Parliament urged to reject assisted suicide bill

Campaigners are pleading with MPs to reject proposals to legalise assisted suicide, warning that any change to the law will put vulnerable people in danger. 

They have expressed concern about how little time MPs need to scrutinise details of Kim Leadbeater’s bill just two weeks before a vote is held. This is considerably shorter than the nearly two months MPs had when the problem was last voted on in Parliament in 2015. 

“More than half of the present sitting MPs were newly elected on the General Election this 12 months, and have spent much of that point for the reason that election on recess,” said Right to Life UK.

“This means they’ve had little or no time to listen to from each side of the talk on this significant change to the law – and now they will probably be only given barely two weeks to scrutinise the Bill.”

While Leadbeater has sought to vow “the strictest safeguards anywhere on this planet”, over 3,400 doctors and nurses have signed an open letter to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer saying that it’s “unimaginable for any Government to draft assisted suicide laws which include protection from coercion and future expansion”.

“The NHS is broken, with health and social care in disarray. Palliative care is woefully underfunded and lots of lack access to specialist provision,” they are saying within the letter organised by campaign group Our Duty of Care.

“The considered assisted suicide being introduced and managed safely at such a time is remarkably out of touch with the gravity of the present mental health crisis and pressures on staff.

“Any change would threaten society’s ability to safeguard vulnerable patients from abuse; it could undermine the trust the general public places in physicians; and it could send a transparent message to our frail, elderly and disabled patients in regards to the value that society places on them as people.”

Dr Gordon Macdonald, chief executive of Care Not Killing, said: “This bill is being rushed with indecent haste and ignores the deep-seated problems within the UK’s broken and patchy palliative care system and the crisis in social care as highlighted by hundreds of medics who signed the open letter to the Prime Minister, published this morning.

“It also ignores data from world wide that shows changing the law would put pressure on vulnerable people to finish their lives.

Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill says that applications for medically-assisted suicide will should be reviewed by two doctors before being approved by a judge. An initial debate and vote on the proposals will happen on 29 November.

Starmer, who backed laws to legalise assisted suicide in 2015, is yet to make up his mind about how he’ll vote.

“I’m not going to be putting any pressure by any means on Labour MPs. They will make their very own mind up, as I will probably be,” he said.

“Obviously so much will rely upon the detail, and we want to get the balance right. But I’ve all the time argued there’ll should be proper safeguards in place.”

Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said it was “outrageous” that the bill had only been published two weeks before a vote. 

“What is being proposed is a monumental change to our laws, and it’s very unjustifiable and fundamentally undemocratic to try to rush it through without proper public scrutiny,” she said.

“With an NHS described by the sitting Health Secretary as ‘broken’, and the 100,000 individuals who need palliative care annually dying without receiving it, this rushed assisted suicide laws is a disaster in waiting.”