Let your MP know about major new problems with the assisted suicide Bill

The Bill’s sponsor, Kim Leadbeater, promised meaningful scrutiny at Committee Stage and claimed her Bill would have the “strictest safeguards anywhere in the world”. Proceedings at Committee Stage have shown these promises to be hollow.

Well over 300 amendments that sought to strengthen safeguards in the Bill and that would have protected vulnerable groups were rejected by Kim Leadbeater and other Bill supporters at Committee Stage. Concerning developments at Committee Stage include:

• Amendments that would have explicitly protected people with Down’s syndrome, autism and learning difficulties, as well as homeless people, under the Bill were rejected.
• Amendments seeking to ensure that conditions such as anorexia and diabetes could not be grounds for assisted suicide, as they have been elsewhere, were rejected.
• Amendments to prevent doctors from raising assisted suicide with patients unprompted, including children under the age of 18, were rejected.
• The flagship safeguard at Second Reading of High Court judicial oversight was removed.
• Amendments prohibiting assisted suicide in cases where a person has been encouraged or manipulated into a request or a request has been made under “undue influence” were rejected, putting the victims of domestic abuse at risk.
• Attempts to ensure ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ criteria for verifying eligibility and mental capacity for assisted suicides were rejected, as was a proposal to ensure “reasonable certainty” about the prognosis of a person having six or fewer months left to live.
• An amendment to ensure a person requesting an assisted suicide would be acting for their own benefit, rather than out of feeling a financial or emotional burden to others, was rejected. Kim Leadbeater repeatedly refused to deny that being a financial burden would be a legitimate reason for assisted suicide.
• Despite claims that legalisation is necessary for the sake of very rare cases of people in pain at the end of their lives, an amendment requiring someone to be in pain as their primary motivation for assisted suicide in order to be eligible was rejected. So was an amendment requiring a consultation with a palliative care doctor before assisted suicide applications could be approved.

This decision by Leadbeater and supporters of the Bill to reject countless amendments at Committee Stage, which would have strengthened safeguards in the Bill and protected vulnerable groups, was an intentional choice.  

This reveals a deliberate preference for a loose Bill, allowing for future expansion, over a tight law with explicit safeguards. Given the expansion of similar laws elsewhere, this ought to ring significant alarm bells. 

It is vital that MPs are made aware of these concerns and it is critically important that MPs realise how many of their constituents continue to have deep concerns about the Bill as a whole, fears that have only been enhanced by the way Leadbeater and her allies have handled Committee Stage of her Bill. 

You can make a difference right now by contacting your MP to express your concerns. It only takes 30 seconds using our easy-to-use tool.

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