Thread by @yuanyi_z

Less than 3 weeks before it's due to be debated, Kim Leadbeater MP has finally published the text of her assisted suicide bill. It's 38 pages long, has 43 clauses and 6 schedules. MPs will have a maximum of five hours to debate it. bills.parliament.uk/bills/3774/pub…

Highlights:

It doesn't prevent doctors from proposing assisted suicide to patients (some of the worst Canadian abuses have originated this way).

It doesn't allow doctors to opt out of either discussing assisted suicide or to refer patients to doctors who will do it.

It legalises assisted suicide for patients whose deaths can be reasonably expected within 6 months.

But we know from research that doctors trying to predict a 6-month life expectancy often get it wrong. A study has shown that they are wrong two thirds of the time.

The High Court must approve applications. If we use Oregon as a baseline, that means 7,500 assisted suicide in England and Wales per year.

There are 18 High Court judges in the Family Division. That comes to 400 applications per judge per year.

Patients can give their consent to assisted suicide by proxy “by reason of physical improvement, being unable to read or for any other reason”. Any. Other. Reason.

Death is to be inflicted by a drug approved by the Secretary of State

We know the drugs currently used for assisted suicide don't provide the speedy death its proponents promise. In an Oregon case, the patient took almost a week to die.

There is no duty on a coroner to investigate a death by assisted suicide.

The Secretary of State *must* ensure that assisted suicide is available. He is no under such duty, as far as I know, to provide palliative care to everyone that needs it.

What else... Two doctors must sign off, but the first doctors chooses the second, “independent” doctor.

There are no qualifications for which doctor can approve the application. The Secretary of State *may* make regulations specifying qualifications but does not have to do so.

If the second doctor refuses to sign off, the first doctor gets to choose another second doctor. You can doctor shop, but once.

If the High Court refuses to approve assisted suicide, there is a right of appeal to the Court of Appeal. But there is no right to appeal against the High Court's approval of assisted suicide.

There are explanatory notes with the bill, but more than half of it is just verbiage about why assisted suicide is great.

Remember folks, Kim Leadbeater has said that if MPs are unsure about any of this, they should vote in favour.

https://x.com/eleanormia/status/1856094559031439515?t=awkQe0pOpmj5iI3IUbKX2g&s=19

TWO EXTRA POINTS:

The bill assumes that the first doctor will be the doctor who provides the fatal drugs and, if needed, helps the person to take them. This means that in practice the primary assessing doctor is often going to a doctor who's willing to kill the patient.

Second, as far as I can see there is nothing stopping someone who has been refused permission by the first or second doctor from making a second request or a third request, so in practice your ability to doctor shop is unlimited.