Left image – Wikimedia Commons: Official portrait of Kim Leadbeater MP crop 2, 2024
MP Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill breaches the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), a top lawyer has said after reviewing the draft law, set to be voted on by MPs on 16 May.
Tom Cross KC, who conducted the review with a fellow barrister, concluded that the bill is incompatible with Article 14 of the ECHR, which says that its rights must be enjoyed equally and without discrimination.
The review was carried out on behalf of The Christian Institute by Cross, a Counsel for the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and barrister Ruth Kennedy.
Their 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”.
It continued: “Persons with disabilities of the above sort are… more likely to express the clear and settled wish to die required under the legislation to be eligible to be assisted to die…
“Accordingly, they are on well-established principles required to be treated differently under Article 14. The legislation fails to provide an adequate safeguard to address that greater vulnerability.”
Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill proposes to legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales for terminally ill adults said to have six months left to live. MPs are set to debate and vote on the draft law on 16 May.
During the Committee Stage of the bill, numerous safeguards were rejected, and more concerns arose about the implications for disabled people, one of the groups that has the most to lose if it becomes law.
Paralympian Tanni Grey-Thompson recently stated that “every disabled person who writes to me – and they do write quite a lot – is absolutely terrified about what this [assisted suicide] means for them”.
At a SPUC event held in Middlesbrough last April, Baroness Grey-Thompson said: “We are told that the Bill is not for disabled people, yet disabled people are very easily able to fit into the six-month diagnosis…
“We already have doctors in this country talking about terminal anorexia. If a patient with anorexia doesn’t take treatment, they could very easily have a six-month diagnosis. Someone with diabetes could fit into this if they stopped taking their insulin. For someone like me, if I had a pressure sore and it didn’t heal, I could fit into this qualification very easily.”
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