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Dan Hitchens Profile picture
Dan Hitchens
@ddhitchens
Senior editor @firstthingsmag | Co-author, Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Johnson (out in 2025) | https://t.co/yj4GPUYs00
Nov 23 • 21 tweets • 7 min read
A House of Lords appreciation thread.

Here are 20 peers doing a fine job scrutinising the Leadbeater/Falconer bill: Image 1. Baroness Finlay. Former BMA president, major figure in the palliative care world. Knows the whole subject inside out.

Very polite, but consistently makes Lord Falconer look flat-footed by comparison:
Nov 21 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
1. Lord Falconer, 2017: the Lords has the right to reject a bill which wasn’t a manifesto promise. 2. Lord Falconer, 2018: the Salisbury Convention—which limits the Lords’ ability to reject a bill—doesn’t apply if a bill wasn’t part of the governing party’s manifesto.
Sep 20 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
Ten things we learnt from the first Lords debate on the assisted suicide bill: Image 1. The Lords is taking this seriously.

Thanks to the efforts of Baroness Berger and others, there will now be evidence sessions to fill in some of the gaps left by the haphazard Commons stage.

A sign that this may be a more grown-up process overall.
Sep 19 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
Dignity in Dying have launched a campaign this week against the phrase “assisted suicide”—and by an amazing coincidence, the first three pro-bill speakers, including the two flanking Lord Falconer, objected to the term.

A few reasons why “assisted suicide” is good terminology: Image 1. Legislative precision. The bill amends the Suicide Act, changing the law on suicide:
Sep 12 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
A brief fact-check of Lord Falconer’s speech this morning, some of which was misleading or at least missing important context: Image 1. “The government’s own estimate is that...less than 1% of deaths would be assisted after ten years.”

That’s because the civil servants imported the 1% figure from Oregon, which, respectfully, was a very strange decision. (NB in Quebec it’s 7 per cent.)
Sep 11 • 21 tweets • 7 min read
On May 13, defending the assisted suicide bill he is sponsoring in the Lords, Lord Falconer told Newsnight:

“It is hard to imagine a more safeguarded process.”

20 safeguards rejected by Falconer’s allies:
1. Doctors to ask applicants why they want an assisted suicide.

Rejected by pro-bill MPs in committee, partly on the grounds that “it’s none of your business.”
Sep 1 • 17 tweets • 10 min read
“Let’s be very very clear,” Kim Leadbeater told the House of Commons on November 29 last year. “The model that is being proposed here…is nothing like what happens in Canada.”

Here are fifteen important ways in which the Leadbeater bill resembles Canada’s disastrous model: (Canadian details taken from this extraordinary @TheAtlantic story: ) Image
Jul 20 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
A month on from the Commons vote on assisted suicide, it’s clear that quite a few MPs were confused about the bill or influenced by misinformation.

Here are 10 examples: Image 1. Janet Daby MP says she was reassured because there would be “further psychiatric assessment” in the event of concerns about a patient’s “mental health”.

This is completely untrue—the lack of such assessment is one reason the Royal College of Psychiatrists oppose the bill. Image
Jun 25 • 26 tweets • 12 min read
Major unresolved problems with the Leadbeater bill: an A-Z guide.

A is for Anorexia.

Eating disorder charities and experts have warned that the bill leaves the door open for sufferers to qualify and receive an assisted death:
B is for Burden.

Under the bill, if someone meets the criteria and their sole motive is feeling like a burden, they qualify for an assisted death.

If unamended this could open the way for large numbers of people to receive lethal drugs out of mere guilt.
Jun 20 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
1. Fact check: Kevin McKenna MP says of the panel:

“This reflects the best practice…that we have a multidisciplinary team.”

But the experts invited by Kim Leadbeater have said the panel falls far short of good clinical practice, and is *not* a proper multidisciplinary team. 2. Palliative care specialist @doctor_oxford, who was invited to give evidence to the committee by Kim Leadbeater, has said the panel is not an MDT and in fact betrays “a gross misunderstanding” of what an MDT is.

Jun 18 • 15 tweets • 6 min read
1. What happens, under the assisted suicide bill, if someone requests lethal drugs *because* they feel like a burden? Image 2. The first thing to say is that—if they have a 6-month prognosis—they absolutely qualify.

Here Kim Leadbeater confirms the point: if your sole motive is altruistic—i.e. “others would be better off if I was dead”—the doctors/panel don’t have any freedom to refuse your request.
Jun 17 • 17 tweets • 7 min read
1. How do assisted suicide laws affect palliative care?

Big question this week, with Gordon Brown warning that the Leadbeater bill prioritises death over palliative care, and Leadbeater arguing “this is not an either-or”.

Where does the evidence point?
2. The most comprehensive recent study is by the bioethicist Professor David Albert Jones.

Prof Jones found “clear indications in several jurisdictions of palliative and end-of-life care deteriorating in quality and provision following the introduction of AD / AS.” Image
Jun 17 • 13 tweets • 6 min read
1. Who are @dignityindying? And—as campaign groups are an accepted part of politics—why does this particular group matter so much?

Thread prompted by coming across this (Dr Sam Ahmedzai): “Invited by Kim Leadbeater…travel and one night accommodation covered by Dignity in Dying” Image 2. Originally DID was the Voluntary Euthanasia Society—co-founded by Killick Millard, who lobbied for the release of an SS camp doctor he saw as a fellow-traveller.

Then EXIT, featuring the even more sinister Mark Lyons:

But that’s all a long time ago!
Jun 15 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Explainer thread: Care costs and the Leadbeater Bill.

Care is very expensive: around £949 a week in a care home and £1,267 in a nursing home, says Age UK.

Councils can sometimes help—but that model faces an unprecedented crisis, with 500,000 people on assessment waiting lists. Image 2. This provides a significant incentive for assisted suicide.

The Orders of St John Care Trust—Britain’s second biggest not-for-profit care provider, with 61 care homes—has warned that people will request lethal drugs for financial reasons.
Jun 10 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
The Leadbeater bill is on a knife-edge; but if it passes, you can expect in 10-15 years to hear its backers saying, “Of course, in retrospect…” and “Hindsight is 20/20” and “Had we known then what we know now…”

Thread on what we know now, June 10 2025: 1. Important medical bodies—the Association for Palliative Medicine, British Geriatrics Society, Royal College of Psychiatrists and Royal College of Physicians—have said the bill fails to protect the vulnerable.
Jun 7 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
1. To be clear, the criticisms of the process are not about the number of hours allotted, but about the manipulative amateurishness of it all.

Things like announcing psychiatrists would staff the panels without consulting @rcpsych, who then come out against the bill… 2. …like selecting a witness list unbalanced 80-20 towards bill supporters:
Image
Jun 5 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
1. For this week’s @spectator I interviewed as many hospice staff as I could, and found an extraordinary strength of feeling about the Leadbeater bill.

Amy Proffitt, former president of the Association for Palliative Medicine, says: ‘It has the potential to destroy the sector.’ Image 2. I spoke to staff—pro-bill, anti, and somewhere in between—at 17 adult hospices across England and Wales, a tenth of the total.

Again and again I heard fears that, as one consultant at a Welsh hospice put it, ‘This could be the end of hospice care as we know it.’
Jun 3 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
1. Who is actually taking responsibility for the assisted suicide bill?

The public sometimes think of it as a Labour project. But the PM always stresses it’s a private member’s bill – eg here where he declines to give Kim Leadbeater a hint of comradeship:
2. So is it Leadbeater’s responsibility? Well, sort of. But then at times she makes basic errors about the text of the bill...
Jun 1 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Six things to know about the marketization of assisted suicide:

1. It is a real possibility if the bill becomes law.

Stephen Kinnock, the minister who would lead the implementation, says he is ‘comfortable’ with AS being outsourced. Image 2. There would be no limit on profits.

Kim Leadbeater thought of imposing such a cap—and according to the Times considered tabling an amendment to that effect.

For reasons which have never been explained, she decided not to. Image
May 20 • 20 tweets • 7 min read
1. Kim Leadbeater claims—without giving details—that criticism of the bill has not been “well-informed or accurate”.

Who are these ill-informed critics throwing around inaccuracies? An incomplete list: 2. The Royal College of Psychiatrists, the professional body for psychiatrists (who will be on the panels).

They say they have “repeatedly” raised multiple issues—the capacity test, the lack of help for depression, etc etc—which have not been addressed.
May 19 • 32 tweets • 11 min read
Today Libby Purves describes the bill as “being steered from the back like a clown car.”

Other descriptions include “amateur hour” (Matthew D’Ancona), “beyond a joke” (John Lamont), “never seen a bill less up to scratch” (Richard Garside), etc etc.

Is all this fair? A timeline: Image Oct 3: Kim Leadbeater announces the Bill, less than two months before the first Commons vote.

It takes 17 days to find a lawyer—Elizabeth Gardner—willing to draft it. By that stage key details, eg on the NHS and drugs, have to be left out.