Georgia L Gilholy is a journalist.
You could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, given how readily their spin is often lapped up by sections of the mainstream media. But, for all of the noise they make and the attention lavished upon them, the assisted suicide lobby’s efforts remain an abject failure.
No, really.
In March, the Scottish Parliament firmly rejected their proposals. Then Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was thoroughly discredited and ran out of time before the end of the last parliamentary session. Their last hope of ramming assisted suicide through Westminster this side of the year 2100 rests now on the shoulders of Lauren Edwards MP.
After coming second in last month’s Private Members’ Bill ballot, the Labour politician announced on Sunday that she plans to resurrect Leadbeater’s Bill. Sigh.
The backlash was instant and widespread, including amongst her Labour colleagues. On Wednesday, The Times’ editorial raged: “Dusting off an unimproved bill and hoping it will sail through the Commons and Lords is delusional.” Privately, many politicos across the ideological spectrum have confided in me that (a) they doubt Edwards’ plans will prevail, and (b) they fiercely oppose them, despite being indifferent to assisted as a concept. No one wants this, and it is unlikely to pass.
First and foremost, it is unclear whether Sir Keir Starmer’s successor in Downing Street (Polymarket currently has 87 per cent odds of him being gone before the year is finished) would be supportive. Even if he lingers on, this millstone of a Bill will weigh heavily around his neck for a second consecutive session as an unwelcome distraction.
Andy Burnham has indicated that while he supports the principle of assisted suicide, he would only vote for a Bill that would require “that the hospices of this country get properly funded and sorted out before that law change comes in“. Erstwhile Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, holds a similar position, while not totally opposed to the idea of assisted suicide, he told MPs that end-of-life care was not in a state where people would have genuine freedom to choose an assisted death. He went on to vote against the Leadbeater Bill at both Second Reading and Third Readings.
With end-of-life care under such severe pressure across the country, the condition Burnham set before he could back assisted suicide, properly funded palliative care, has not been met. On that basis, he would appear unlikely to support the revived assisted suicide Bill.
Moreover, this manoeuvring all reeks of the assisted suicide lobby’s recklessness and desperation. The Parliament Acts, if they end up being invoked as campaigners have suggested, were not designed as a shortcut to avoid scrutiny for backbench initiatives. Only seven Bills have become Acts through their use. They have never been used for a Private Members’ Bill, and invoking them under these circumstances would be an extraordinary overstep more indicative of ideological zealotry than good law-making.
Assisted suicide, while a longtime hobby horse for Sir Keir, was not a Government manifesto commitment. Fewer than half of all MPs voted for it at Third Reading, and it then ran into serious trouble in the Lords because the Bill was found wanting under diligent scrutiny.
Peers heard concerns from doctors, psychiatrists, palliative care specialists, disability rights campaigners, domestic abuse experts, and others who all expressed deep anxieties about how this legislation would work in practice.
Sadly, throughout the entire process, the assisted suicide lobby’s response was not to welcome that scrutiny or fix the Bill, but to find a way around it. The inconvenient truth, which they have fought tooth and nail to suppress, distract from and wilfully disbelieve, is that this Bill is simply not up to scratch, whatever view one might take on the principle.
This is exactly why the threat of the Parliament Acts is so concerning. As former No.10 Legislative Affairs Director Nikki da Costa has pointed out, this plan “is turning off MPs” because it would mean passing “an identical bill, all the flaws, all the risks, no changes, forced on to the statute books using powers only ever used by an elected government.”
One of those problems that could not be fixed, if the Parliament Acts route is taken, is the so-called “anorexia loophole”. Under the current Bill, people with eating disorders could qualify for assisted suicide if their condition produces physical complications deemed “terminal”. Labour MP Naz Shah tabled an amendment designed to eliminate this loophole, but it was not voted on and did not become part of the Bill.
This is not some minor technicality.
These issues are already playing out in jurisdictions in which assisted suicide is legal, with devastating consequences. In 2021, 33-year-old Dutch woman Esther Beukema qualified for death via euthanasia due to her battles with anorexia. Both eating disorder campaigners and the Royal College of Psychiatrists have raised concerns about preventable deaths among people with mental illness and/or eating disorders. But if the Parliament Acts route is pursued, it would be extraordinarily difficult to address these defects, and MPs considering supporting the new Bill at Second Reading certainly should not rely on that happening.
To speak a language all politicians understand, there is also no evidence that the public is at all keen to have assisted suicide rushed through in this way, with no concern for safeguards. Perhaps this is why Labour never dared to insert it into their 2024 manifesto in the first place? Recent polling from JL Partners found that 61 per cent of respondents said that it is important that we prevent the possibility of people being coerced or pressured into ending their lives, even if it means that terminally ill people are unable to receive assistance to end their lives. Over half of those polled were worried about abuse or misuse if doctors are legally able to end the lives of terminally ill people.
Only 14 per cent of respondents disagreed that the Government should only be able to push a Bill through Parliament without full scrutiny from the House of Lords, if it was in their election platform and the public voted for it. The public welcomes scrutiny; it is the assisted suicide lobby which runs from it. That tells its own tale.
Labour MPs, and even the Cabinet, were already heavily divided on this Bill, and at least seven cross-party MPs who previously supported the plans have now expressed their unease about returning the Bill to Parliament, or forcing it through. Whitestone Insight polling of MPs from this April suggests that more MPs would oppose the assisted suicide Bill than could be relied upon to back it if the Bill were revived in the next parliamentary session.
The failure of the returned bill at Second Reading seems not only possible, but highly plausible.
The country obviously has more urgent concerns: immigration, crime, energy, industry, housing. It is extraordinary that, at the whim of one backbencher and a well-funded, single-minded lobby, Labour seems destined to be drawn into wasting time tearing itself apart still further over radical social change.
Figures from Electoral Calculus show Edwards as very likely to lose her seat at the next General Election, which begs the question: what sort of legacy does she want to leave? Surely something more positive and unifying than this? It is not too late; she could be the person to finally wind up these pig-eared plans and even withdraw her Bill, but that would require a degree of self-reflection and humility which has thus far been found lacking in the assisted suicide lobby.
Tragically, MPs do not seem to realise that they risk fundamentally altering the law on life and death because fringe campaigners are itching for a victory to boast about in their annual reports. The assisted suicide lobby is desperate and running on borrowed time, but their slapdash strategy can and must be resisted. After all, it is MPs of all parties who will have to live with their individual conscience and the terrible consequences for vulnerable people should they become complicit in this awful Bill becoming law.