Assisted dying bill has ‘best and most robust safeguards in world’ for law like this, says Charlie Falconer
Charlie Falconer, the former Labour lord chancellor, is speaking now. He says the law is “completely broken”. The law says people can be jailed for 14 years for helping people to die, but the CPS will not prosecute people motivated by compassion.
He says Leadbeater has described the bill as having “the best and most robust safeguards in the world” for a law like this, and she is right.
Key events
Leadbeater says she expects number of people using assisted dying to be in ‘hundreds’ per year
The panel are now taking questions.
Q: How many people do you expect to use this law?
Leadbeater says most evidence from around the world suggests between 0.5% and 3% of deaths would be covered.
Initially the numbers would be in the hundreds, she says.
Falconer says different numbers apply in different countries. But the numbers would grow, he says.
Leadbeater refers to the figures quoted early showing that, in Western Australia, less than half of the people who registered did not use the right. (See 10.23am.) But having that permission gave them reassurance, she says.
Q: Would the court hearings be in public?
Hill says the bill shows that there would have to be a “substantive consideration”. That means the legal process would not just be a tick box exercise.
He says how the hearings operate is something that would be decided at a later point. But the bill does not say they have to take place in private, he says.
Former DPP Max Hill says parliament should pass new law because current situation leaves vulnerable ‘in pitiable situation’
Max Hill, the former director of public prosecutions, is speaking now. He says the law has not changed since the Suicide Act of 1961.
At present there is a “two-gear system”. People with money can go to Dignitas. But if a relative even just buys them a ticket, they are committing a criminal offence.
He says judges have not been able to change the law; there are limits on what they can do. And the CPS cannot properly address this either, he says, because it cannot say for certain that it won’t prosecute some cases.
Under the current system, all the scrutiny happens after someone has died.
He says it is time for parliament to look at this again, and pass a better law.
After a death does happen, a grieving relative is left in limbo for 15, 15, 18 months, not knowing if they will be prosecuted for booking that ticket to Dignitas, or leaving the pills by the bedside.
That shows the law at the moment “provides no safeguards … and leads the vulnerable in pitiable situation”.
Hill says the Leadbeater bill “has safeguards all over it”.
Sally Talbot, an Australian MP and a doctor, is speaking next. She says Western Australia has had an assisted dying law since July 2021.
She says she has been following the debate in the UK closely, and in many ways the debates are identical.
In Western Australia, as in the UK, there were convincing arguments that the system was broken and the law needed to change.
But in Western Australia, as here, there were also reservations. And people worried what might happen to palliative care.
She says in Australia the latest report on the law has just come out. It says that 1,851 in Western Australia have requested an assisted death since the law came in, and 738 have died by chosing an assisted death.
She says the law was decriminalised. “Remember, it happens now, but we have decriminalised it,” she says.
The law treats this as a rational decision to end suffering.
Western Australia was the second state in the country to legislate for this. All the others have legislated now, she says.
She says there are two points where the Australian legislation is similar to Leadbeater’s.
First, the law says you must have a terminal illness.
And, second, to be eligible, you must have an enduring capacity to consent at every stage of the process.
She says these two principles are the “bedroock safeguards”. They are in the Western Australian legislation, and in Leadbeater’s too.
She says when they were taking evidence in her state, they did her evidence of coercion. But it was coercion from relatives who were trying to persuade terminally ill people not to die because they wanted an extra week with them.
Leadbeater introduces the next speaker, Nat Dye, who has terminal cancer. She says she thinks his views are the most important for people to hear at this press conference.
He says he has known “positive” experiences of death. His fiance and his mother both had relatively peaceful deaths. He says palliative care can work for some people.
But he says he is “hoping for the best but preparing for the worst”. This bill would allow him to avoid the worst-case scenario of a bad death.
He is not afraid of dying, he says. He says his loved ones will have to live with the manner of his death for the rest of their lives.
He can imagine a situation where he might never get out of bed again. Talk about the end of the tunnel? The tunnel is blocked up, he says.
Even with the best palliative care, people can suffer painful deaths.
He says he sees this bill as being about allowing him to perform “one last act of kindness” to his family, and to himself too.
He says he cannot imagine anyone wanting to end their life because they think they are a burden. For him, choosing to end his life would be an act of kindness.
The Conservative MP Kit Malthouse is speaking now. Leadbeater introduces him as evidence that her campaign is cross-party. Malthouse says he has been in favour of assisted dying legislation for a long time. He says it is harrowing to hear from people whose relatives have wanted to end their lives in harrowing circumstances.
Assisted dying bill has ‘best and most robust safeguards in world’ for law like this, says Charlie Falconer
Charlie Falconer, the former Labour lord chancellor, is speaking now. He says the law is “completely broken”. The law says people can be jailed for 14 years for helping people to die, but the CPS will not prosecute people motivated by compassion.
He says Leadbeater has described the bill as having “the best and most robust safeguards in the world” for a law like this, and she is right.
Kim Leadbeater is speaking now. She says after she came top in the ballot for private member’s bill she suddenly became “the most popular person in the world”. Many groups wanted her to take up a bill.
She says she has consulted very widely on the bill, with the BMA, the archbishop of Canterbury, disability rights activists, medics and lawyers.
The current law is not fit for practice, she says. People who do want to end their lives have to travel abroad, and often do so prematurely.
She says, however good palliative care is, some people still face a harrowing death.
And, when you meet people who have had that experience in their families, you realise “the status quo cannot go on”, she says.
She urges reporters to speak to families in this situation.
Kim Leadbeater holds briefing on her assisted dying bill
The Kim Leadbeater briefing is taking place in an MP’s room in the Commons. There are about a dozen or more journalists here, and almost as many people due to speak. Half the journos have ended up sitting on the floor. We are just starting now.
The Conservative MP Danny Kruger has posted a lengthy thread on social media explaining why he is opposed to the assisted dying bill. Here are some of his posts.
The Bill tries and fails to restrict itself to the extreme cases. But anyone who can find two doctors to confirm they’re within 6 months of death – and a judge to confirm they’re making their own decision – can qualify.
(Actually it’s not even ‘doctors’ but ‘medical practitioners’, the definition of which will specified at a later date – so a nurse or pharmacist, I guess.)
You need to be registered with the first ‘practitioner’ for 12 months before they can give the green light. If the second one you pick doesn’t agree to sign your form, you can shop around for another one.
And if they don’t agree either, I think – it’s not clear – you can start the whole process again, and repeat till you get your wish.
So it’s death on demand, if a little slow and bureaucratic (for now – till the activists persuade Parliament to speed it up and simplify it on compassionate grounds).
And by the way you don’t have to do all this yourself. A ‘proxy’ – someone you’ve known for 2 years, or someone ‘of good standing in the community’ (the Neighbourhood Assisted Death Advisor, perhaps) – can do all the paperwork for you.
Stephen Flynn says he will stand for seat in Scottish parliament at next Holyrood elections
Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, has submitted an application to stand for the party at the next Scottish parliament election but, if elected, also plans to remain an MP, PA Media reports.
Writing in the Press and Journal newspaper, Flynn said he hopes to be joined by current and former colleagues at Westminster in aiming to become an MSP at the 2026 election. He said that, if elected, he plans to remain the MP for Aberdeen South until the next general election but would not take two salaries.
He wrote:
I’m chucking my bonnet in the ring. I will be seeking my party’s nomination to be their candidate for Aberdeen South and North Kincardine at the 2026 Scottish Parliament election.
Why? Well, it’s simple really. I don’t want to sit out the upcoming battles that our city, shire and country face in Holyrood …
In my mind, it is clear that we are at a crucial junction in our nation’s story.
As John Swinney rebuilds the SNP and refocuses his government, I feel that I can contribute towards the next chapter and help build the case for independence.
And, in doing so, I’ll aim to be as unashamed as always in putting Aberdeen and Scotland first.
Flynn has been tipped as a future SNP leader, but in practice to run for that post he would need to be sitting as an MSP, not an MP.
Kim Leadbeater’s terminally ill adults (end of life) bill would apply in England and Wales. Here is an article by Harriet Sherwood explaining what it would do.
In Scotland the Liberal Democrat MSP Liam McArthur has tabled a bill to allow assisted dying, but the Scottish government has said that the Scottish parliament cannot pass it because laws relating to lethal drugs are reserved to Westminster.
In Northern Ireland the DUP is strongly opposed to assisted dying, but Sinn Féin and the SDLP are sympathetic to changing the law to allow it.
UK unemployment rises as pay growth slows
The UK’s jobs market has shown further signs of cooling after a rise in unemployment in September while pay growth slowed, Richard Partington reports.
Starmer says Labour MPs must decide for themselves on assisted dying, refusing to say how he will vote
Good morning. Parliament passes important laws (as well as some rather tedious ones), but normally the process is predictable because the government is in charge and most of what it does foreshadowed in a manifesto. Once a minister says ‘X will become law’, usually it does.
But assisted dying is different because the Labour MP Kim Leadbeater is trying to change the bill through the private member’s bill process, MPs will have a free vote and no one really has much of a clue as to what will happen. The main uncertainty is whether or not MPs will vote to give the bill a second reading when it is debated, on Friday 29 November. But even if it passes at second reading, given the jeopardy inherent in the private member’s bill process, it could still be touch and go whether it becomes law.
Leadbeater published her bill last night, and she is holding a briefing about it this morning. Here is our overnight story by Jessica Elgot, Harriet Sherwood and Kiran Stacey.
Even though Labour MPs will have a free vote, the views of ministers, and the prime minister, will still be influential. Keir Starmer voted in favour of assisted dying when the Commons last debated a bill (in 2015 – it was defeated by 33o votes to 118) and, when asked about this issue before the election, he always implied that, provided the safeguards were adequate, he would vote in favour again.
When he was director of public prosecutions in 2010, with parliament refusing to change the law and the CPS under pressure to prosecute people who had clearly helped terminally ill relatives to die out of kindness, not malice, Starmer issued new guidance on what might have to happen for the CPS to decide prosecution was not in the public interest. This did not change the law, but it was a bold move by a DPP clearly frustrated at the way the law was operating.
Now the bill is out, and Starmer can exame the safeguards, which are not trivial. But he still has not said definitely that he will vote for the bill. Speaking to reporters travelling with him at the Cop29 summit, he said Labour MPs would have to make up their own minds. He said:
Look, it’s going to be a free vote and I mean that. It will be for every MP to decide for themselves how they want to vote.
I’m not going to be putting any pressure whatsoever on Labour MPs. They will make their own mind up, as I will be.
Obviously a lot will depend on the detail and we need to get the balance right but I’ve always argued there will need to be proper safeguards in place.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: Kim Leadbeater holds a press briefing about her assisted dying bill. Charlie Falconer, the former lord chancellor who has introduced similar legislation in the the Lords, and Sir Max Hill, the former director of public prosecutions and another supporter of the bill, are also attending.
11am (UK time): Keir Starmer is due to hold a press conference in Baku in Azerbaijan, where he is attending the Cop29 summit. Later he is due to give a speech confirming the government’s new target to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035.
After 12.30pm: MPs debate the remaining stages of the House of Lords (hereditary peers) bill.
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