Assisted dying bill has lost Commons majority now high court signoff abandoned, says MP

The Guardian

11-02-2025

Good morning. In parliament MPs and peers don't simply vote yes or no on proposed legislation. They debate it at length, over weeks and months, and consider amendments line by line. This process is at the heart of parliamentary democracy, and it happens like this so that bills, in theory, can be improved before they reach the statute book.
There is a good example of this today. The terminally ill adults (end of life) bill is perhaps the most consequential bill going through this session of parliament and the Labour MP who has sponsored it, Kim Leadbeater, has announced a significant change. As Jessica Elgot reports, she wants to scrap the requirement for an assisted dying application to be approved by a high court judge, because the judiciary said this process would be too time-consuming and would clog up the courts. Instead an expert panel, with a legal chair, would vet the assisted dying applications already approved by two doctors.
Leadbeater has written an article for the Guardian explaining her reasoning here.
In the article Leadbeater claims the change will make her bill 'even more robust'. And she is calling it 'Judge Plus' implying it involves a safeguard that goes beyond the original one, sign-off by a judge. (She is using this term because a judge would chair the commission that appoints the expert panels. But the panels actually taking the final decisions would not be led by judges, and so arguably that is more spin than accurate labelling.)
In interviews this morning Leadbeater argued that the tabling of the amendment showed the parliamentary process operating exactly as it is meant to. She told the Today programme:
I would say this is exactly what the process is designed to do, and the purpose of having such a comprehensive bill committee procedure hearing from over 50 witnesses. What's the point of having witnesses if we don't listen to them, and we don't listen to the expertise that they provide?
But, whatever it says in the textbooks about democratic theory, in practice governments are normally very reluctant to start tinkering with the wording of legislation once a bill has started its progression through parliament. That is because any amendment is seen by opponents as a sign of weakness. And that is exactly what has happened now with the assisted dying bill.
Danny Kruger, the MP who is leading opposition to the bill (he is a Conservative, but it is free vote, conscience legislation, and so party labels are not particularly relevant), posted this on social media last night.
Approval by the High Court - the key safeguard used to sell the Assisted Suicide Bill to MPs - has been dropped. Instead we have a panel, NOT including a judge, of people committed to the process, sitting in private, without hearing arguments from the other side. A disgrace
And on the Today programme he suggested that this amendment meant that, when MPs voted to back the bill by 330 votes to 275 at second reading, they were doing so on a false premise.
I have to ask why, if this is the plan, why this isn't the plan that was put to MPs when the whole House of Commons voted it through at second reading. At that point the point was made very strongly that the principal safeguard for the bill, the way people could have confidence that it was going to be safe for vulnerable people, was that there would be a high court judge approving the application.
That's now being removed. I don't think it would have passed the House of Commons if this new system – which doesn't involve a judge, it is involves a panel of people all of whom, presumably, are assisted to the principle of assisted dying, not an impartial figure like a judge would be – [was in place].
Kruger was implying the Commons majority for the bill will now have gone.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.25am: MPs on the public bill committee for the assisted dying bill begin their line by line scrutiny of the bill.
9.30am: The Office for National Statistics publishes the latest data on wellbeing.
Morning: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
11.30am: Wes Streeting, the health secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
2.30pm: Sue Gray, Starmer's former chief of staff, takes her seat in the Lords.
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