On Tuesday 2 September, assisted dying campaign group My Death My Decision (MDMD), alongside Humanists UK, hosted an event at the House of Lords. The event is just days ahead of the second reading of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which sets out criteria for “lawful assistance to voluntarily end [one’s] own life”, a.k.a. assisted suicide. Kim Leadbeater and Lord Falconer of Thoroton, both Labour MPs, were the original sponsors of the bill.

Leadbeater has previously insisted on the narrow scope of her bill, insisting that it has strongest safeguards in the world. MDMD notably favour a broader, more-permissive model of assisted dying than that provided by the current draft of the legislation.

Whilst this may seem to set Leadbeater and MDMD at odds, Leadbeater chose to speak at the campaign group’s event in the Lords. This has raised alarm bells among critics of the assisted dying cause.

MDMD: the Canadian model

On their website, MDMD categorize two different models of assisted dying:

The first, most notably found in Oregon and some other parts of the United States and some states in Australia, only provides assistance to those who have six or fewer months left to live. The second, of which Canada is a prime example, provides assistance for people with both terminal or intolerable conditions.

MDMD state that both their organisation and the UK Assisted Dying Coalition strongly favour the Canadian model. That is, they believe that there should be no restriction on how soon an individual might die when they seek assistance in dying.

By contrast, the End of Life Bill is far more in line with the first model. It defines someone as terminally ill if:

In spite of this clash of views, Leadbeater chose to speak at the event in the Lords yesterday. On X, MDMD quoted the MP as saying that:

We have a duty to get this bill through parliament and royal assent, so that we can replace the stories of trauma, loss and agony with stories of compassion, autonomy and dignity.

Leadbeater: removing safeguards

Kim Leadbeater has already received major criticism for relaxing the safeguards provided in the original version of the Bill. After first drafting the document, she removed a requirement for signoff by a high court judge. In its place, the new draft requires the assent of an ‘expert team’ consisting of a lawyer, a psychiatrist and a social worker.

In the Guardian, Leadbeater argued that this change makes the Bill “more robust”:

…without making it so difficult to navigate that it would be too much of a burden for people in the last months of their lives to undertake.

The advice from a wide range of witnesses, including medical professionals, lawyers, palliative care specialists, and experts in the fields of disability, coercive control and other disciplines, has been to introduce a multidisciplinary layer of protection.

Opposing MPs issued stern criticism of the change. Tory MP Danny Kruger asked:

Why, if this is the plan, why isn’t this the plan that was put to MPs when the whole House of Commons voted it through?…

At that point, it was made very strongly that the principal safeguard for the bill, where people could have confidence that it was going to be safe for vulnerable people, was that there would be a high court judge approving the application. That’s now been removed.

This new system … doesn’t involve a judge, it involves a panel of people, all of whom presumably are committed to the principle of assisted dying, not an impartial figure like the judge.

Given that Leadbeater has already made her Bill wider in scope since it was first voted through the Commons, the fact that she is now speaking to the Lords alongside campaign groups who are vocally committed to widening the availability of assisted dying even further should be cause for concern for any who worry that the movement will open the door for the further devaluation of the lives of disabled and terminally ill individuals.

Featured image via the Canary