Left to right – Wikimedia Commons: Official portrait of Kim Leadbeater MP crop 2, 2024, Official portrait of Wes Streeting MP, Official portrait of Danny Kruger MP, Jess Asato MP portrait cropped
The roll-out of MP Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill, if legalised, has been delayed until 2029, casting doubt about whether the draft law will ever be implemented, though there are concerns that the delay will be spun by Ms Leadbeater to win over MPs troubled by the Bill.
The bombshell news about the delay came the same day as the Committee stage concluded its scrutiny of the Bill on 25 March.
Amid rising concerns that the NHS and judiciary are not prepared to handle the caseload of assisted suicide, Ms Leadbeater was reportedly told by ministers that her law was “unworkable”.
The revised timeline means that the implementation of the Leadbeater Bill is pushed back to 2029, the same year when a UK general election must be called at the latest.
Rachael Maskell, a Labour MP, said that the timing couldn’t be worse, stating: “When people hear the detail of the Bill, they are horrified. This is bad for politics and the poor people who may be victims of this process. I am really fearful about where this is going to place us.”
Another Labour source slammed the delay as a “cynical” attempt to cover up “the Bill’s current failing, basically letting the Government clean up the mess. But by cynically pushing it into the long grass for other people to fix, they’ve pushed it right up against the possible dates of the next election, which isn’t very bright.”
Yesterday, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said that Ms Leadbeater had consented to the delay after being told by ministers that her proposed law could not be implemented in two years.
However, a spokesperson for Ms Leadbeater said that 2029 is a “limit… not a target, it’s a backstop. Kim hopes and believes the service can be delivered more quickly if it becomes law later this year.”
Opponents of the Leadbeater Bill say that the delay is an “admission that the Bill does not work… This shows it’s a long way from safe. If they need four years to work it out, then it shows this Bill is still riddled with problems.”
Labour MP Jess Asato said: “This last-minute switch demonstrates again just how chaotic this whole process has been with substantial last-minute changes to core sections of the Bill.
“We’ve seen the NHS’s founding principles amended, the High Court protections ditched and now the timeline for the whole process changed. This isn’t how good laws are made.”
Ms Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill proposes to legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales for terminally ill adults given six months to live.
Last year, Health Secretary Streeting warned that legalised assisted suicide would have “resource implications” for the NHS.
“To govern is to choose”, Mr Streeting said. “If Parliament chooses to go ahead with assisted dying, it is making a choice that this is an area to prioritise for investment. And we’d have to work through those implications.”
On 12 March, the committee of MPs scrutinising the Bill voted to scrap the High Court judge safeguard that would have required a higher level of judicial sign-off.
In February, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood had indicated that there were difficulties with the Bill and making it “actually capable of being delivered in the country, and my department and my officials have engaged in that”.
Sir Nicholas Mostyn, a retired judge, commenting on the burden that would be placed on the High Court by assisted suicide cases, warned that it would impose an “impossible” workload.
In a first vote on 29 November, Westminster MPs voted 330 to 275 in favour of Ms Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill at Second Reading. However, following the High Court rule U-turn, over a hundred MPs signalled that they might vote against it at Third Reading.
The Independent reported that “privately a number of MPs now believe that the provision for sign off by a High Court judge was in fact always a ruse to get this Bill through second reading and the intention was then to dump it at a later stage”.
The Committee stage of the Bill ended yesterday, the Bill will be returned to the House of Commons to be voted on by MPs at Third Reading on or around 16 May.
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