With Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill now set to fail, supporters of assisted suicide are preparing a renewed effort to push the fatally flawed Bill through Parliament in its next session. According to Sky News, backers of Leadbeater’s bill believe they can recruit around 200 MPs willing to reintroduce the proposal in the next parliamentary session, after it stalled in the House of Lords.
The bill could return if sympathising MPs come high in the private members bill ballot. This ballot is reserved for backbench MPs, not Government ministers. They are threatening to use the Parliament Acts – a very rarely used parliamentary mechanism – to bypass the House of Lords.
Backers of the bill, such as Dr Simon Opher MP, are confident that, should the bill return, it would be a different case this time around. With a debate and vote about the bill already had in the House of Commons, supporters are confident that its passage through the Commons would be speedier this time. Dr Opher told Sky News that: “As it is a private members’ bill, the whole committee could be supporters of the legislation, so the committee stage would only last a few hours.”
Opposition to the bill remains strong
Whilst confidence might appear to be high amongst backers of the bill, there is similar confidence from those who oppose the bill. Speaking to Good Morning Britain on Wednesday 1st April, Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson said: “I think it’s really important to remember that there is no Royal College that supports this bill. There are about 400 organisations of and for disabled people, none of them support this bill.”
Those in opposition to the bill will also be buoyed by the recent defeat of Liam McArthur’s comparable Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill. MSPs rejected the bill by 69 votes to 57. Speaking at the time, SPUC CEO, John Deighan, described the result as a “huge relief” and a “massive victory for common sense and true compassion.”
Explaining the situation, Alithea Williams, SPUC’s Public Policy Manager, said: “Supporters of assisted suicide are clearly desperate and are trying anything. Kim Leadbeater’s Bill has been shown by extensive scrutiny in the Lords to be flawed and not fit for purpose. In order to force it through in the next session by use of the Parliament Acts, supporters would have to bring back the exact same Bill, with no amendments. Lord Falconer himself has tabled dozens of amendments to the Bill, so even he knows it is not fit to pass into law as it stands.
“Moreover, use of the Parliament Acts would be an unprecedented and extraordinary abuse of parliamentary convention. This mechanism was designed to stop the Lords blocking Government manifesto commitments, and has only been used a handful of times for this purpose. It has never been used for a private members bill. Trying to force through an obviously flawed PMB this way is a sign of fanaticism, and the Bill’s backers are living in fantasy land if they think 200 MPs would be willing to engage in such reckless vandalism.
“We must make it clear to MPs that this Bill, and the whole attempt to introduce state-sponsored killing, has been completely discredited, and no more parliamentary time must be wasted on it,” Ms Williams concluded.
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