My assisted dying bill will have the strictest safeguards in the world
A small demonstration by people advocating assisted dying outside the Houses of Parliament, October 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)
4 min read
My decision to introduce a bill offering choice at the end of life for terminally ill adults was not taken lightly.
I am acutely aware of the responsibility attached to proposing legislation on matters of life and death, which is why I have taken time and a great deal of care in drafting my bill.
I know too that I am asking colleagues to make their own decision about an issue that is both serious and complex. I believe when they study it in detail, they will see that the bill offers hope to those terminally ill people with a clear, informed and settled wish to have a better death, while at the same time protecting all those approaching the end of their life from coercion or pressure to make a decision that isn’t right for them. Indeed, my bill will contain the strictest protections and safeguards of any legislation anywhere in the world.
I am clear that if we are to have a new law it must be a good law
I have been consulting very widely over the past few weeks, mainly because I’m not the sort of person who would embark on a task like this without delving deeply into the issue first. But, also, because I am clear that if we are to have a new law it must be a good law. Both Houses of Parliament have debated this subject many times in the past and I would encourage everyone to look back at those thoughtful and detailed debates as I have done. The Health and Social Care Committee spent 14 months investigating assisted dying before publishing their report in February and that too is a valuable source of information and analysis.
I didn’t just want to study the long history of debate on the issue, I also wanted to talk with those who have a direct interest in the matter. I have had very productive meetings with medical professionals, lawyers and members of the judiciary, faith leaders, humanists, disability rights campaigners and palliative care professionals. And, of course, the families who have first-hand experience of the terrible pain and trauma that results from the current law, and terminally ill people who know what awaits them and simply want the right to choose to die on their own terms.
I was particularly moved by those whose loved ones faced an unbearably painful end, despite having had access to the best possible palliative care, or who have taken their own lives. Above all, it is their voices we should be listening to in the coming days and weeks.
While I fully respect the right of colleagues to take a different view to mine, to do so is a decision to leave the current legal situation unchanged. One that leads to desperate people travelling abroad, if they can afford it. Or who take things into their own hands, often long before they need to, and do so alone because they are scared to put those close to them at risk of prosecution. As Keir Starmer said on the last occasion MPs voted on it in 2015, there is “an injustice… trapped within our current arrangement”.
I am pleased that both the Prime Minister and the new opposition leader support the principle of correcting that injustice, but this is rightly a matter of conscience for every individual MP.
The vote on November 29 is important, but it is not the final word. If passed, it would simply allow the bill to go forward for scrutiny in committee and again at report stage and third reading in the Commons, and then again in the Lords. That means extensive further debate and opportunities to amend the bill before a final decision on the basis of that detailed examination.
I hope when colleagues study my bill they will agree that it deserves to be given this level of scrutiny, and I remain open to meet with members in the same spirit of respectful and compassionate discussion that has characterised the debate so far.
Kim Leadbeater, Labour MP for Spen Valley
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