The great assisted-suicide stitch-up
Kim Leadbeater has pulled every trick in the book to minimise parliamentary scrutiny of her dangerous bill.

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On Tuesday, the first formal sitting of the committee for Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was held. What would normally have been a fairly dull and process-driven meeting about procedure ended up attracting significant attention and providing a degree of drama.
The meeting was not the time for discussing the substance of the bill or its merits and demerits, but how the committee intends to collect oral evidence and whom it should call to provide it. After Leadbeater’s bill narrowly passed its second-reading vote in November, she assured us that she would ensure the voices of those who had concerns about her bill would be heard throughout the parliamentary process. Sadly, it has since become clear that she never really meant this.
First, we had the announcement in December about which MPs would sit on the committee. Leadbeater made much of the fact that nine of the committee’s 23 members were opponents of the bill at second reading, but this was still a smaller proportion than the number of MPs who actually opposed the bill in November’s vote.
Worse, when you examine the details of the individual members, it becomes clear that this was a stitch-up of epic proportions. A good chunk of the nine ‘opponents’ handpicked by Leadbeater are the softest-of-soft opponents. Most are newbie MPs who are inexperienced in the parliamentary process. Most were also seemingly not engaged in the debate enough to have spoken during the second-reading vote. Tory MP Danny Kruger is the notable exception. In contrast, the bulk of the MPs on the committee who had voted in favour of the bill have been much more invested in the issue and are thus far more knowledgeable.
There is also a real imbalance when it comes to which MPs on each side have legal and medical expertise. MPs with medical experience who are opposed to the bill, such as Conservative MP Ben Spencer, a former consultant psychiatrist, were rejected from the committee.
In Tuesday’s session, it became clear that not only had Leadbeater sought to put her thumb on the scales in terms of the committee’s membership – she also tried to do the same with the list of witnesses invited to give oral evidence. Any witness likely to question the wisdom of her supposedly righteous crusade for assisted suicide was excommunicated. This included blocking members from the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) from giving evidence. It is not entirely clear what Leadbeater has against those who specialise in psychiatry. Not least as you’d think their expertise would be valuable, given the concerns many of the bill’s opponents have about coercion and consent. (Fortunately, there has since been an 11th-hour u-turn on this, apparently in response to the public backlash.)
As well as psychiatrists, you might also think that charities like Hourglass, which focusses on tackling elder abuse, or the British Geriatric Society would be worth inviting to scrutinise the bill. But Leadbeater shut these groups out, too. Perhaps she feared their perspective might be too damaging.
One reason we can’t be entirely sure of her reasoning is that Leadbeater insisted the meeting would retreat into a ‘private session’ for more than an hour, which is highly unusual. During part of the public proceedings, Danny Kruger raised concerns about the demands for secrecy. He also speculated about the involvement of lobby group Dignity in Dying (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society) in writing the bill. At this, the bill’s sponsor transformed from Saint Kim to Snappy Kim. She then continually interrupted him and other opponents whenever they raised inconvenient points or began to make arguments she wished to curtail.
There was also a very peculiar debate about Canada during the committee’s deliberations. Kruger said the Canadian experience should be taken into account. Infamously, the number of people opting for Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), Canada’s euthanasia / assisted-suicide scheme, has dramatically increased every year since its introduction in 2016. Kit Malthouse, a Conservative MP who backs assisted suicide, rejected this, insisting that Leadbeater’s bill is based on ‘a very different legal framework’ from the law in Canada, even though the key principles at stake are exactly the same. Of course, it makes sense that those in favour of assisted-suicide laws would prefer not to discuss Canada, where almost five per cent of all deaths now take place via MAID.
Kruger then pointed out that, of the eight witnesses Leadbeater selected from foreign jurisdictions where assisted suicide has been legalised, all are in favour of such laws and not one is against. For the sake of balance, he suggested that there should be at least some witnesses from these jurisdictions opposed to assisted suicide. Labour MP Lewis Atkinson disagreed. ‘We don’t need to hear from people in other jurisdictions who were in principle opposed’, he insisted. An apparently devoted acolyte of Leadbeater’s crusade, Atkinson helped to reinforce her strategy of silencing those who might raise inconvenient arguments or evidence.
All in all then, if anyone was hoping that Leadbeater’s committee would properly interrogate this most consequential of bills and ensure that its safeguards are as robust as possible, the early signs do not inspire confidence.
Tom Hunt is a former Conservative MP.
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