Last week four Labour MPs warned their colleagues they weren’t being given the full picture on the assisted suicide bill.
If anything the MPs understated it. Here are 10 things we’ve learnt from the committee stage which Leadbeater and allies have studiously avoided mentioning:
1. Huge anxiety that the state of public services will incentivise assisted suicide.
Several witnesses talked about this, including the head of the Royal College of Nurses and, most eloquently, @doctor_oxford:
2. People will request lethal drugs because they feel like a burden. Nobody denied this, and some pro-bill witnesses like Sam Ahmedzai defended it:
3. The bill’s supporters have entirely failed to reassure people with disabilities.
Disability Rights UK - who Leadbeater originally didn’t want to invite - opposed the bill, and Dr Miro Griffiths said it was “nonsense” to suggest it didn’t apply to disabilities.
4. The bill is not safe for those with eating disorders.
@ChelseaRoff made that point powerfully to the committee; it wasn’t clear that Team Leadbeater had even begun to think this through.
5. A lot of controversy about capacity assessments. A few witnesses, including Chris Whitty, thought they were a good safeguard; the majority disagreed.
6. Also much disagreement about coercion.
Notably, even two eminent witnesses who support the bill thought the safeguards here don’t solve the problem.
7. The bill is probably bad news for palliative care.
Some witnesses were more optimistic than others; but only one, the President of the Association for Palliative Medicine, gave a really detailed and informed answer:
8. The experience of other jurisdictions is not exactly reassuring.
9. The bill falls short of NICE guidelines for patients at risk of self-harm or suicide. Prof Allan House made the point succinctly:
10. How would it work in practice? All very vague so far.
The lawyers cast doubt on the court safeguard, the GPs said they didn’t want it incorporated into their normal work, and Baroness Falkner pointed out that the PMB process leaves us in the dark:
And of course this only scratches the surface, because almost every expert who might have given the bill a hard time was carefully excluded.
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