Politicians to face assisted dying decision after Senedd election
The current crop of 60 Senedd politicians rejected a proposal on assisted dying last year.It has a significant decision to take before the election when it votes on whether Kim Leadbeater's legislation should apply in the areas it usually controls.However it is not legally binding, and it would still be for a government formed after the next Senedd election to decide whether to provide a service on the NHS, and for the new Welsh Parliament to agree to it in a further vote.Under Leadbeater's bill assisted death for terminally ill people would be legalised in England and Wales regardless of what the Senedd decides.That means the decision the Welsh Parliament faces is about how or if it is provided - and not whether it's a criminal offence.As is usual with matters of conscience, Labour, the Welsh Conservatives, Reform and the Liberal Democrats said they would maintain a neutral position on the issue at the next election.Plaid Cymru has allowed its politicians a free vote in the past.Kim Leadbeater's bill has passed the House of Commons and now has to be examined by the House of Lords before it becomes law.
There is a difference of opinion within the Senedd's three main parties and Jeremy Miles was among the ministers who opposed the assisted dying vote in the Senedd last October.He told BBC Wales he remained opposed to the legislation - "that is still my view", he said.The legislation gives the Welsh government the power to set the legal rules for how an assisted dying service would be provided by the NHS.Miles told the Senedd's health committee on Wednesday morning said the Welsh government "would need to make a policy decision to be open to introducing the service".The health secretary said that given the "timing of the legislation and the Senedd term" that would "effectively be a government in the new Senedd".Pushed by Tory chair Peter Fox on whether the government could choose to refuse to implement elements of the bill, Miles said: "In devolved competence, certainly"."And even if the government wanted to and the Senedd didn't want to approve it the Senedd would have that ability as well".
Labour MS John Griffiths asked what the implications would be for the Welsh NHS if the Senedd voted against.Miles said if a service was operating in England, but not in Wales because of the Senedd or because of timing, "the sorts of things we would be thinking about [are] people crossing the border for services, distances to services" and "equality of experience".Miles said there would be "options in England and Wales for services to be provided other than in the public sector"."The Welsh government already has regulatory powers in relation to some independent healthcare provision, so the precise mix of regulatory powers for non-public provision in Wales would depend upon who is providing it and what they are providing."
Raising the idea that some people could access assisted dying services privately, Conservative MS James Evans said: "You could have a situation in Wales where those who could afford to pay for assisted dying could access it, and those who cannot afford it would not be able to access it."Asked if the "equality of access to the service" would need to be a consideration for future ministers, Miles said "yes".However, he pointed out there were lots of decisions to make before that scenario could arise.Miles told the committee that the legislation provides for services to be implemented "no later than October 2029"."There's a substantial period of time, but there are a number of things which, both in Wales and England, would need to be settled in advance of that."Who is providing the service, where, what the workforce implications of that are," he said. "There's a very significant level of work that would need to follow from the decision by a government that they are open to introducing this service."
The first vote on the legislation in the Senedd - a legislative consent motion (LCM) - is expected later this year.It would not decide how a service is provided but would indicate whether this Senedd is happy for the UK Parliament to legislate. It is not legally binding but the vote is meant to be respected by Westminster. Miles indicated it would be "influential" on decisions taken by the Welsh government whether to press ahead or not.Additional reporting by Cemlyn Davies
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Deep down, he shared the European view that his country deserved to pay a price. So he reversed the previous Government's position and invited Brussels to tell him what to do. More than this, he agreed to pay for it. As the text spells out: 'The United Kingdom should bear appropriate costs for participation in the common sanitary and phytosanitary area and for the implementation of the agreement to link the United Kingdom and the Union's greenhouse emissions trading systems.' In exchange for what? Insults, chiefly. Again, try to imagine it the other way around. Imagine that, at every summit with a European leader, the British began by saying how wrong the other country was to allow its laws to be set abroad. 'I deplore Germany's decision to hand over its democracy to unelected Brussels functionaries, but I accept the decision of the German electorate.' You can't, can you? Yet we barely notice any more when European leaders say, as the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz did at his summit with Starmer this week: 'The UK, and I personally deplore this deeply, decided to leave the European Union.' The reason he gets away with it, of course, is that Starmer agrees. So, indeed, does the Cabinet. The Europhile think-tank, UK in a Changing Europe, writes quarterly reports monitoring the extent of divergence between Britain and the EU. Its latest, published last week, finds an unprecedented degree of alignment across 21 areas including energy policy, fisheries, trade, energy and competition. The few areas in which Britain had been diverging – the freedom to grow precision crops, for example – are being brought into line. Leftists often have a false idea of what conservatives believe, and Labour came to office genuinely convinced that the Tories were rejecting collaboration with the EU out of xenophobia. As a Number 10 spokesman told this newspaper last week: 'The Tory method was making bad choices because they were stuck in the ideological treacle of the past. We're not going to continue that.' The truth – that Britain had pushed for close economic relations and had baulked only at the Carthaginian terms demanded by the other side – never entered Labour heads. Thinking that they were putting pragmatism above ideology, Labour accepted the EU's terms, to the incredulity of Brussels functionaries, who are now rushing to lock the deal in permanently. Britain's paltry asks – easier access for touring artists, equivalence for our financial services companies – were dropped during the talks. The sole claimed victory – the use of e-gates for British passport holders, something the EU could have done at any time, as Britain does for EU passports – turned out not to have been agreed. On the other hand, Brussels got absolutely everything it wanted, from guarantees against British competition and a UK defence commitment down to a British agreement to subsidise the university fees of EU students, something that matters enormously to the children of Eurocrats (Eurobrats, as it were). It was an EU clean sweep. So long, and thanks for all the fish. I suppose there is one silver lining. When, as seems inevitable, Labour's fiscal incontinence brings a full-scale financial crisis, not even the #FBPE halfwits will be able to blame Brexit.
