Labour is telling lies about assisted suicide neutrality, leaked policy document reveals
SIMON CALDWELL
PEERS return to the House of Lords tomorrow to debate amendments to the assisted suicide bill fresh in the knowledge that the controversial legislation didn’t emerge from the backbenches but had been planned by the government all along.
A policy document leaked to the Guardian revealed that Kim Leadbeater’s Private Member’s Bill was planned centrally while Labour was in opposition.
The option was considered as less risky to the party, but could nonetheless be ‘heavily influenced’ by the support of the government, which has always claimed to be neutral on assisted suicide.
The report reveals that a bill ‘strikingly similar’ to Ms Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was prepared by Labour policymakers ahead of the general election in July last year.
A Labour source who opposes the bill said the leak exposed ‘a shadow policymaking process, outside of the Labour manifesto, and with no consultation with MPs, unions or members, that sought to evade scrutiny on an issue of huge importance’.
The source said: ‘At a time when the Lords are being told democracy requires them to nod this bill through, it is now clear that the process in the Commons bypassed the usual processes for developing laws of this magnitude and that everyone has been misled about the nature and origin of the bill.
‘It’s bitterly disappointing that No 10 have sought to use the machinery of government and other parties as cover on an issue that needs more scrutiny, not less.’
Opponents of the bill are demanding that it is withdrawn now that there is clear evidence of a Downing Street stitch-up.
Alisdair Hungerford-Morgan of Right to Life UK said: ‘If these reports are true, the government has misled MPs, peers and the public about the bill.
‘The bill must be withdrawn immediately as it constitutes an abuse of parliamentary process for the government to use a Private Members’ Bill to push through its own agenda, while claiming neutrality.
‘Voters were not told that voting Labour would mean voting for a government-backed assisted suicide law.’
He added: ‘Only last week, the government took the highly irregular step of adding seven additional sitting Fridays for the bill after Christmas, including when the House of Lords was due to be in recess, to try to rush it through, further casting doubts on its impartiality.
‘How many other genuine Private Members’ Bills have been denied time because the government has seemingly clogged up the process with an assisted suicide bill mired in controversy and widely deemed unfit for purpose?’
The document, drafted in November 2023, makes 11 references to the pro-assisted suicide campaign group Dignity in Dying, and predicted ‘strong, impactful campaigns in favour of assisted dying during the general election campaign’.
It recommended that the Labour party needed to set out its position.
Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, made his own position clear two month later when he promised Esther Rantzen that he would give time for an assisted suicide Bill. He has consistently voted in favour of assisted suicide.
The leaked document reportedly said it was ‘necessary to reach a position on how we approach legalisation of assisted dying’, and made reference to polls which suggest public sympathy for a change in the law.
The document uses the ‘warmest’ language, according to the Guardian, about the possibility of using a Private Member’s Bill to legalise assisted suicide by ‘allowing all members of the house a free, conscience vote on a cross-party matter’.
It said: ‘We know there are existing Conservative MPs who are supporters of this policy. We also know we can control the parameters of legislation carefully through working with advocacy groups and government civil servants to draft the legislation and provide conditions for parliamentary time,’ the document reportedly says.
A spokesperson for Ms Leadbeater told the Guardian that the government had ‘remained scrupulously neutral throughout the passage of the bill through the House of Commons and now into the Lords’.
He added: ‘Government officials, lawyers and parliamentary draftsmen have given extensive expert advice to ensure the bill is workable and effective, but all the policy decisions have been for Kim and Lord Falconer alone. The allegation that this is government legislation by the backdoor is simply false.’
A Labour spokesperson said: ‘It’s completely normal for a wide range of policy proposals to be assessed by political parties in opposition.
‘MPs have been able to vote with their conscience on the Terminally Ill Adults Bill throughout its passage through Parliament and the government has not taken a position. It is for MPs to decide whether this bill is passed.’
The bill was voted through the Commons in June by 314 votes to 291 but has faced stiffer opposition in the Lords where hundreds of amendments have been tabled.
Ten additional days were assigned to debate the amendments but campaigners for assisted suicide have nonetheless complained that peers are attempting to kill off the bill with filibustering tactics.
Serious dangers were highlighted, however, by the many experts who gave evidence to a Lords committee set up to examine the Bill.
They included Professor Mumtaz Patel of the Royal College of Physicians who warned peers that patients may opt for assisted suicide in ‘fear’ they will not get access to proper medical services.
Representatives from the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Royal College of General Practitioners also raised grave concerns.
Some of the most damning evidence came, however, from Judge Thomas Teague KC, former Chief Coroner of England and Wales
He attacked Clause 38 of the bill because it stipulated that coroners would not be required to investigate deaths from assisted suicide.
He told the Lords: “We have a rational, disciplined, functional system for . . . scrutinising deaths, both natural and unnatural, and I am bound to ask what on earth is the point, when you’ve reached that stage, of then reversing part of it and saying, “Well instead of having these unnatural deaths investigated by the coroner in accordance with the system it’s taken us 200 years to develop, we’re going to put them in another category”, and then to get round the problem that they’re not being properly investigated, we’ll train the [medical examiners] to do it. I mean, to me, it’s frankly absurd.’
Judge Teague argued that referring every assisted suicide death to a coroner is a powerful safeguard against wrongdoing because it is only the certain knowledge of investigation that could act an effective deterrent to abuse.
This article (Labour is telling lies about assisted suicide neutrality, leaked policy document reveals) was created and published by Conservative Woman and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Simon Caldwell
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