Labour MPs turn on assisted dying Bill

Telegraph

6 hours ago

Labour MPs have turned against the assisted dying Bill and, at the eleventh hour, urged their colleagues to vote down the 'drastically weakened' plans.
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill returns to the Commons on Friday, where it is set to become law if enough MPs back it in a historic vote.
The Bill, under which terminally ill adults expected to die within six months could seek medical assistance to end their lives, was initially passed by 55 votes in November.
However, Friday's vote is said to be on a 'knife-edge' after a series of controversies about changes to the Bill that critics say weaken the proposed laws.
Labour MPs Markus Campbell-Savours, Kanishka Narayan, Paul Foster and Jonathan Hinder previously backed the Bill, but on Thursday announced that they were switching to vote it down.
In a last-minute letter to all MPs, they said: 'The Bill presented to MPs in November has been fundamentally changed. This is not the safest Bill in the world. It is weaker than the one first laid in front of MPs, and has been drastically weakened.'
One major point of contention is the dropping of a requirement for a High Court judge to sign off on all assisted dying cases.
Under revised plans, patients will be able to have an assisted death with the approval of two doctors and an assisted dying panel, made up of a psychiatrist, social worker and a legal expert.
The MPs also warned that predictions of life expectancy could be wrong, with some patients given six months to live going on to survive for three years or more.
'No one should be robbed of the possibility of an extra three years of precious memories with loved ones. Christmases, birthdays, weddings, meeting grandchildren they never thought they may meet,' they said.
'If faced by the same decision, would any of us choose to end our lives if we knew there was a chance to live them instead?'
A fifth Labour MP, Dan Carden, also revealed on Thursday that he was switching from abstain to no, as he felt legalising assisted dying 'will normalise the choice of death over life, care, respect and love'.
Senior Conservatives have also been critical of the Bill. Danny Kruger, one of the leading voices opposing the legislation, said that it was a 'world away from the limited, carefully safeguarded arrangements that the assisted death campaign promised us'.
Writing for The Telegraph (see below), Mr Kruger said those who were approaching the end of their lives, or who were disabled, were vulnerable and 'profoundly influenced by the people around us, not least because we are profoundly dependent on others'.
'We do not make decisions in a vacuum, and imagining we do – pretending that anxious, bullied or depressed patients have the 'autonomy' to make uninfluenced the most momentous decision it is possible for a human being to make – is infantile,' he said.
Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, said on Thursday that the legislation was a 'bad Bill' and had 'not been done properly', and urged Tory colleagues to vote against it alongside her.
More than 21 MPs are thought to have moved from either supporting the Bill or abstaining to no, with others still to make up their minds.
It is unclear whether there have been enough switchers to defeat the Bill, with its backers hopeful that support will hold to bring about the momentous change to the law. In order to stop the Bill, 28 MPs would need to change their votes from yes to no.
'The vote is on a knife-edge,' one figure helping count MP support told The Telegraph. The source also claimed that the number of MPs who abstained on the legislation could rise compared with the first vote in November, making it harder to predict the result.
If it passes, the Bill will go to the House of Lords, where it could be amended, but in effect it is almost certain that it will become law and come into effect by 2029.
If it is defeated, it is likely that it will be years before the question of legalising assisted dying is put before the Commons again.
MPs are rushing back to Westminster, with some critics taking exceptional measures to have their say. Dame Karen Bradley, the former culture secretary, is flying back from a parliamentary group visit to Rome to make sure she can vote against the legislation.
She told The Telegraph: 'In all conscience, I couldn't miss the vote. I do not think it will deliver the safeguards that people want and need.'
However, some MPs on sick or compassionate leave will not be able to cast their ballot because of parliamentary rules stopping them from voting by proxy.
One MP critical of the Bill, Sorcha Eastwood, tested positive for Covid and was set to miss the vote on Thursday. But, according to one opposition campaign source, she is exploring whether an ambulance can take her to Parliament to vote no.
There is confusion about whether Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, who has long supported legalising assisted dying, will vote for the Bill.
He has declined to publicly make the case for the change in an apparent attempt to make sure he does not influence the debate, given that MPs are free to vote with their consciences.
A Downing Street spokesman declined to confirm on Thursday that the Prime Minister would vote to legalise assisted dying. He voted yes in November.
The vote stems from a Private Member's Bill, which means it is being spearheaded by a backbench MP with the Government neutral on the issue.
Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP behind the legislation, moved to back an amendment from Naz Shah, a Labour MP and an opponent of assisted dying, in a sign she is scrambling to reassure MPs concerned about the Bill's safeguards.
The amendment would bar people becoming eligible for an assisted death purely on the basis that they had voluntarily stopped eating and drinking.
Ms Leadbeater has insisted that this change would close the so-called 'anorexia loophole' – a gap in safeguards that means sufferers could qualify for assisted dying on the basis of life-threatening malnutrition.
However, in the final 24 hours before the vote, Ms Shah, who tabled the amendment, as well as leading psychiatrists and eating disorder charities, said this claim was wrong. Patients with severe eating disorders could still be deemed eligible for assisted death if their physical decline – caused by a treatable mental illness – was judged to be life-threatening, they said.
On Thursday night, Dr Annabel Price, the Royal College of Psychiatrists' lead on assisted dying in England and Wales, told The Telegraph that the 'anorexia loophole' could only be closed if this exclusion was set out on the face of the Bill.
'If the [Terminally Ill Adults] Bill were to proceed, it is essential that it excludes the physical effects of mental disorder as the basis for eligibility. Malnutrition caused by anorexia nervosa, for example, has been deemed as a terminal illness under similar pieces of legislation in other jurisdictions,' she said.
On Thursday, Ms Leadbeater said she was 'positive and optimistic' that the Bill would pass, insisting at a press conference that her legislation was 'the most robust assisted dying Bill in the world'.
Dangerous Bill is a world away from what the campaign promised
By Danny Kruger
Never mind the process. The late publication of Kim Leadbeater's Bill, the huge changes she made to it after the first big vote in the Commons, the unbalanced evidence sessions and the rushed debates – all that is secondary.
The main problem is the Bill itself, which is a world away from the limited, carefully safeguarded arrangements that the assisted death campaign promised us.
I understand the fear of a bad death, particularly as people approach older age. For them, this isn't an abstract but an imminent threat. Many will have known their contemporaries die badly, in pain and distress and at the mercy of a health system that simply isn't good enough at managing the end of life.
Personally, I don't think this is a reason to legalise assisted suicide. The fact is there is no pain that can't be lessened by modern analgesic medicine and techniques such as nerve blocks, and there is always palliative sedation (an induced coma) for those who need it.
We do not need to kill people to spare them pain. But I respect the view of those who think this option should exist to give people peace of mind that they will not face an agonising death.
But this isn't a Bill just for those people. Kim Leadbeater rejected amendments that would have restricted the new service to people seeking to avoid pain. The Bill contains no criteria for who is eligible, or why they want to die.
As she admitted in the Bill committee, a person whose sole motivation for seeking an assisted death is to save their family money would be perfectly eligible to proceed; indeed, the doctors or the expert panel that approves the death would not be allowed to refuse an application on these grounds.
And so every ill or frail person approaching the end of their lives – and all the disabled people who would qualify too – will be obligated to consider this option. They would have to decide whether they want to live for longer, a burden on their family and the NHS, or to do what will increasingly be seen as the 'right thing to do'.
Put like this – given our natural and admirable impulse not to be a burden on others, and our fear of suffering – you can see why so many people, many more than the handful of desperate cases the campaigners parade in their advertising, would feel compelled to take this option.
In parts of Canada, with the law there less than a decade old, nearly 10 per cent of deaths are 'assisted'. This is our future too if we pass this Bill.
Yes, it's an 'option', and you don't have to do it. But this libertarian framing of the issue misses the reality of vulnerability. At the end of life, or if we are disabled, we are profoundly influenced by the people around us, not least because we are profoundly dependent on others.
We do not make decisions in a vacuum, and imagining we do – pretending that anxious, bullied or depressed patients have the autonomy to make uninfluenced the most momentous decision it is possible for a human being to make – is infantile.
As Gordon Brown argued in a powerful intervention this week, the 'options' are not equal. The assisted death route will be organised, funded, advertised. The alternative, palliative care, is underfunded, bureaucratic and in places non-existent.
But there is hope. If we reject this Bill, we can do what the whole House agrees needs to be done – we can properly fix palliative care. We can invest real money in hospices and ensure everyone has the care they deserve – without pain, with dignity – at the end of life.
That would be a worthy conclusion of Kim Leadbeater's efforts, and of all the words we have wasted on her flawed and dangerous Bill.