Georgia L Gilholy is a journalist.
The assisted suicide Bill seems to be on its last legs, and our new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, might already have dealt it the fatal blow.
Last month, Burnham told journalists that now was not the moment for another assisted suicide debate, and that “fixing of the funding” for social and palliative care must be addressed before the issue is reconsidered.
Even those who might back assisted suicide in principle, like Burnham, know that reviving the issue now would be a mistake. His comments are encouraging, but if he intends to follow through on them, he must walk the walk, too, and vote against this misguided Bill in September.
Burnham’s remarks are a significant departure from his predecessor’s instincts. As Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Keir Starmer was criticised for attempting to create “legislation by stealth” after his guidance reportedly made prosecution less likely in some assisted suicide cases.
Under Starmer, Labour did not campaign on this divisive issue ahead of its 2024 general election victory. Assisted suicide was not in the Party’s manifesto. Still, Starmer’s Government did far more than was procedurally necessary to make time for Kim Leadbeater’s poorly drafted Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. It progressed as far as it did largely through the allocation of additional sitting Fridays for debate in the House of Lords.
Lauren Edwards MP has now published her near-identical plans, which are set to be voted on when Parliament returns in September. The debate can, and should, end here.
By publishing a near-identical Bill to the version that failed in the previous parliamentary session, Edwards and her supporters have made it clear that they intend to use the Parliament Acts if the House of Lords refuse to back the Bill. This would allow the Bill to bypass the Lords and be forced into law.
These Acts have been used a mere seven times since their introduction, and never for non-government legislation. To do so would defy both constitutional norms and political prudence.
Using them would eliminate the possibility of amending the legislation in the House of Commons, making it impossible for MPs to address the numerous concerning defects it still contains. Such a campaign risks looking like an attempt to push through assisted suicide at virtually any cost, and the public is seeing through it.
Whitestone Insight polling earlier this year found that in every constituency in Great Britain, a majority of voters do not want their MP to support a law pushed through Parliament without full scrutiny and approval by both Houses of Parliament.
Who can blame them?
Certainly, all is not well with health and care at any stage of life in Britain. The NHS currently has a higher death rate from harm caused by medical treatment than Sudan. One in three people in England is now dying with unmet palliative care needs, including unaddressed pain or distress. Care homes and hospices are overstretched and underfunded. In April, Hospice UK announced that nearly 60 per cent of hospices had made or were considering frontline cuts.
By Burnham’s own standard, the conditions for considering assisted suicide legislation are plainly not being met, and though the Prime Minister says he intends to fix these problems, any plans to do so have not been laid out yet and would likely take years to implement.
Burnham is facing a starkly divided party and country, giving him little reason to reopen another deeply contentious debate. Less than half of MPs voted for the previous assisted suicide bill at Third Reading, with 42 per cent of participating Labour MPs voting against it.
There is no reason to believe this figure will shift in Edwards’ favour. Her bill contains the same flaws identified by Royal Colleges, professional bodies, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and disability, mental health and domestic abuse charities as Leadbeater’s did. More than 350 British disability rights groups opposed Leadbeater’s Bill, and can be expected to oppose Edwards’ too. They are not only concerned that the legislation could easily expand beyond the terminally ill, but that it does not contain adequate safeguards to protect highly vulnerable groups from coercion and pressure to end their lives prematurely.
Edwards therefore has an uphill battle on her hands, particularly with Burnham pulling the rug from beneath both her campaign and its well-funded supporters. These revived proposals are an unwelcome distraction from the urgent task of reforming Britain’s social and palliative care system. Whether he actually follows through on the latter promise remains to be seen.
Burnham has set out his stall early, admitting that reform of social care and palliative care is an urgent priority. He simply cannot afford for this policy pledge to be dragged down by the millstone of yet another flawed assisted suicide Bill.
If, as he says, he is serious about putting “care for people at the heart” of his premiership, the way ahead for both his party and the country is clear: this Bill must fail once again.