Terminally ill say four-year timeframe for assisted dying service is too long
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is entering the final stages of committee scrutiny.
Campaigners have criticised a move to double the length of time before an assisted dying service would have to be up and running if a new law is agreed in England and Wales.
The proposed change, put forward by the MP behind the Bill, has been branded a “retrograde step” and “outrageous” by two terminally ill supporters of legalising assisted dying.
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is entering the final stages of committee scrutiny, before it is expected to return to the House of Commons for another vote by all MPs, possibly next month.
As it stands, the legislation has an implementation period of two years after it is passed into law for all parts to come into force.
Labour MP Kim Leadbeater has now put forward an amendment, expected to be debated next week, proposing to extend that to four years.
Pro-change group My Death, My Decision said that is an “unreasonable” amount of time.
Mother-of-two Clare Turner, who has stage four cancer, said the proposed change is “outrageous for terminally ill people like me”.
She added: “Every delay means more suffering, more people forced to endure unbearable pain against their will.”
She said she and others “deserve dignity, not delays”.
In quotes released through the campaign group, fellow terminally ill cancer patient Tim Wardle said the proposed extension “would be a retrograde step, contrary to the core intent and messages of the Bill – care and choice”.
He said terminally ill people have “waited far too long for this legislation” already and that “even a slight delay beyond the two years currently proposed is not fair or reasonable”.
Giving evidence to the committee earlier this year, England’s chief medical officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty said he thought two years “seems a reasonable starting point” but that he does not believe there should be a “firm deadline”, with the focus instead on providing a “safe, fair and secure service”.
Meanwhile, opponents of the Bill have claimed legislation is being rushed through and has not been exposed to proper scrutiny.
A group of experts, led by disability studies scholar
Dr Miro Griffiths from the University of Leeds, have written to MPs urging them to vote against a Bill they said is “beset by issues”.
The group highlighted the change earlier this month, which saw MPs on the committee vote to scrap the previously hailed requirement for a High Court judge to approve all assisted dying applications.
They said the Bill is “an altogether different and less robust piece of legislation as a consequence of its being removed”.
Ms Leadbeater’s proposals to instead establish a voluntary assisted dying commissioner – a judge or former judge – and expert panels featuring a senior legal figure, a psychiatrist and a social worker who would decide on assisted dying applications, are expected to be voted on next week.
In their letter to MPs, Dr Griffiths and other specialists in disability, law and medicine, wrote: “In our view, Kim Leadbeater’s Bill is beset by issues that would translate into serious public harm, should it be passed into law. We would urge you to reflect on the issues above and vote down the Bill at Third Reading.”
Ms Leadbeater has insisted the amendments she has put forward will give her Bill “additional patient-centred safeguards” by providing a “range of expertise” via the three-member panel, which she said “is a strength, not a weakness”.
She said she had “listened carefully” to expert evidence in January on concerns around the pressure on judicial resources if each case was to automatically go before the High Court, and on calls to involve psychiatrists and social workers in assessing mental capacity and detecting coercion.
