A retired chief coroner has warned that MP Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill could lead to potential murders not being investigated, in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), raising more concerns about a lack of safeguards.
Leadbeater’s bill, if legalised, could lead to potential murders not being investigated following an apparent assisted suicide, Judge Thomas Teague KC has warned.
Judge Teague, who was chief coroner until last year, says that the bill could also be subject to a legal challenge as it exempts assisted suicides from being probed. This clause potentially breaches the ECHR, which requires all “unnatural deaths” to be investigated, he said.
“The coroner’s statutory duty to investigate all unnatural deaths, irrespective of whether any misfeasance is alleged, provides a powerful deterrent against wrongdoing”, Judge Teague wrote in a letter to The Times.
“By removing any realistic prospect of an effective inquest, such a dispensation would magnify, rather than diminish, the obvious risks of deception and undue influence and would expose the bill to legal challenge.”
An impact assessment published last week by the Department of Health and Social Care and the Ministry of Justice stated that “the government is of the view that the bill is compatible with the ECHR”.
However, Tom Cross KC, who conducted a review of the bill on behalf of The Christian Institute, concluded that it was in breach of Article 14 of the ECHR, which affirms that its rights must be enjoyed equally and without discrimination.
The legal opinion stated that the bill “contains no adequate safeguard protecting the position of those with disabilities where suicidal ideation is more likely, and who are, because of that feature of their disability, more likely to express a clear and settled wish to die”.
Leadbeater’s bill for England and Wales proposes to legalise assisted suicide for terminally ill adults given six months to live.
However, Westminster MPs, including Health Secretary Wes Streeting, have raised concerns about coercion and the absence of safeguards in the bill.
During the Committee stage of the bill, the High Court judge rule was scrapped after being forwarded as a vital safeguarding measure designed to identify coercion. As many as 144 MPs who were initially in favour of the draft law said they might vote against it after the provision was replaced by an assisted suicide panel of “experts”.
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