A bill to legalise assisted suicide will be introduced in the House of Commons by a Labour MP on October 16th, just one month after the Labour health secretary—no less—warned that legalisation will lead to elderly people being urged to end their lives.
Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, whose government is reportedly willing to “fast-track” a vote on the issue, said he is “very pleased” it is coming to Parliament. He supported legalisation when a vote was last brought to the Commons nine years ago, and it looks likely that most MPs will do so this time around.
Labour ministers have been told that when the vote takes place, they—like all other MPs—will be able to vote “however they wish,” rather than along with the government line. But they “should not take part in the public debate,” according to the outgoing cabinet secretary Simon Case.
Thankfully, health secretary Wes Streeting has already expressed his concern that the shoddy state of palliative care in Britain means legalisation could see people being “coerced” into ending their lives. Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, a former paralympian and crossbench peer in the House of Lords, is also worried “about the impact on vulnerable people, on disabled people, coercive control, and the ability of doctors to make a six-month diagnosis.”
The decision on when the bill will be debated and voted on is in the hands of the government. The exact scope of the bill is also not yet clear, although a group of 54 MPs are pushing for it to include those who do not have a terminal illness.
Labour MP Dame Meg Hillier responded in a piece for The Sun on Sunday that while “in most countries, the law started with the premise of limiting assisted dying to those with terminal illness and a limited life expectancy …
But then the interpretation gets ever-wider—in Canada and Oregon, some with anorexia have had euthanasia.
Reports over the weekend suggested that the ever-more unpopular Labour PM was pushed by his “puppetmaster”—Labour donor Lord Alli—to pressure his party’s MPs into backing the new law. One Labour parliamentarian said that Starmer’s long-time open backing of assisted suicide—or assisted dying, as supporters and allegedly impartial media outlets prefer to label it—meant “some [MPs] will feel they therefore can’t vote against [it].”
Former Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg added that “Lord Alli’s backing for the dreadful idea of assisted dying explains why Sir Keir has been in such a rush to engineer a Commons vote and push this through. The PM’s overt backing also makes a mockery of the notion that this will be a free vote by MPs.”
