A BILL to legalise assisted dying has been passed within the House of Commons by a narrow majority of 23 votes.
A debate on the Third Reading of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life Bill), on Friday, was followed by a free vote, carried by 314 to 291. The Bill will now progress to the House of Lords to be scrutinised by peers.
Before the primary debate on the Bill began, MPs considered quite a lot of amendments. Among them were a latest clause which might mean that the Bill wouldn’t apply to individuals who had “voluntarily stopped eating or drinking”, which was supported by Ms Leadbeater and passed with no counted vote.
Some changes were rejected, including a latest clause which might specify that assisted dying wouldn’t be available to people in the event that they were motivated by “not wanting to be a burden”, had a “mental disorder (including depression)”, a disability that was not a terminal illness, “financial considerations”, “lack of access, or delayed access, to treatment”, or “suicidal ideation”.
An amendment that will remove the legal presumption that an individual had mental capability unless shown otherwise was also rejected at a vote.
In the Third Reading debate that followed the consideration of those amendments, Ms Leadbeater argued that it “doesn’t make sense” for it to be legal for individuals with terminal illnesses to effectively kill themselves by refusing foods and drinks, but to not request a medically assisted death.
Referring to the stories of several individuals with terminal illnesses, Ms Leadbeater focused on arguments about autonomy, saying: “Surely we should always all have the best to make our own decisions about our own bodies and choose when enough is enough.”
The Conservative MP James Cleverly, a former Foreign Secretary, said that he was confident that every one members were “sympathetic” to the underlying motive of the Bill: to cut back suffering.
“I don’t come to this from a spiritual perspective; I’m an atheist, I’m a humanist,” he said; he got here to the talk “not from a position of religion, but of ignorance”. He said that he was struck by the variety of skilled bodies, including the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Psychiatrists, which were neutral on assisted dying as a principle, but had expressed concerns concerning the particularities of the Bill.
Mr Cleverly urged members to reject the Bill, suggesting that it had not been properly scrutinised, and that neither proponents nor opponents must be comfortable trusting the House of Lords to enhance the laws.
The Labour MP for Bradford West, Naz Shah, also referred to opposition to the Bill by some members of the medical and health-care professions, warning that MPs must be wary of considering that they knew higher than experts.
The Liberal Democrat MP for Richmond Park, Sarah Olney, agreed, saying that this mustn’t be a “political decision” made in an “adversarial” process, but must be handed to a commission of experts.
Responding to points concerning the lack of consensus from skilled bodies, Ms Leadbeater said that there have been health-care professionals on either side of the talk.
“This would be the most fateful Bill we discuss this Parliament. It is literally a matter of life and death,” the Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, Diane Abbott, said. “What could possibly be more appalling than losing your life attributable to poorly drafted laws?”
Questions of capability, and privilege, were essential, she suggested, and MPs needed to be mindful of the incontrovertible fact that they were individuals who didn’t have any problem with standing up for themselves; but many individuals, especially when affected by a terminal illness, could be less capable of exert their autonomy.
The Liberal Democrat MP for Eastbourne, Josh Babarinde, said that there was no one more voiceless in the method than adults with terminal illnesses, and proponents of the Bill were, like Ms Abbott, concerned with ensuring that those that were vulnerable had autonomy at the tip of their lives. “The establishment is totally unacceptable and have to be reformed,” he said.
There was an “absolute sanctity of human life”, the Labour MP for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket, Dr Peter Prinsley, said; however the query was not about life and death, but “death and death”. His long experience as a health care provider had convinced him of the “sanctity of dignity”, he said. He urged members to support the Bill.
The DUP MP for Belfast East, Gavin Robinson, said that he could be voting based on his religious faith, but urged those MPs who weren’t voting based on a “principled position”, but as an alternative on the specifics of the Bill, to oppose it.
Many had supported the Bill within the expectation that safeguards could be developed on the Committee stage; but, as an alternative, they’d been “stripped away”, he said, including the requirement that a High Court judge be involved in the method.
The Labour MP for Worthing West, Dr Beccy Cooper, who’s a health care provider specialising in public health, disagreed concerning the levels of protection, as did the Labour MP for Southend West and Leigh, David Burton-Sampson.
Dr Cooper said that caution had been taken through the legislative process to make sure that the laws included adequate safeguards, and that public-health policy should — and, on this case, would — create a secure environment for people to exercise autonomy over their bodies.
Not all MPs agreed that sufficient care had been taken over the progress of the Bill. Among those to lift concerns was the Conservative MP for North Dorset, Simon Hoare. He observed that about 746 hours had been spent discussing “the death of a fox” when the Hunting Act was being passed, but “about 98 hours discussing the death of fellow humans”. Was this right, he asked.
The Conservative MP for Tonbridge, Tom Tugendhat, said that laws, if passed, would amount to a “huge shift in the connection between the person and the State”, as it could license the State to take a life.
“The truth is that this isn’t assisted dying; assisted dying is what a hospice does already, now: helping people, caring for people, supporting them. This is assisted killing or assisted suicide,” he said.
The language utilized in the talk has been a source of contention: some opponents of the Bill confer with it as “assisted suicide”, and MPs on the opposite side object that such language is uncaring (News, 13 June).
The Conservative MP for Droitwich and Evesham, Nigel Huddleston, praised the final tone of the talk, but lamented the “somewhat dismissive attitude expressed towards those with religious beliefs. . . It is perfectly legitimate for religious beliefs to influence one’s views on assisted dying”, and those that articulate them must be “respected, not sneered at”, he said.
In a report published by the think tank Theos, last Friday, Dr Nick Spencer argued that it was fundamentally flawed to demand that “one sort of belief system — the religious one — must be named, outed, and treated prefer it was a compromising factor, but that other (non-religious) belief systems needn’t achieve this” (News, 13 June).
