UK Lawmakers Debate Assisted Dying for First Time in 9 Years
(Bloomberg) -- UK Members of Parliament will hold a landmark vote on assisted dying on Friday as they decide whether to allow terminally ill people with less than six months to live to opt to end their own lives.
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Under the legislation put forward by Kim Leadbeater, a backbench member of the governing Labour Party, assisted dying would be restricted to adults with a terminal illness who are expected to die within six months. Two doctors and a high court judge would also be required to approve the decision. It broadly follows the US state of Oregon model, meaning the lethal drugs must be self-administered.
Opening a five-hour debate on the legislation on Friday morning, Leadbeater sought to allay concerns of opponents, saying her bill would give the terminally ill “choice, autonomy and dignity at the end of their lives,” bound by “very stringent” criteria. “We are not talking about a choice between life or death,” she told the House of Commons. “We are talking about giving dying people a choice of how to die.”
It’ll be the first vote on the issue since 2015, though if the bill passes its so-called second reading, there are still several more Parliamentary steps before it becomes law, including opportunities to amend it. If the legislation is successful, it would be a fundamental social reform bringing England and Wales into line with about a dozen countries that permit assisted dying such as Canada and Switzerland, as well as 11 US states.
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Opposing the legislation, Conservative lawmaker Danny Kruger said that altering the law would “change life and death for everyone.”
“The bill will not just create a new option for a few, it will impose on every person towards the end of their life, on everyone who could be thought to be near death and their family this new reality: the option of an assisted suicide, the obligation to have a conversation,” he said.
Assisted dying has substantial public backing, with surveys consistently showing support for a legal change that would give Britons an alternative to traveling overseas to clinics including Dignitas in Switzerland. High-profile celebrities including TV presenter Esther Rantzen, who was diagnosed with lung cancer, have brought public attention to the issue, prompting Prime Minister Keir Starmer to promise her he would grant time for a vote on the issue “early” in the next parliament during the summer’s election campaign.
Rantzen told LBC radio on Thursday that she doesn’t think the bill will become law in time to benefit from it, and that if her life becomes “unbearable,” she would go to Switzerland without her family to avoid them being investigated by British police.
Leadbeater told the Commons that her bill would protect loved ones of the terminally ill from the sort of prosecution that they could face under current laws banning people from helping someone to end their life. Addressing other concerns of the legislation’s detractors, she said it would not apply to the elderly, the disabled, people with mental health conditions and those with chronic health conditions unless they are also terminally ill.
A YouGov poll last Friday found 73% of Britons believe that assisted dying should be legal in the UK, compared to 13% who say it should not. That picture was consistent among voters of all the major parties, the pollster said.
MPs have been given a “free vote” on the issue, meaning they don’t have to follow party lines. Lawmakers across the parties are split, with many telling Bloomberg they are still undecided. The vote is expected to be close, although those involved with proposing the bill say they expect it to pass.
Former prime ministers Gordon Brown, Theresa May, Liz Truss and Boris Johnson are against the bill, with the latter telling the Spectator he worried it would lead to “the industrialization of state-sponsored suicide.” Another ex premier, David Cameron said this week in an article for the Times newspaper that he has changed his mind to now support a change in the law, believing it would achieve a “meaningful reduction in human suffering.”
The Labour government has no official position on the law, with ministers being told last month not to intervene in the debate. Cabinet ministers have, nevertheless, made their views clear, most notably Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who told the BBC he worried about people being “guilt-tripped” into taking the decision to end their lives, and later ordered civil servants to conduct an impact assessment of the cost of the policy, warning the legal change could force cuts to other parts of the health service.
Streeting’s interventions prompted increased media scrutiny of the positions of the cabinet on the issue, revealing a split among ministers. A majority of publicly-declared cabinet members support the bill, but several prominent figures will vote against it, including Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, according to people familiar with the matter, though she has not stated her position publicly. Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who like Streeting would have a role in implementing the new law, said she would vote against it on religious grounds.
Starmer held a meeting with Streeting to express his unhappiness with his health secretary’s interventions and the scrutiny they prompted, according to people familiar with the matter. The prime minister, who voted for assisted dying in 2015 and said last year he retained that view, refused to say how he’ll vote this time, when asked Thursday in a press conference.
If the bill passes Friday’s vote, the legislation and any proposed amendments will then be scrutinized line-by-line by a specially formed committee, before going back to the wider House of Commons, where further amendments — and then the whole bill - can be proposed and voted on. Then it goes to the upper chamber, the House of Lords for further scrutiny.
Leadbeater said she’s minded to move a motion to give the Commons bill committee the power to take oral and written evidence on assisted dying and its implications — not normal procedure for a so-called private members’ bill, the sort of non-government legislation she’s marshalling. That would allow for extra scrutiny of the issue. She also promised the committee’s members would come from different parties and represent a range of views. “This is not going to happen overnight,” she said.
(Updates with comment from Leadbeater, Kruger, starting in third paragraph.)
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