Leadbeater Bill dangers rehearsed at Westminster

A range of concerns associated with Westminster assisted suicide plans have been rehearsed before MPs.

This week, a Committee looking at Kim Leadbeater MP's Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill heard evidence from experts in several areas including medicine, law and disability.

On Tuesday morning, the Committee heard from England's Chief Medical Officer Sir Chris Whitty, who suggested that the framework for accessing assisted death should be "simple", with few legal barriers.

At the same time, Whitty highlighted problems with the Bill criteria, admitting that determining an accurate prognosis of 6 months is not an exact science - a point backed up by other witnesses.

Dr Sarah Cox, of the Association of Palliative Medicine, which represents doctors providing end of life care, said accurately assessing how long someone has to live is "incredibly difficult".

The palliative care expert also warned that identifying when someone is being coerced is not always possible, particularly when the nature of the coercion being applied is subtle.

Social pressure

Another expert, Dr Rachel Clarke, expressed concern that people would be pressured into choosing an assisted suicide because they lack access to good palliative care.

She told MPs, “people will choose to end their life because we as a society don’t care about them enough to give them the care that might make life worth living”.

Whilst Dr Andrew Green, of the British Medical Association, said: assisted suicide "should not be part of any doctors' normal job", calling for a "separate service".

Later in the day, MPs heard from Retired High Court judge Nicholas Mostyn, who said he thought it would be "impossible" for the High Court to handle assisted suicide cases.

Stressing the huge pressure that courts in England are already under, he told the Committee: "The High Court, trust me I've just come from there, has not got the capacity."

Mostyn, who has Parkinson's, also told MPs he wants the Bill criteria to be expanded to cover people with "intolerable suffering", without the need to be terminally ill.

On Wednesday, the Committee heard from pro-assisted suicide medics from Australia and then from a panel of experts including disabled academics.

Disability concerns

Miro Griffiths, a Disability Studies Scholar, expressed concern that an assisted suicide law would compound “systemic injustices faced by disabled people”.

Dr Griffiths described Bill provisions on coercion as “incredibly weak”, adding that coercion “is a complex issue” that is even more difficult to assess in the context of disabled people’s lives.

He told MPs: “Coercion can manifest in very different ways and one can be exposed to the societal pressure to feel that your life is no longer tolerable because of the struggles that you have".

The academic also described a “fundamental flaw in the bill” is the fact that terminally ill people are defined as disabled under the terms of the Equality Act.

He told MPs: “I have had meetings with clinicians where some have referred to my condition as a terminal illness, some have referred to it as a life limiting condition, and others as a progressive condition.

“The articulation of these ideas and the ways in which we think about conditions, again, I think shows the complexity that we are talking about.”

And he stressed that laws could be expanded over time: “As soon as you pass it on a six-month basis you will have individuals who would say, ‘why not seven months, why not five months?’

"And then you’ll have campaigners who will say, ‘this doesn’t include me, and I’ve been campaigning for this’. So, there will be a pressure to change, and governments will change.

"So, there’s no guarantee that you can make that this the eligibility criteria will be fixed.”