Rantzen accused of being ‘disrespectful’ after suggesting critics of assisted dying motivated by undeclared religious views
Hoyle called Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP who has introduced the bill, to open the debate.
Leadbeater started with some general points about the changes to the bill in committee, but Hoyle intervened and asked her to speak specifically about the amendments.
The Labour MPs Jess Asato intervened to ask Leadbeater if she would disassociate herself from what she said was Esther Rantzen’s “distasteful and disrespectful” about opponents of the bill being motivated by undeclared religious beliefs. (See 9.20am.)
Leadbeater claimed that she had not seen those comments. But she said that it was important that, whatever people’s views in this debate, “we must remain respectful”.
Key events
Most of the MPs speaking in the debate this morning have been opponents. But Liz Jarvis, the Lib Dem MP, who supports the bill, used her speech to speak in favour of amendment 4, which would allow people with a neurodegenerative illness to access assisted dying if they were judged to have 12 months left to live. As currently drafted, the bill only allows assisted dying where people are judged to have just six months left.
Jarvis said she was influenced by the experience of her mother, who died last March after a seven-year struggle with Alzheimer’s. She said extending the timeframe to 12 months would give people with a neurodegenerative illness “more control over their ultimate decision”.
She ended her speech saying:
As other members have said, the decision before us is fundamentally about whether we believe in an individual’s right to have choice at the end of their life. I know what my mum would have said.
MP hits back at Rantzen, saying it’s ‘insulting’ to dismisses valid concerns about bill as due to religious beliefs
In his speech Florence Eshalomi also hit back at Esther Rantzen over her letter (see 9.53am) in which she said critics of the bill were motivated by undeclared religious views. Eshalomi said:
As politicians, we have to be clear that members with valid concerns about this bill are not raising it because of some ideology or religious belief. It is because we recognise that if this bill passes, it may impact everyone, not just those who may choose to die.
It is not wrong or scaremongering to consider the wider family life, relationships, with feelings of burden or coercion, including vulnerable women and people from the BME community, at the end of their life.
It is not wrong or scaremongering for us as politicians, as we continue to receive correspondence from our constituents about the broken state about NHS and social care, for us to think carefully about a bill which may alter the very relationship between doctors and their patients.
And it is frankly insulting to disabled people, hard-working professionals up and down the country who have raised many valid concerns about this bill, to have it dismissed as “religious beliefs”.
I’ve sadly come to the conclusion that, instead of giving the universal right to dignity and death, it will reinforce the health inequalities that deprive so many from our vulnerable communities of that dignity in life.
Minority communities ‘scared’ about being more at risk of coercion under assisted dying bill, MPs told
One of the most powerful speeches in the debate so far was delivered by the Labour MP Florence Eshalomi, who is opposed to the bill. She said that she voted against the bill because she was worried about its “inadequate safeguards against the coercion of minority communities”.
She said that she hoped these concerns would be addressed by changes to the bill in committee, but she said she was “even more worried now” about the bill than she was last year.
She said she has tabled amendment 16, which would make it clear that care homes do not have to offer assisted dying. She said that Kim Leadbeater has tabled new clause 10 (NC10) saying people cannot be compelled to take part in assisted dying procedures (see 10.22am), but she said she she did not think this was comprehensive enough.
Explaining why she was worried about the impact of the bill on minority communities, she quoted from evidence given to the bill committee by Dr Jamelia Hussain, a palliative care consultant working predominantly with ethnic minority communities in Bradford. Hussain told the MPs:
I have gone into those communities, and I’ve spoken to them about this bill, what they say, overwhelmingly to me, is we are scared. We are really fearful that this is going to result in disproportionate impact on our community. We’ve seen this through Covid, and we are scared.
Heartbreakingly, she also said, “almost every week, one of the first things I have to reassure patients about is that I cannot legally do anything to shorten their lives. This is front and centre of the fear of those patients, and we see it all the time.
Edward Leigh (Con), father of the Commons (its longest-serving MP), used his speech in the debate to argue for care homes to be excluded from assisted dying.
Leigh quoted at length from the manager of a care home in his constituency who drafted a message for MPs on this subject. The care home manager said:
Imagine that pressure on those workers in that care home, the scenario is made worse by the prospect of an assisted death not resulting in a quick, nor painless death. There are examples from other jurisdictions of significant complications leading to painful deaths and deeply traumatic experiences for loved ones.
We ask this House of Commons to consider the unworkable nature of individual exclusion from the processes of assisted dying in social care environments.
Consequently, specific exclusion of the care home sector should be a feature of the bill. In any case, organisations and sites should and must be given the ability to exclude themselves from the act of assisted death.
Muslims are three times as likely to oppose the assisted dying bill as non-Muslims, according to new polling published this week by Hyphen, a Muslim media platform.
In her report on what Hyphen describes as the first comprehehensive study of Muslim views on assisted dying, Aisha Rimi says:
Some 43% of Muslims surveyed by Savanta in late February and early March said they were against the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill, compared with 15% of non-Muslims. About a fifth (19%) of Christians said they opposed the bill, along with 15% of followers of other religions and 8% of non-religious people.
About a third (34%) of Muslims said they backed the bill, compared with more than two-thirds (69%) of non-Muslims as a whole, including 64% of Christians. The rest did not know or did not hold a view in either direction.
Anneliese Dodds, the Labour former development minister, told MPs that she was worried about people feeling under pressure to end their lives via assisted dying. Dodds, who voted against the bill at second reading, said:
I have heard countless times the phrase that I do not want to be a burden. I’ve heard that time and again.
James Cleverly, the former Tory foreign secretary, intervened, asking Dodds what she thought about “the impact of intersectionality” on this. He said:
We know that a number of people don’t, in practical terms, have full control over their lives. [Diane Abbott] the mother of the house, made the point [see 11.25am] about people particularly from ethnic minorities, particularly women from ethnic minorities, who are often pushed around by their families, their wider society will be particularly at risk from the gentle advice or suggestions from authority figures that they will be overly deferential towards and in doing so lead them, I think, into a very dangerous position.
Dodds said she agreed.
I further believe that it is exactly those individuals who would be more likely to be subject to coercion from others. And I’m afraid that the evidence does indicate that, we can see that sadly when it comes to the experience of our courts from so-called mercy killings.
I do believe it’s instructive that in those cases we’ve had highly trained legal professionals who’ve often described the actions, particularly of former partners, as motivated by compassion. But then when the circumstances have been investigated in detail we’ve seen evidence of substantial amounts of coercion and abuse.
The Labour MP Meg Hillier, who voted against the bill at second reading, has tabled an amendment to the bill (new clause 1, or NC1) banning doctors from rasing assisted dying with a patient unless they asks about it first. She said she thought this was necessary because the bill as drafted “presents a serious risk that terminally-ill patients already highly vulnerable will feel pressured into ending their lives”.
Diane Abbott (Lab), another opponent of the bill, made an intervention to say she agreed. She asked
Does [Hillier] agree with me that there are far too many people who do not have confidence in the face of authority, and if a doctor raises assisted suicide with them, however tactfully or professionally, they will feel that they are being steered in that direction?
And Caroline Johnson (Con), another opponent of the bill, backed Hillier too, saying:
I’m very aware as a doctor myself of the trust that the public place in doctors, and the seriousness with which they take what we say. If a doctor tells somebody, or gives any information, about assisted dying, it is quite reasonable for that person to think that either the doctor is suggesting that they should take part in this process, or even they’re hinting their death is going to be a dreadful one and trying to be kind to them.
Assisted dying bill underwent ‘massive shift’ in committee, with more emphasis on choice, MP claims
The second speaker in the assisted dying bill debate was Rebecca Paul (Con), who voted against the bill at second reading and who has tabled NC10(a). (See 10.22am.) She sat on the committee that considered the bill and she said the changes to the bill since November amounted to a “massive shift”.
She explained:
The arguments put forward changed. There was less emphasis on pain and more on choice and autonomy. The word autonomy came up again and again in the bill committee, and autonomy is important, of course, but up to a point.
We have moved from a proposal to provide a humane end to someone’s pain when it can’t be relieved in the last months of their life to providing an assisted death service to those who choose it for any reason even if the pain can be alleviated by palliative care. But this approach comes with a cost to others – family, clinicians and broader society.
This really is momentous. There is no going back from such a massive shift. A move to autonomy trumping everything else changes everything.
In an intervention, John Hayes (Con) said he agreed:
Other jurisdictions who have passed laws like this, up to a third of people report that they’ve taken this step because they feel they’re a burden on others. That’s the truth of it. It’s not always about pain and that’s the kind of autonomy which leads to disaster.
Paul said she “strongly” backed the Naz Shah amendment on anorexia (see 10.59am) saying “it addresses a big risk”.
She also said she had tabled two other amendments (new clause 17, NC17, and new clause 18, NC18), saying care homes should not have to offer assisted dying, and that they should not lose public money as a result of not offering assisted dying.
Turning away from assisted dying for a moment, Keir Starmer has said the UK-EU summit on Monday will be “an important moment” for the country.
Speaking to reporters as he arrived for the European Political Community summit in Albania, he said:
In the last two weeks you’ve seen the UK do a trade deal with India, really important for our country and our national interest, a trade deal with the US, again really important for our country and our national interest.
I’m positive going into Monday and I think that this is an important moment for our country that will be measured in the benefits to working people and their living standards.
