Draft assisted dying laws are to be published this week as the MP behind the bill said it will offer the “strictest protections” against coercion anywhere in the world.
The wording of the legislation, introduced by Labour’s Kim Leadbeater and thought to run more than 40 pages, is due to be published on Tuesday and is set for its first debate in the House of Commons on 29 November.
The MP for Spen Valley in West Yorkshire, who tabled the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, also said if MPs pass a new law it “must be a good law”.
Writing in The House magazine, she said her bill “offers hope to those terminally ill people with a clear, informed and settled wish to have a better death”.
Leadbeater said that it will also protect “all those approaching the end of their life from coercion or pressure to make a decision that isn’t right for them”.
She added: “My bill will contain the strictest protections and safeguards of any legislation anywhere in the world”.
Leadbeater said she has consulted with medical professionals, lawyers, faith leaders, disability rights campaigners, palliative care professionals and “families who have first-hand experience of the terrible pain and trauma that results from the current law and terminally ill people who know what awaits them and simply want the right to choose to die on their own terms”.
She said the existing policy leads to “desperate people travelling abroad, if they can afford it, or taking things into their own hands, often long before they need to and alone, because they are scared to put those close to them at risk of prosecution”.
It emerged last month that health secretary Wes Streeting will vote against the bill – he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain about his concerns about coercion, and that he is worried “about those people who think they’ve almost got a duty to die to relieve the burden on their loved ones”.
Here is what we know about the bill so far, as well as public sentiment on the issue.
What we know about the bill
Assisting someone to end their life is against the law in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and while it is not a specific criminal offence in Scotland, assisting the death of someone can leave a person open to being charged with murder or other offences. Leadbeater’s bill would cover England and Wales only.
Although the bill has now been formally introduced to the House of Commons, a full draft of the proposed legislation is not expected to be made available until closer to a debate on the issue scheduled for Friday, November 29.
However, its official title, the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, suggests a targeted approach in who it could apply to.
Leadbeater, the MP for Spen Valley, said: “The current law is not fit for purpose. We’ve got a duty as legislators to make robust laws that are fit for society, and at the moment this situation just isn’t.”
Opponents to assisted dying, such as campaign group Care Not Killing, say the government should instead “focus on fixing our broken palliative care system”.
Some have also argued people could feel pressured to have an assisted death against their will.
An assisted dying bill was defeated in the Commons in 2015 and a separate one was blocked in the Lords in 2021.
Esther Rantzen: ‘The right to shorten our deaths’
Dame Esther Rantzen, 84, a high profile supporter of legalising assisted dying, who is terminally ill, urged people to write to their MPs to ask for “the right to choose, not to shorten our lives, but to shorten our deaths”.
The Childline founder, who has stage four lung cancer and has joined Swiss organisation Dignitas, said that assisted dying can be “carefully legalised”.
She said: “Please write to your MP and explain your reasons why this time they should vote for change and assisted dying should be carefully legalised.
“Tell them your story. I am writing to mine. Explain this is a life and death issue and all we are asking is the right to choose, not to shorten our lives, but to shorten our deaths.
“Your words may just make the difference. If so, thanks to you we may all, for the first time, be able to look forward with hope and confidence to a good death.
“No matter how good palliative care is, it cannot always guarantee a good, pain free death.”
What did the Archbishop of Canterbury say?
The archbishop told the BBC on 16 October he was worried some people who were nor terminally ill would choose to end their lives.
“I think this approach is both dangerous and sets us in a direction which is even more dangerous, and in every other place where it’s been done, has led to a slippery slope,” he told the broadcaster.
“For 30 years as a priest I’ve sat with people at their bedside. And people have said, ‘I want my mum, I want my daughter, I want my brother to go because this is so horrible. Introducing this legislation opens the way to it broadening out such that people who are not in that situation [terminally ill] asking for this, or feeling pressured to ask for it,” he said.
“There will be people who look at that and say the church is totally out of touch, that they totally disagree with us, and say they are going nowhere near a church, but we don’t do things on the basis of opinion polls,” said Welby.
Leadbeater rejected this argument, telling ITV’s Good Morning Britain the same day she would not have such concerns so long as “we get this legislation right”, adding: “We’ve got the benefit in this country of looking at what other countries have done.
“And I’m very clear, based on what I’ve seen so far and the research that I’ve done is, if we get this right from the start, which some places have done, places like Oregon and certain states in Australia, we have very strict criteria, then those jurisdictions do not broaden out the criteria.
“So we have to get it right from the start with very clear criteria, safeguards and protections.”
What does the public think?
Almost two-thirds of people in England and Wales want assisted dying to be legalised for terminally ill adults, polling has suggested.
The study, by the Policy Institute and the Complex Life and Death Decisions group at King’s College London, found 63% of 2,063 adults polled want assisted dying to be legalised in the next five years. A fifth (20%) are against it, while 17% said they do not take a side or have an opinion on the issue.
The majority (85%) of those who support a law change said people having a less painful or distressing death is a very important reason for their view, while a similar proportion (83%) said giving people more dignity at the end of their life is very important.
But researchers said the polling showed the “moral complexities” people feel when it comes to this controversial issue, with concerns around risks remaining among those who are broadly supportive of legalisation. Of all respondents, 61% said they would be concerned about some people being pressured to have an assisted death if the law was changed.
What happens next?
The bill was formally put to the House of Commons by Leadbeater on Wednesday, 16 October, with a first debate for MPs scheduled for Friday, 29 November.
If it is voted through, it will then go to committee stage, where MPs can table amendments, before it faces further scrutiny and votes in both the Commons and the House of Lords.
However it is possible that MPs could vote against it in November, as they did last time changes to the law were considered in 2015, preventing it going any further.
Where is assisted dying legal?
Dignity in Dying, which is in favour of assisted dying, says 400 million people around the world have legal access to it in some form. It defines assisted dying as “allowing a dying person the choice to control their death if they decide their suffering is unbearable”.
Countries where it is legal include Switzerland, 11 states in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Earlier this year, Tracy Hickman, a British woman with terminal cancer who lived in New Zealand and later had an assisted death, told UK politicians: “Look at what New Zealand has done, and do it even better. There is a lot of focus on the right to life, but people should have the right to a peaceful, gentle death.”