Just one disabled MP sitting on the Assisted Dying Bill committee shows what a sham it is

Membership of the committee set to scrutinise Kim Leadbeater’s bill to legalise assisted dying shows already that the process will likely be little more than a fig leaf for forcing the legislation through parliament. On Wednesday 11 December, Leadbeater made the announcement on the 23-member committee. Yet notably, she has stacked it with MPs who voted in favour of the bill at its second reading.

What’s more, there’s just one disabled MP sitting on the committee – who also voted for the bill. Far from the thorough scrutiny stage Leadbeater and proponents of the bill promised, it’s evident this will be another stitch-up. That is, Leadbeater looks to be gearing up to ram it through without genuine engagement with the legislation’s litany of issues.

Assisted dying bill committee: stacked with supporters

Including herself, Leadbeater has appointed 14 supporters of the bill to the committee responsible for scrutinising her Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life Bill).

These include health minister Stephen Kinnock and justice minister Sarah Sackman. Six other Labour MPs who supported the bill will join them. There’ll also be two Conservative MPs, two Liberal Democrats, and one Plaid Cymru MP that backed it as well.

The remaining nine – six Labour, two Conservative, and one Liberal Democrat – opposed the bill at second reading.

Immediately, it’s clear the weighting of the committee is heavily pro-assisted dying from the get-go. Hansard Society researcher Matthew England astutely highlighted what this would mean in practice:

Slight overrepresentation of Aye-voting MPs.

Importantly, three Aye voters would need to support an amendment brought forward by opponents of the Bill for it to succeed (assuming that all No voters support as well).

— Matthew England (@mattengland3011) December 11, 2024

In short, to pass amendments – presuming that all those who voted against the bill support them – at least three members who voted for the bill will need to support them.

And here’s the thing. The Canary has found that the majority of those who voted for the bill have expressed the view that the bill is sufficiently safe as it currently stands. It calls into question whether a committee packed with MPs predisposed to support the present bill will genuinely engage in an amendment process for it.

What have committee members said?

Alarmingly, the committee includes four co-sponsors of the bill, alongside Leadbeater. These are Labour’s Jake Richards and Rachel Hopkins, Tory MP Kit Malthouse, and Liberal Democrat Sarah Green.

Besides them, here’s a quick rundown of what the other supporters of the bill have said about its so-called safeguards.

The following MPs have expressed support for the bills safeguards as they are:

• Justice minister Sarah Sackman told constituents that Leadbeater’s bill has the “most robust safeguards in any assisted dying legislation for the terminally ill anywhere in the world”.
• Health minister Stephen Kinnock described the bill as “the most thorough proposal Parliament has ever considered on assisted dying”.
• Dr Simon Opher was among a group of cross-party MPs with medical background who penned a letter that said they “support the criteria” of Leadbeater’s bill. He also spoke in the debate suggesting that doctors can spot coercion.
• Lewis Atkinson – writing for the Sunderland Echo, he said that the bill has “strong protections”
• Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst – also among the group of cross-party medical MPs who penned the pro-assisted dying bill letter. For Politics.co.uk, he expressed his view that the bill “introduces a series of practical, robust measures to ensure the protection of the vulnerable”.
• Tom Gordon called Leadbeater’s bill “the most tightly-regulated assisted dying frameworks in the world”. He said he believed it included “proper safeguarding measures”.

MPs who have indicated they could change their mind on the bill:

• Marie Tidball has suggested she may change her mind depending on the outcome at the committee stage. She is urging for stronger safeguards.
• Liz Saville-Roberts has said that: “if bill committee scrutiny cannot make this bill robust” that she would “reconsider” her “support at future votes”.

The Canary was unable to find statements from Labour MP Bambos Charalambous. Charalambous was a teller for the ayes during the second reading. Largely though, it demonstrates that those seeking to strengthen the bill at committee will likely face an uphill battle.

Watering down the bare minimum ‘safeguards’ that exist

On top of this, some MPs on the committee have already suggested they would in fact support watering down some of the safeguards. For instance, writing for LabourList co-sponsor Jake Richards mulled the idea that courts needn’t automatically be involved.

Similarly, Dr Simon Opher has made his thoughts known on the possibility of dropping judicial safeguards. During the second reading debate he said that the “judiciary review did not add much to the process” in Australia. In other words, he’s likely to support weakening the judicial safeguards, or dropping them altogether.

There are other glaring biases in the make-up of the committee as well. Not least among these is the fact that as the Independent underscored:

the three medically qualified MPs on the committee are all supportive of assisted dying.

Labour’s Dr Simon Opher has even suggested that assisted suicide should be one of the “tools in palliative care”.

This is despite the fact that palliative care professionals are overwhelmingly against assisted dying as part of mainstream healthcare.

In 2023, Labour MP and former shadow minister Bambos Charalambous was suspended from the Labour Party for sexual assault allegations. After the investigation concluded, Labour unsuspended him in April, and he stood for the party in July’s election. He’s now a member on the committee – and voted in favour of the bill.

Disabled MPs excluded

If all this weren’t controversial enough, the Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey pointed out the most problematic part of Leadbeater’s appointments. This is the fact that there’s just one disabled MP on the committee:

Assisted dying committee feels incredibly stacked. Also the only disabled person on it being for the bill feels massively on purpose to drown out overwhelming opposition from disabled people https://t.co/V9LNbXjV9G

— Rachel Charlton-Dailey (@RachelCDailey) December 11, 2024

This is Marie Tidball, elected in July amidst the new crop of Labour MPs. She was one of two MPs that identify as disabled who voted in favour of the bill at second reading. By contrast, six MPs who identify as disabled voted against the bill.

In other words, Leadbeater has appointed no disabled MPs who opposed the bill to the committee – despite being the majority position of disabled parliamentarians. So, it means the committee has no disabled representation for disabled people who’ve overwhelmingly come out against the bill. Specifically, of 350 Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations (DDPOs), not a single one backed Leadbeater’s bill.

The Canary shouldn’t have to explain why excluding disabled MPs against assisted dying is enormously problematic. Since Leadbeater seems to have missed the memo, we’ll spell it out.

Crucially, it’s chronically ill and disabled people that the bill poses the biggest risks to. Most significantly then, Leadbeater’s selection means that disabled voices in parliament won’t have a seat at the table on decisions that could genuinely threaten the very lives of the disabled community.

A dangerous bill that can’t be ‘fixed’ anyway

Of course, the committee stage was never going to be able to fix the glaring problems with the bill anyway. This was a forgone conclusion because nothing the bill can offer will address the appalling inequity of palliative care. Quite the opposite – legalising assisted suicide will likely instigate a race to the bottom for more expensive palliative medicine – as it has done in many places that have introduced it.

Moreover, the bill doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There’s nothing the committee can amend through the bill that can dismantle systemic ableism rife in every facet of public life. Ironically – or perhaps not – Leadbeater’s exclusion of disabled MPs is testament to this as well.

Both mean that one of the biggest risks – coercion – the committee simply can’t solve.

Ultimately, the ‘safeguards’ as they stand are woefully inadequate. Dan Hitchens in the Telegraph accused Leadbeater of misleading parliament on multiple occasions during the debate. He wrote:

Take her three misstatements on the court process. First, Leadbeater implied she had the approval of the serving judiciary when she didn’t. Second, she claimed the bill’s safeguards included a “High Court judge” when, as she had admitted six days previously, they don’t. Third, she claimed that the court’s decision could be “revoked” if other evidence came to light subsequently. As the former president of the Family Division of the High Court, Sir James Munby, commented: “there is scant if any support in the Bill for this proposition.”

All this helped Leadbeater give an impression of a serious, ironclad process as trustworthy as the court system itself. That impression was false.

So, it was foolish for any MP to believe that the committee would be able to bring them up to scratch. At best, committee members can tinker around at the edges of so-called safeguards – but they can’t fix them.

Assisted dying: where next?

Of course, disabled people have been saying this all along. Now, Leadbeater’s highly partisan selection should make one thing abundantly clear. That is, this bill was never an equal fight and was never intended to be. From the start, assisted suicide advocates have sought to sideline disabled voices. So, it’s no surprise they’re excluding them now – right when they should be heard most of all.

Featured image via the Canary