Assisted Suicide Bill to return on 13 June

Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill will return to the House of Commons in June, after the sheer volume of potential amendments slowed down the process at Report Stage.

More than 100 amendments have been tabled for Report Stage; these were divided into two halves, and the first half were debated today. After five hours of debate, only two amendments were actually voted on, due to lack of time. The amendments which were discussed but not voted on today, will be voted on when Report Stage continues on 13 June.

Nine amendments were selected for today, but were not debated due to lack of time; there will be no discussion of them before they are voted on.

It is unclear whether the key vote - at Third Reading - will take place on 13 June as well, or whether there will be so much debate that it will be postponed again further.

Although the debate at Report Stage is designed to be around specific amendments, many MPs used their speeches to expand their critique (or support) for the Bill as a whole. Amendments tabled included:

• Proposals which would ban healthcare workers from raising assisted suicide unsolicited with a patient

• Proposals which would stop people from being able to access assisted suicide if they were ‘substantially motivated’ by financial considerations or being a burden

• Proposals which would expand eligibility criteria to include those with neurodegenerative diseases who have a prognosis of 12 months still to live

• Proposals that healthcare professionals cannot raise Assisted Suicide unsolicited with people with Down’s Syndrome

• Proposals that families and friends should be consulted if a patient seeks an assisted suicide

The first amendment voted on - tabled by Conservative MP Rebecca Paul - would have allowed care homes, hospices and charities to opt out of providing assisted suicide services. It was defeated by 279 votes to 243.

A number of MPs expressed their frustrations around the process, including Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, posted on X: “For the mover of a bill to present such a huge number of amendments to their *own* bill suggests a serious lack of confidence in its safety and rigour. In 20 years I’ve not seen anything so shambolic. Even supporters of the bill must surely see that the bill can’t pass like this.”

Tom Tugendhat, the former Conservative Minister was equally scathing after the debate concluded for the day: “This is the worst of Parliament. A Bill that will give huge power to the state over people who by definition are vulnerable without any party having set out an agenda and for which it can be held accountable. Power without responsibility. Parliament is broken.”

Frustration was also expressed around Dame Esther Rantzen’s intervention the previous night, after she wrote to all MPs asking them to vote the Bill through and dismissed all those with concerns as having “undeclared personal religious beliefs which mean no precautions would satisfy them.”

In response, Jess Asato, Labour MP for Lowestoft and a staunch critic of the Bill, intervened in the debate and asked: “Will (Kim Leadbeater) distance herself from the correspondence from Dame Esther Rantzen, who accuses those of us who have concerns about the Bill as having undeclared religious beliefs. Many colleagues found this distasteful and disrespectful.” Ms Asato’s also put out criticism of this on social media, and found support from many others, including the Health Secretary Wes Streeting.

A number of powerful speeches were made opposing the Bill, of which you can find a sample below:

Rebecca Paul (MP for Reigate) – on the flaws of the Bill, and her amendment, which was rejected, which would have safeguarded charities and hospices which did not want to offer Assisted Suicide:

“[This Bill] will harm far more people than it will help and those people who will be harmed are the most vulnerable in our communities. I’m not willing to accept that collateral damage”.

“We should not make the mistake of assuming that a doctor always makes the right decision, or that they are infallible”.

“In the case of anorexia, there are physical manifestations of the illness, such as malnutrition and diabetes, that might mean the patient meets the definition of being terminally ill... The Bill doesn’t adequately rule out physical manifestations caused by mental illness.”

“Whether you’re in favour of assisted dying or not, we must preserve the rights of organisations, companies and charities to choose whether to offer it. They must never be bought into it by public funding being conditional on the provision of assisted dying.”

James Cleverly (MP for Braintree) – on the threat to women from ethnic minorities

“We know that a number of people don’t, in practical terms, have full control over their lives. The mother of the House, made the point about people particularly from ethnic minorities, particularly women from ethnic minorities, who are often pushed around by their families, their wider society will be particularly at risk from the gentle advice or suggestions from authority figures that they will be overly deferential towards and in doing so lead them, I think, into a very dangerous position.”

Anneliese Dodds (MP for Oxford East) – on coercion

“I do agree with (Mr Cleverly), I further believe that it is exactly those individuals who would be more likely to be subject to coercion from others. And I’m afraid that the evidence does indicate that, we can see that sadly when it comes to the experience of our courts from so-called mercy killings.”

“I do believe it’s instructive that in those cases we’ve had highly trained legal professionals who’ve often described the actions, particularly of former partners as motivated by compassion. But then when the circumstances have been investigated in detail, we’ve seen evidence of substantial amounts of coercion and abuse.”

“I have heard countless times the phrase that ‘I do not want to be a burden.’ I’ve heard that time and again.”

Florence Eshalomi (MP for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) – on the state of the NHS, and insulting campaigning from pro-Assisted Suicide advocates:

"It isn't scaremongering for us, as we continue to receive correspondence from constituents about the broken state of our NHS and social care, to think carefully about a bill which may alter the very relationship between doctors and their patients".

“I voted against this Bill at second reading on the grounds of inadequate safeguards against the coercion of minority communities. This was based on my belief that if we are to legislate for something as serious as the end of someone’s life, then that bar it should reach to be deemed safe needs to be much higher than in other areas.

“In the time since, I have closely followed the scrutiny that this Bill has received at committee and report stage. I hoped that my concerns would be addressed, but I’m sad to say I’m even more worried now than I was then.”

“I do not doubt the good intentions of any members choosing to support this Bill today, and I thank the many constituents that have contacted me on both sides of this, but as politicians we have to be clear that members with valid concerns about this Bill are not raising it because of some ideology or religious belief.

“It is because we recognise that if this Bill passes, it may impact everyone, not just those who may wish to die. It is not wrong or scaremongering to consider the wider family life, relationships with feelings of burdens or coercion including vulnerable women and people from the BME (black and minority ethnic) community at the end of their life.

“It is not wrong or scaremongering for us as politicians as we continue to receive correspondence from our constituents about the broken state of our NHS and social care, and for us to think carefully about a Bill which may alter the very relationship between doctors and their patients.

“It is frankly insulting to disabled people, hardworking professionals up and down the country who have raised many valid concerns about this Bill, to have it dismissed as religious beliefs.”

Rachael Maskell (MP for York Central) - on concerns around training for doctors

“This week, the chair of Royal College of GPs has said they’ve got real concerns about the practical and legal implications within this Bill, and I seek to address that assessment process with my amendment, but I must quickly say to the minister, if he thinks just two days of training for a doctor is sufficient, well, I can tell him they will not have the necessary competencies.

“It even suggests in the impact assessment it will just be 90 minutes online, with 60 minutes interactive training. That is simply not good enough. Poor medicine makes assumptions, and this Bill certainly does. It assumes somebody wants to die. However, it’s a clinician’s duty to have an open and inquiring mind, to seek out reason, not to assume.”

“Listen to the experts, hear their collective voice. This Bill is unsafe, which is why the professional bodies are speaking out against this Bill. While my amendment will nudge it into a safer place, the scale of concern far exceeds this.”

Naz Shah (Labour MP for Bradford West) – on the flawed process, and fears for people with disabilities.

“I take my responsibility, as I’m sure everybody in this House does, extremely, extremely seriously. This is literally a matter of life and death. If this Bill passes that it doesn’t have the safeguards, there’s no coming back from those decisions.”

Ms Shah concluded: “I’ve spoken to parents of a girl who had … diabetes and complexities of anorexia. They came to Parliament and they said the law that helped them, the law that assisted them, because their daughter wanted to go to Dignitas was because it would have been illegal, and that’s the law we today are trying to change.

“If the safeguards in this Bill fail, even once, it will be a young woman like Jessica who dies, it will be parents like Leslie and Neil who lose a child. That is a terrible tragedy no family should ever have to endure.

“No-one in this House will be able to say truthfully that we did not know or didn’t see this coming. That is not compassion, that is abandonment. I will not be complicit in that and I hope this House will not be either.”