Campaigners opposed to the legalisation of assisted suicide have strongly criticised the removal of a High Court safeguard from Kim Leadbeater’s draft legislation.
Opponents say the change makes a mockery of her claim that her assisted suicide bill would introduce the strongest safeguards in the world.
The bill originally required assisted suicide applications to be signed off by the High Court, but this has been replaced with approval by an expert panel including a lawyer, psychiatrist and social worker.
Dr Gordon Macdonald, CEO of Care Not Killing, a campaign group that opposes euthanasia, said that ditching the High Court safeguard was “a deeply worrying move that puts a sword to the lie that changing the law can be done safely”.
“Approval by the High Court was sold to members of the public and our elected representatives in Parliament as the key safeguard that would make this legislation the ‘safest in the world’, but because of fears that the court system would not be able to cope, this important measure is being ditched,” he said.
“Instead, it is being proposed that we have a secretive panel, of people who support so-called assisted dying making the life-or-death decision.
“There would be no transparency and astonishingly, unlike the judicial process its replacing, no requirement to hear arguments from an applicant’s family or doctor if they have concerns. This is a disgrace that if approved will put the lives of vulnerable people at risk.”
A spokesman for Christian advocacy group CARE said that scrutiny of the bill so far had been “flawed” and that MPs should instead work to bolster suicide prevention and palliative care.
“The fluid nature of the debate about ‘safeguards’ in this Bill is a concern in itself. Evidence from other countries shows that ‘safeguards’ are subject to change,” he said.
“In places where assisted death is permitted, legal requirements have been relaxed or dispensed with altogether as campaigners pursue easier access by more groups of people. There is also evidence of changing practice on the ground.
“The direction of travel is always liberalisation, and we would expect a UK law to develop in this way. Parliament does not need to take this risk.”
Criticism has come from within Leadbeater’s own party, with Labour MP Diane Abbott tweeting: “Safeguards on the Assisted Dying Bill are collapsing. Rushed, badly thought out legislation. Needs to be voted down.”
Conservative MP Danny Kruger told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme of his concerns.
“Why, if this is the plan, why isn’t this the plan that was put to MPs when the whole House of Commons voted it through?” he said.
“At that point, it was made very strongly that the principal safeguard for the bill, where people could have confidence that it was going to be safe for vulnerable people, was that there would be a High Court judge approving the application. That’s now been removed.
“This new system … doesn’t involve a judge, it involves a panel of people, all of whom presumably are committed to the principle of assisted dying, not an impartial figure like the judge.”
