Georgia L Gilholy: The assisted suicide Bill doesn’t deserve special treatment

Georgia L Gilholy is a journalist.

Labour claims the Government has no stance on this sloppy legislation, so why is it offering it special treatment?

In Lord Falconer of Thoroton’s introductory speech at the assisted suicide Bill’s Second Reading in the House of Lords last September, he suggested that he wanted the Bill to spend only four days in Committee Stage, seemingly implying this would be sufficient time for the Bill to be scrutinised.

But the purpose of a Committee Stage in the House of Lords is to scrutinise a Bill line by line, testing every clause and whether it should be included in the Bill, as well as tabling amendments to draw out the policy intent behind provisions and test arguments which may be returned to at Report for decision. Importantly, unlike the House of Commons, in the House of Lords, there is no set time limit for this. Lords’ business managers may set out an informal allocation of time, but there is no hard deadline, and timetables can be flexible.

Theoretically, peers can and should be free to debate and consider all amendments deemed necessary to fulfil their duty to scrutinise legislation effectively. Unlike Government legislation, which, with the appropriate motion laid, can carry over to the next session, once this parliamentary session ends in the late spring, Private Members’ Bills (PMBs), which have not completed all stages of their consideration and received Royal Assent, will fall.

Is this why Lord Falconer sought such a compressed Committee Stage?

Four days is a highly ambitious target for a Bill of such substantial moral, ethical, and societal importance, without even accounting for its length and complexity (56 pages, 59 Clauses, and 3 Schedules). However, the situation has shifted, with the Government announcing in November seven additional sitting Fridays for the Bill, on top of the three already scheduled, effectively devoting almost every Friday in the first quarter of this year to the assisted suicide Bill. For a PMB, this is unprecedented and, notwithstanding the efforts of the Chief Whip in the Lords to appear fair to all sides, raises real concerns about the Government’s purported neutrality.

Charitably, one could say that the Government has found itself caught between a rock and a hard place, with a PMB passed by the Commons with the clear implicit support of the Prime Minister butting against the standard protocol and procedures in the Lords, which lend themselves to interrogation, not expeditious passage of contentious (or, indeed, any) law. However, while ministers insist the Government remains neutral on assisted suicide, its actions risk undermining that claim. Peers, who already work long hours and often travel significant distances to attend sittings, must now meet most Fridays ahead of Easter, even cutting into recess days. This places strain on the Lords’ staff and members alike, and it gives the impression that pressure has been applied from the top to accelerate this sloppy legislation’s progress.

Other PMBs,  some with cross-party support, will inevitably lose time as a result, receiving far less opportunity for scrutiny. They will simply fall off the schedule as this one piece of legislation is given preferential treatment.

Of course, it is certainly arguable that this is the Bill that most demands scrutiny, because of its dangerous gaps and skeletal framework. The scale of time now being offered might suggest that the Bill’s backers recognise how much work it requires. Yet this generosity comes after months of efforts to limit debate and accelerate its passage. In the Commons, sponsor Kim Leadbeater rejected warnings about the Bill’s weaknesses and dismissed hundreds of proposed amendments to strengthen its safeguards. Parliament is under no duty to provide extra time to address errors that should have been fixed earlier. Given the degree of control Ms Leadbeater had over the Commons process, the Bill which entered the Lords is undeniably the Bill which she wanted. Its failings are hers to own, as will be the defeat should the Bill fall.

Perhaps Lord Falconer was engaging in self-preservation in his opposition to the establishment of the select committee. Having now concluded and reported back to the House, expert witnesses, including disability rights advocates, clinicians, lawyers, human rights experts and a former Chief Coroner, exposed the depth and breadth of the Bill’s problems. Proponents have often brushed aside these warnings, even suggesting that safeguards create a “bureaucratic thicket”. That phrase should give anyone pause. When lives are at stake, the law cannot be too safe.

On the first day of the Bill’s Second Reading in the House of Lords, seven in ten peers who spoke expressed opposition, many highlighting the Bill’s lack of safeguards and structural weaknesses. The concerns mirrored the stark warnings of the House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which found “insufficient detail or principle evident for proper Parliamentary scrutiny of the underlying policy”. The Committee described the approach taken by the Bill (of granting astonishingly broad ministerial discretion to interpret and implement the proposed law) as “sweeping, unspecified and unjustified”, a signal that a robust policy development process was notable by its absence, or perhaps that something went badly wrong with the drafting. I am not sure which is worse: the failure to prepare adequately or an unfit bill being passed by design. These concerns were reinforced by the Constitution Committee’s report, which echoed the same criticisms. The Bill needs careful and thorough examination.

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill may have prompted a welcome national conversation about how we approach death and dying.

However, it is a terrible indictment of our political and societal blindness that it should take a proposal to bring about expedited death through the use of lethal drugs to draw our minds to the thousands who die each year without access to adequate and effective care as they are dying. Where is their dignity? The Bill advocates a bleak, utilitarian vision for the future, where “if you want it, you should have it” is the highest virtue. Lord Falconer’s assertion that poverty should be no barrier to assisted suicide is telling in this regard. But if autonomy is the pre-eminent consideration, where is its logical endpoint? The hazy lines drawn in the Bill can surely only ever be arbitrary. The challenge of engaging with what it means to die well requires more attention. This Bill closes off that conversation by defining “choice” in terms that depend on the state facilitating death.

So pig-eared has this Bill’s process been that parliamentarians who were not intrinsically set against the principle of assisted suicide have become some of this Bill’s fiercest critics. Whatever one’s view on the principle, this Bill clearly requires careful, unhurried scrutiny. Lord Falconer – if he has confidence in the strength of his case – should welcome that process. Peers should be given the time they need to examine every clause, understand the implications, and, if necessary, reject provisions that put vulnerable people at risk. Britain’s tradition of detailed, good-faith scrutiny must not be replaced by a process driven by deadlines and headlines.

Not a month of Sundays, nor any number of Fridays, can make a bad bill good.