Jewish parliamentarians split over assisted dying bill safeguards

A senior Jewish peer has expressed concerns about the proposed changes to the assisted dying bill.

The legislation, known officially as the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, passed by 330 votes to 275 at second reading in late November last year. It is currently going through committee stage – where MPs are undertaking an intensive process of line-by-line scrutiny.

According to the current draft of the bill, a High Court judge would be required to oversee and sign-off applications for the procedure to make sure the person applying isn’t being coerced into doing so.

But Kim Leadbeater MP, the original proposer of the bill, now plans to remove the role of the judge and replace them with a panel of experts including a senior lawyer, a psychiatrist and a social worker to make the oversight process more practical and avoid a court backlog.

In response, Lord Carlile KC, the government’s former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation – himself a former deputy High Court judge – cautioned against what he sees as the weakening of safeguards in the bill.

“The only circumstances in which one person can kill another person lawfully is in war. And creating a new law that allows one person to be complicit, lawfully, in the killing of another person, seems to me to be a very major step to take. If it is to happen, it's got to have the most careful safeguards,” he said.

Lord Carlile (Photo: Houses of Parliament)[Missing Credit]

The crossbench peer continued: “If it's going to happen, there have to be safeguards which involve scrutiny to the highest degree possible, and that must be in front of a High Court judge”.

Carlile added: “A judge has the experience and the skill to interrogate the evidence. So: 'why does that person wish to be assisted to commit suicide?'; 'Are there any questions of pressure upon him or her?'; 'How is it to be accomplished?'; 'Is there a real possibility that they might be of a fixed view now, but they might change their minds if current hospital treatment alleviates their suffering?'; 'Is there palliative care available that would mean that they would not suffer in the way in which they feel they are suffering?'”

“Issues like that would need to be interrogated properly. The sort of panel they're suggesting just isn't a response.”

He also claimed that there was a risk that non-legal members of the deciding committee “would only go on that panel if they were in favour of assisted suicide”.

By contrast, he said, “Judges are trained. They're very good at it in this country to objectivise what they are doing, and they will hear the evidence of people who are like the other members of the proposed panel who will give expert advice no doubt as to whether it is the appropriate outcome”.

The peer went on: “Those of us who spent, as I have decades, doing cases in courts, know that the evidence of experts is quite often rejected, either by a judge or by a jury. One cannot assume that this sort of panel – because it is in inverted commas ‘expert’ – is going to be right in every case. You need a much more objective approach.”

The former Lib Dem MP was also critical of the composition of the bill committee currently scrutinising the legislation, noting that it had a built-in majority in favour of the bill.

Despite this, he said, the legislation has “run into an enormous amount of trouble”.

And, although he hoped that MPs would vote against the bill it at third reading, Carlile warned against any attempts to rush the bill through should it make it to the Lords for final approval.

“There are serious issues that will have to be considered, and it would be very disturbing if, in any way, the government curtailed the amount of time available,” he concluded.

Yet, much like their colleagues in the Commons, Jewish peers are split when it comes to the assisted dying bill.

Lord Dubs, the Labour Peer and former Kindertransportee, is a longstanding supporter of a change to the law on assisted dying: “I've supported the concept of this or similar bills for many years, and I hope it will get through.”

Expert witness: Lord Dubs (UK Parliament)[Missing Credit]

He disagreed with the arguments that High Court judicial oversight is necessary in part because “it puts more pressure on judges who are already overworked” and “Partly because they're not necessarily people with enough time anyway to do it.”

Dubs backed the change to the expert panel and said that Leadbeater has “fallen over backwards to have safeguards built into” the legislation – measures which, he claimed, now meant the bill had the strongest safeguards of any country “with the possible exception of Spain”.

The former Labour MP for Battersea argued that the current reality for people suffering from terminal conditions is also inadequate.

“The present situation is there are no safeguards. Anybody can take a flight to Switzerland [where assisted dying is legal] if they can afford the fare, and there's not a single safeguard”.

He later added: “I think public opinion is so much on the side of assisted dying that the safeguards are as good as they can be. No safeguards are 100 per cent … but they're jolly close to 100 per cent in this bill. And I very much hope, that the Commons will move forward and approve the essentials of the bill.”

In 2015, MPs voted against a similar change to legislation on assisted dying.

As such, Dubs maintained that “this is not a new issue” and he didn’t share the concerns of some critics that parliamentarians haven’t had sufficient time to debate the bill.

“I appreciate for many MPs, it may be the first time, because they've just been elected, and it's quite difficult for some of them, possibly, to work out where they stand on issue of conscience.”

Peter Prinsley, the Labour MP for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket, is one of the bill’s most prominent supporters in the Commons.

The ear, nose and throat surgeon also rejected claims that the legislation was being rushed.

He told the JC: “This has been discussed for years. This is simply the way a private members’ bill works.”

The legislation has received government backing but, since it wasn’t introduced as a government bill, there hasn’t been a published impact assessment produced, something health minister Stephen Kinnock promised would be done at Report stage.

Like Dubs, Prinsley told the JC he thought that the removal of the requirement of a High Court judge with an expert panel was an improvement.

However, many critics of the bill are still likely to raise questions about the safeguards as it returns  from committee.

David Pinto-Duschinsky, Labour’s MP for Hendon who voted against the bill at second reading, said at the time that he had “serious questions about the efficacy of a number of safeguards... and how they will actually operate in practice”.

He added: “Some of the safeguards may be more apparent than real and I have lingering concerns about how coercive control can be addressed. The Bill is also silent on how it would protect vulnerable people from the bureaucratic failures of the type we saw with the Post Office or infected blood scandals.”

During the second reading debate, absent were the shouting, chuntering, interruptions and attempted gotchas that one might expect, for instance, from parliamentary occasions like Prime Minister’s Questions.

Instead, MPs of either side were moved, often to tears, sharing their – or their constituents’ – tales of struggling with dealing with death and suffering.

Dubs said that it showed the best of Parliament: grappling with a serious societal issue with real consequences.

“It's showing MPs who've been wrestling with their consciences to try and find the best way forward”.