Members of Parliament who backed the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life)—or, more frankly, euthanaisa—Bill in November on the condition that it would face serious and open scrutiny during the committee stage will be disappointed to find that the committee is, in fact, both weighted in favour of legalisation and is conducting some of its business behind closed doors.
Analysis suggests the body should—in order to be fair—be made up of 13 advocates of the bill and 10 critics. Instead, the split is 14-9 in favour of legalisation, which isn’t the best start. Though it gets much worse.
Of the lawyers invited to speak to the committee, six are active supporters of assisted suicide and at least two of the others, if not all three, appear neutral on the issue.
Of the eight witnesses from countries where assisted suicide has already been legalised, all support a change to the law.
There is, as journalist Dan Hitchens put it, “a surprisingly large number of vocal advocates for assisted suicide [on the witness list], and a noticeably small number of opponents—or even neutral figures who might raise difficult points.”
Dr. Gordon Macdonald, who is chief executive of the Care Not Killing campaign group, told europeanconservative.com that “the current witness list, could in no way be described as ‘extremely balanced’ and any reasonable person would be deeply troubled by the one-sided nature of those being called.” He noted
To cap this all off, when MPs tried to amend the [witness] list to bring in experts from groups like the Royal College of Psychiatrists to talk about the risk of ‘coercion’ and how to assess ‘capacity,’ pro-assisted suicide [Tory MP] Kit Malthouse railed against this change and was instrumental in getting it blocked.
What’s more, Labour’s Kim Leadbeater—who introduced the bill after being “encouraged” to do so by prime minister Keir Starmer—yesterday called for the debate on which witnesses to call to be held in private, away from the public eye. This was apparently to protect the privacy of the witnesses, though doubts have been raised about this excuse.
