Image – Wikimedia Commons: Royal Courts of Justice
The MP committee scrutinising Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill voted on 12 March to scrap the High Court judge safeguard that would have required a higher level of judicial sign-off.
Most of the 23 MPs sitting on the committee voted in favour of scrapping the clause that had previously been touted as an essential “safeguard” by Ms Leadbeater and the Bill’s supporters.
Ms Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill proposes to legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales for terminally ill adults given six months to live.
The initial draft stated that each case would require approval by two doctors and a High Court judge, and Ms Leadbeater had insisted that having a High Court judge “double-checking” a case for coercion was the ultimate safeguard.
However, Ms Leadbeater later indicated that she was planning to replace the High Court judge rule with a committee of experts who would sign off on assisted suicide applications. The expert panel would include a lawyer (a KC or former judge), a social worker and a psychiatrist.
In response to the vote yesterday, a group of 26 Labour MPs released a statement expressing their dismay at the decision:
“The scrapping of High Court oversight for the assisted dying regime breaks the promises made by the proponents of the Bill.
“It fundamentally weakens the protections for the vulnerable and shows just how haphazard this whole process has become.
“It does not increase judicial safeguards but instead creates an unaccountable quango and to claim otherwise misrepresents what is being proposed.
“The new panel process can be held in private, won’t have the powers to make witnesses appear before it or take evidence under oath.
“They will inevitably drain public services of vital frontline staff without any idea of how much this will cost the taxpayer or any assessment of its impact upon the vulnerable.”
Committee member Danny Kruger MP, who is opposed to the Bill, said that 60 MPs had only supported the draft legislation because of the High Court judge rule.
When Ms Leadbeater first indicated in February that she planned to remove the safeguard, The Independent reported that at least 144 MPs who initially voted in favour of the Bill might subsequently vote against it at Third Reading because of the U-turn.
The Independent noted 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”.
Following the Committee stage, the Bill will return to the House of Commons for another vote, most likely in late April.
