and neither he nor the Labour leader would want to shift him from his central role of running the NHS. Mahmood might find it harder to carry on delivering a “death service” and dealing with the knotty legal complications as the bill goes through committee. If she doesn’t jump, Starmer will be tempted to give her the push—but probably won’t want to antagonise the antis by cementing the divisions with a sacking. I would want her gone, but he may be more forgiving. Perhaps a shift to another high-visibility job will be in order. But it may not come to that.
In another major blow to the bill, former prime minister Gordon Brown has surprised many of us by coming out against it. Brown, in a typically thoughtful piece, argues:
“An assisted dying law, however well intended, would alter society’s attitude towards elderly, seriously ill and disabled people, even if only subliminally, and I also fear the caring professions would lose something irreplaceable—their position as exclusively caregivers.”
But he begins with an intensely personal story. “Jennifer, the baby daughter my wife Sarah brought into the world a few days after Christmas 2001, died after only 11 days. By day four, when the extent of her brain haemorrhage had been diagnosed, we were fully aware that all hope was gone and that she had no chance of survival. We could only sit with her, hold her tiny hand and be there for her as life ebbed away. She died in our arms. But those days we spent with her remain among the most precious days of my and Sarah’s lives. The experience of sitting with a fatally ill baby girl did not convince me of the case for assisted dying; it convinced me of the value and imperative of good end-of-life care.”
As this week unfolds, there’ll be many such heartbreaking stories, from each side, as parliament finds itself at the centre of a debate with global resonance. The eyes of the world will on us as the latest nation grapple to with one of the most profound ethical dilemmas of our time. Follow this page for in-depth coverage. Later in the week, I will publish an interview with disability campaigners.
