The assisted-dying bill should never have been revived

Among the first items of parliamentary business for new UK prime minister Andy Burnham is yet another attempt to introduce assisted suicide into British law.

Labour MP Lauren Edwards reintroduced the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill in July, just before parliament’s summer recess. In doing so, she took up the baton from Kim Leadbeater, who failed to pass her bill during the previous parliamentary session. Edwards’s bill will have its second reading in the House of Commons on Friday 11 September.

Leadbeater’s original assisted-dying bill contained so many flaws and loopholes that the House of Lords simply ran out of time to amend it into a functional piece of law. Yet the bill introduced by Lauren Edwards is to all intents and purposes identical to Leadbeater’s. That’s no accident: Edwards must present the same bill if she wants the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949 to come into effect. These acts allow for the same legislation, if passed in the House of Commons in consecutive parliamentary sessions, to automatically become law regardless of what the Lords think.

The decision to use the Parliament Acts is revealing. Supporters of assisted dying could have brought back a radically reworked version of Leadbeater’s bill that addresses the criticisms raised by doctors, psychiatrists, disability campaigners and legal experts over the past year. But instead, they have brought back exactly the same bill. The goal seems simply to get the legislation over the line, whatever state it’s in or however widely experts may critique it. This should concern everyone, whether they support the principle of assisted suicide or oppose it.

Over the past year or so, in both houses of parliament, the assisted-dying bill has received one of the most exhaustive examinations ever faced by a private members’ bill – that is, a bill introduced by MPs and members of the Lords who are not government ministers. Royal Colleges, professional bodies, domestic-abuse charities, disability organisations, mental-health experts and the Equality and Human Rights Commission all identified significant flaws in the bill. Many of those organisations and experts were not ideologically opposed to assisted dying. Several supported assisted suicide in principle or were neutral on the issue. They were concerned above all with whether this particular legislation is safe, and whether it can protect vulnerable people.

Even Lord Falconer, one of Britain’s longest-serving advocates for assisted suicide and sponsor of Leadbeater’s bill in the Lords, has acknowledged that important changes are needed. He questioned the safeguards for younger adults, the treatment of patients with suicidal thoughts, the risks of remote consultations and the absence of proper recording requirements.

Using the Parliament Acts to push the legislation through is not simply about avoiding the Lords. It also means that MPs will be unable to amend the bill in the House of Commons. This is a wholly inappropriate way to legislate on a question of life and death.

Private members’ bills have never before been forced through parliament using the Parliament Acts. Nor has this bill earned anything approaching an overwhelming democratic mandate. It was absent from Labour’s election manifesto, and passed the Commons only narrowly, with fewer than half of all MPs voting in favour at the third reading. Now, after months of criticism, it has returned unchanged.

Andy Burnham’s recent intervention makes the problem even sharper for supporters of the bill. The PM has now said the debate on assisted dying should not happen while palliative and social care remain poorly funded, confirming, ‘that’s the position I will stick to’.

This is a major setback for the assisted-dying lobby, which had relied heavily on the backing of then PM Keir Starmer. Burnham has correctly made clear that the question of assisted suicide cannot be separated from the state of palliative and social care, and that the funding and reform of the latter must come first. At the very least, that puts him at odds with the strategy of forcing the bill back through parliament and hoping to avoid scrutiny.

Those MPs backing this zombie bill need to think again. Making it acceptable to bypass parliamentary scrutiny because it is convenient to do so sets a very dark precedent indeed.