Kim Leadbeater: ‘The assisted dying bill is rightly facing unprecedented scrutiny’

On Tuesday my private members’ bill to give terminally ill people choice at the end of their lives will start to come under detailed examination in a parliamentary committee.

This is a vitally important part of the process and, taken together with the unprecedented three days of witness evidence last week and hundreds of submissions of written evidence, will guarantee that the bill gets significantly more scrutiny than any bill of its kind.

This is what I promised when MPs first debated the bill back in November, supporting it by a majority of 55, and that’s what I’m delivering.

I hope we delve into detail with continued responsibility and mutual respect

That debate showed parliament at its best. It’s my profound hope that we will now delve into the  detail of the bill with the same level of responsibility and mutual respect that we witnessed on that occasion.

My bill is already the strongest in the world, creating new protections and safety measures for dying people, and strengthening end-of-life care as a whole.

READ MORE: ‘I’m an ex-hospice nurse with long-term conditions. I don’t want to die in pain’

The job of the committee – a cross-party group of 23 MPs with a variety of views on the bill in principle – is to stress-test every line, so that the draft law that comes before Parliament again later in the year is as safe, fair and practical as it can possibly be.

Many though not all amendments strengthen the bill

There’s a lot of work to do. Hundreds of amendments have been proposed. Many, though not all, designed to help strengthen the bill. Those in my name have been drawn up with the advice of literally dozens of experts in the Department of Health and Social Care and the Ministry of Justice.

The government remains neutral but ministers have made clear that they have a duty to ensure that if the bill does become law, it must be workable and able to deliver on what it is set out to do.

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I am very clear that the purpose of the bill is to correct a cruel injustice and failures in the existing law and spare that small minority of people for whom other options have failed the choice between a traumatic and painful death, going alone to Switzerland to die, or taking matters into their own hands.

The committee has been deeply moved by the evidence

Every single member of the committee was deeply moved by the testimony from people whose loved ones had been deprived of the good death they wanted for these very reasons.

Yes, we have to address the issues raised in the evidence we heard around protecting vulnerable people, the need for robust training for medics, and questions around mental capacity and coercion. I am confident we can do that. And we can learn from those places that have already introduced similar legislation.

READ MORE: ‘Why I and other Labour MPs are struggling with the arguments around assisted dying’

Those who gave evidence last week from Australia and the US said they had grappled with the very same concerns but had successfully navigated them so that many people who had previously opposed the idea had come to see that it was a positive addition to end of life care and choice.

That includes professionals in palliative care which is so important to me as it is to many MPs.

Debate on palliative care investment wouldn’t be happening without this bill

I may be wrong, but I don’t believe the current debate about the need to invest more in palliative care and bring it up to the highest standards would be happening in the way it is without this bill.

So I’m looking forward to the process of line-by-line scrutiny of the legislation which will start next week.  We must keep at the front of our minds the terminally ill people and bereaved relatives who are being failed so abysmally by the current system.

But asking tough questions will ensure we end up with a law that is safer and fairer than the legal quagmire they face now.

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