Thread👇. Second day's evidence in the Assisted Suicide bill committee. Today's witnesses blew apart the idea this bill is safe for vulnerable people. As Dr Jamilla Hussain explained it won't just be a new option for a few, but a new reality for everyone - and a very scary one
(By the way, Dr Hussain contradicted Chris Whitty who told us yesterday that mental capacity assessments are excellent and 6 different docs would all give the same assessment to the same case. The system is not nearly good enough to be relied on, as this Bill does)
On capacity - Chelsea Roff cited evidence of 60 young women with eating disorders being euthanised around the world; all were assessed as having mental capacity.
Don't think it won't happen here. The NHS already treats some patients with eating disorders as terminally ill.
And it's not just eating disorders. People with diabetes... with substance abuse disorders... with HIV... they qualify. Watch:
We heard from Dr Miro Griffiths on the 'arbitrary nonsense' of the 6 month limit, and the fact that as a disabled man he'd qualify for an assisted death
and from Fazilet Hadi of Disability Rights UK, who simply said the NHS discriminates against disabled people as it is
Sam Royston of Marie Curie bluntly showed why palliative care simply isn't in a good enough place for this Bill to be safe
We also had some foreign witnesses, from Australia. This chap boasted that only a few years after introducing Assisted Suicide they are planning to remove safeguards because - yup - 'they're not safeguards but impediments, barriers to equitable access'
Finally some legal input. Unsurprisingly given all we'd heard, Baroness Falkner the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission said we shouldn't be looking at the Bill until the Govt has produced its equality impact assessment. Hear hear. Where is it?
And Lord Sumption pointed out that the judicial safeguard is either pointless (a rubber stamp on the doctors' assessment) or if done properly it will overwhelm the courts. He suggested dropping it; which I believe is what the Bill's backers are planning to do.
The central purpose of this Bill - compassion for the vulnerable - is contradicted by advocates for disabled people and other minorities. And now the key defence, which so many MPs cited as a reason for backing it - the High Court judge - is being ditched. We need to think again.
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