Call Kim if you want to die. You’ll get a free Parker pen just for enquiring
Kim Leadbeater was a little uncertain about whether she was allowed to start speaking. Friday’s session on Assisted Dying had begun with a few minutes of legislative procedure, which can be daunting even to those familiar with piloting it. We were again reminded that the government has entrusted some of the most consequential legislation it will pass to a backbencher who wasn’t, a year ago, thought to be ministerial timber.
We were cantering through the legislation on one of the Friday mornings set aside to decide whether and how the National Health Service should be allowed to kill patients. Although several MPs mentioned the high tone in which the debate is apparently being conducted, there is a notably less friendly undertone. Praise for Leadbeater’s engagement with all sides tended to come from those who already agreed with her.
Much of what happens in Parliament is a form of theatre: people are usually arguing for their party and physically for their side of the chamber. But the assisted dying debate has no clear borders between parties: it is like a civil war. Leadbeater sits on the fourth bench back, directly behind the despatch box, with a cluster of supporters around and behind her. But just in front, at the other end of the bench, is one of her main groups of opponents. Another is just across the stairway next to her.
Waugh’s call for assisted suicide advertising to be as tightly regulated as tobacco ads was rejected
It’s especially tricky for Labour MPs because they’re used to thinking of themselves as the good guys. They may occasionally do unpleasant things, like cutting welfare or invading Iraq, but fundamentally they know they’re on the side of righteousness. And this debate splits the party, between those who see a doctor ending your life as a worrying development and others who feel it’s such a good thing that they worry about any move to restrict the public’s access to death.
Jeevun Sandher, for instance, objected to the various attempts to ensure that ethnic minorities, who tend to get worse outcomes from the NHS, weren’t disproportionately pushed to take up the option of ending it all. “The point of the bill is to give people the choice to end their life regardless of the colour of their skin!” he declared, in a speech fit for a King, though you must decide whether it was Martin Luther or Stephen.
Leadbeater likewise seems quite certain that she’s on the side of the angels. She sits looking disappointed when MPs make opposing points, occasionally shaking her head, her hand on her chest and her face full of sad sincerity that they haven’t understood what a good thing it is that she’s trying to do.
Friday’s debate was on technical issues, rather than the principle, but supporters of the bill view any amendments suggested by opponents with deep suspicion. When Tory John Glen spoke in favour of toughening up the panel that will decide on people’s requests to die, Leadbeater intervened to point out that he’d already voted against the bill when it had proposed these decisions should be made by a judge, an idea since removed. The implication seemed to be that, as he was against the bill anyway, there was no point in listening to him. Glen replied, a little sadly, that he’d been trying to be “constructive”.
Labour’s Paul Waugh called for a very tight ban on advertising. “One person’s advert,” he said, “is another person’s public information campaign. It is not impossible to imagine a future secretary of state, who passionately believes in the merits of assisted dying, authorising such a campaign. It could be a government-approved plotline in a soap opera” – British soaps have a fine history of characters assisting each other to die, and in at least one case, assisting one of them to rest in peace under the patio – “or an ad read out by a podcaster.” As the host of a popular war movies podcast currently seeking a sponsor, I’d urge the Department of Health to get in touch. We already have a “Best Death” category.
“It is our role, indeed our responsibility, to deal not only in intended consequences, but in unintended ones, too,” Waugh, a former journalist, said. “We are not commentators, we are legislators.” He alluded to Esther Rantzen’s attack on objectors to the bill as religious zealots: “Some of those who passionately support assisted dying have a faith –a devout faith – that their world view is the right one.”
In the end, the attempts to amend availed little. Waugh’s call for assisted suicide advertising to be as tightly regulated as tobacco ads was rejected, as was a proposal that doctors shouldn’t be allowed to raise assisted dying with patients who hadn’t asked about it. Only on the question of whether they should be allowed to offer it, unprompted, to 16 and 17-year-olds were enough MPs queasy for a ban to be passed. Sorry kids, but you’ll have to wait until your 18th birthday for a pamphlet from the doctor to arrive asking if you’ve ever thought about death.
Stephen Kinnock, the health minister speaking on behalf of the government, was unsympathetic to calls for a less rushed process: “This bill has received over 90 hours of parliamentary time, which is more than most bills.” Or, to put it another way, they’ve spent so much time trying to fix it, it must work by now.
