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
Kim Leadbeater’s bill, which may well dominate debate in Westminster over the next few months, gets its first outing today. The justice committee is meeting to grill the attorney general Richard Hermer and the solicitor general Lucy Rigby about the legal implications of assisted dying.
The actual committee on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill will meet for the first time next Tuesday, 21st January.
But that’s only to formally finalise when and how often it will meet in the future. The plan at the moment is to begin line-by-line scrutiny on 4th February, so right now campaign groups are sounding out MPs to see if they’ll back their favoured changes.
Only committee members can put forward amendments. First off the blocks was Ashford MP Sojan Joseph, who was a mental health nurse until his election last year. He wants a psychiatrist to be one of the doctors required to sanction a request for assisted dying. He told Nursing Times: “you’re more likely to feel depressed when you hear that you only have six months to live... and your judgement can be impacted by that sort of low feeling. Specific mental health professionals’ involvement to assess a patient’s decision to go ahead with assisted dying should be based on their mental state as well, more than just capacity.”
Joseph voted against the bill in November but has made it clear he could change his mind if the amendment is passed.
I’m told other MPs are being sounded out to see if they would support a definition of terminal illness that doesn’t include a time limit, as in the Scottish bill, and dropping the involvement of a High Court judge in favour of a panel of experts, as happens in Spain. Some want clarification about who exactly is exempt from prosecution under the Suicide Act. Clearly, the bill creates exemptions for medical professionals but doesn’t cover, for instance, someone driving a person to an appointment. This loophole could lead to legal uncertainties, such as inheritance disputes if family members are accused of a crime despite following guidance. Some issues will be bitterly fought over, such as what doctors can and can’t say to patients. Opponents want them prevented from promoting assisted dying; those in favour of the bill regard this as a “gagging clause”.
Unusually for a private members’ bill, the committee has been given the power to call for “persons, papers and records”, and campaign groups are chivvying their supporters to write in: anyone can do so, although parliament’s own very helpful website suggests people should “concentrate on issues where you have a special interest or expertise, and factual information of which you would like the Committee to be aware.”
One Catholic news outlet helpfully publishes Care Not Killing’s handy guide to objecting to the whole thing without saying you’re objecting to the whole thing: “This is not a consultation on the overarching principles of the debate...
“Our briefing may give you a steer, but must not be reproduced verbatim: your submission must be an expression of your own concerns about the workability of the Bill.”
“Your personal or professional experience may make you well placed to explain why particular provisions in the Bill are inadequate, unworkable, or not properly thought through.”
Among those lobbying MPs is the charity Humanists UK, which argues on its website that “passing the Bill will give dying adults the choice and dignity of a compassionate death within the law.” The group’s director of Public Affairs and Policy, Richy Thompson, told me what its aim was: “We will be seeking to ensure that the bill that emerges from committee stages is as good as it can be in terms of eligibility process and safeguards. That means both guarding against amendments that might harm or restrict access in ways that are unhelpful for those who genuinely need an assisted death, but also looking at what amendments could be brought to strengthen the bill in all of those different areas.”
Over the coming days I’ll be keeping an eye on what amendments are proposed and what they would mean for the bill.
