MPs amend Leadbeater Bill in adjourned debate

THE debate on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill will proceed on 20 June, after further parliamentary time was dedicated to the proposed laws on Friday.

Clauses that prohibited doctors from raising the subject of assisted dying with the under-18s, and banned advertisements for assisted-dying services, were added to the Bill during Friday’s debate.

On Friday, before the controversy began, a recent report was published that responded to accusations that opponents of assisted dying weren’t honest about their religious motivations (News, 13 June).

During the controversy, the Labour MP for Rochdale, Paul Waugh, said: “I’m not driven by religion, but I don’t imagine that those with religious faith ought to be denigrated or patronised as they’ve been.

“I’m driven as a substitute by my duty as a legislator to get this Bill right, and by what I see as my moral duty to guard essentially the most vulnerable in society,” he said.

Mr Waugh proposed an amendment to the anti-advertisement clause to tighten the exceptions allowed when, for example, responding to a request for details about assisted dying. The amendment was rejected by 233 votes to 254.

The Bill’s sponsor, the Labour MP for Spen Valley, Kim Leadbeater, responding to suggestions that the main focus ought to be on improving palliative care quite than legalising assisted dying, said: “This will not be an either/or conversation. Palliative and end-of-life care can and do work side by side to present terminally sick patients the care and alternative they deserve of their final days. . . It must also not be an either/or for us as legislators, to choose from supported assisted dying or other end of life options.”

The Liberal Democrat MP for Richmond Park, Sarah Olney, who opposes the Bill, said, nevertheless, that not one of the safeguards “fully mitigate the risks to vulnerable groups”, and continued: “We usually are not serious about the impact on our wider society of the concept of lives not being price living and the way which may disproportionally effect vulnerable groups.”

“I don’t think that this Bill is protected,” said the Second Church Estates Commissioner, Marsha de Cordova, who’s the Labour MP for Battersea. “I do know I speak for tens of hundreds of disabled individuals who say ‘We need assistance to live, and never to die.’”

The Labour MP for East Renfrewshire, Blair McDougall, said that he respected those that were influenced by their faith, though he was not considered one of them. Instead, the “big booming voice” echoing in his head was not that of God, but of Nye Bevan, who had warned against the corruption of care.

“I understand the attraction around alternative,” he said, “but arguing for freedom of alternative in isolation, without also acknowledging the economic, social, and cultural context people make those selections in, doesn’t appear to me a Labour approach to this.”

MPs have a free vote on the laws. Many of essentially the most distinguished voices in opposition to Ms Leadbeater’s Bill are other Labour MPs.

Many amendments and revised clauses were debated without being put to a vote.

Arguing against a proposal for a consultative board, with a special representative for individuals with minority-ethnic backgrounds, the Labour MP for Loughborough, Dr Jeevun Sandher, said that data from places where assisted dying had been legalised suggested that ethnic minorities were less more likely to go for an assisted death.

“The point of this Bill is to present people the alternative to finish their life whatever the color of their skin. There is not any special quality of the color of my skin that affects my access or the necessity for a special representative on this case,” he said.

An amendment to forestall health professionals’ being the primary to lift the topic of assisted dying with a patient was was voted on, after being recommend by MPs who, on the whole, opposed the Bill as an entire. It was lost by 256-230, but one other amendment, prohibiting a physician from raising the potential of assisted dying with an someone under the age of 18, was passed, by 259-216.

One of the principal talking points was the legislative process, and there have been complaints that the Bill had not been debated enough.

The Conservative MP for North Dorset, Simon Hoare, described the present version of the Bill as “skeletal.” “This is simply too serious a problem to have as many gaps and lacunas,” he said.

The Health and Social Care Minister, Stephen Kinnock, said, nevertheless, that the Bill had received greater than 90 hours of parliamentary time: greater than most pieces of proposed laws.

An amendment supported by greater than 60 MPs was moved by the Labour MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, Adam Jogee. It would require that, if passed, the Bill could be subject to further scrutiny by the House of Commons before coming into force (the timeline for which is several years).

“It is that this Bill that we’re voting on today, not the principle,” he reminded MPs, though his amendment was also not put to the vote before time ran out on Friday.

While at times emotional, the controversy was generally even-tempered — although the Liberal Democrat MP for South Devon, Caroline Voaden, objected to the use, by some members, of the terms “murder”, “killing”, and “suicide” to explain assisted dying.

“This is about people dying in a civilised way. . . To call is murder and killing is so fallacious, and I feel now we have an obligation to mind our language,” she said.