Latest news with #Leadbeater
Western Telegraph
25 minutes ago
- Health
- Western Telegraph
Assisted dying: All you need to know following the crunch Commons vote
Here, the PA news agency takes a look at the Bill and what happens next after a significant moment in its journey to become law. – What is in the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill? The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill has since been amended by a committee (Stefan Rousseau/PA) The proposed legislation would allow terminally ill adults in England and Wales, with fewer than six months to live, to apply for an assisted death. This would be subject to approval by two doctors and a panel featuring a social worker, senior legal figure and psychiatrist. The terminally ill person would take an approved substance, provided by a doctor but administered only by the person themselves. On Friday, MPs voted 314 to 291, majority 23, in favour of legalising assisted dying as they completed the mainstay of their work on the Bill. It will now face further debate in the House of Lords. – When would assisted dying be available if the Bill became law? Kim Leadbeater is the MP behind the Bill (Jordan Pettitt/PA) The implementation period has been doubled to a maximum of four years from royal assent, the point it is rubber stamped into law, rather than the initially suggested two years. If the Bill was to pass later this year that would mean it might not be until 2029, potentially coinciding with the end of this Government's parliament, that assisted dying was being offered. Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, who is the parliamentarian behind the Bill and put forward the extended timeframe, has insisted it is 'a backstop' rather than a target, as she pledged to 'hold the Government's feet to the fire' on implementing legislation should the Bill pass. The extended implementation period was one of a number of changes made since the Bill was first introduced to the Commons back in October. – What other changes have there been? A High Court safeguard was scrapped during the committee process (Alamy/PA) On Friday, MPs bolstered the Bill so people with eating disorders are ruled out of falling into its scope. Another amendment, requiring ministers to report within a year of the Bill passing on how assisted dying could affect palliative care, was also approved by MPs. Previously, a High Court safeguard was dropped, with the oversight of judges in the assisted dying process replaced with expert panels. The change was much criticised by opponents, who said it weakened the Bill, but Ms Leadbeater has argued it strengthens it. At the end of a weeks-long committee process earlier this year to amend the Bill, Ms Leadbeater said rather than removing judges from the process, 'we are adding the expertise and experience of psychiatrists and social workers to provide extra protections in the areas of assessing mental capacity and detecting coercion while retaining judicial oversight'. Changes were also made to ensure the establishment of independent advocates to support people with learning disabilities, autism or mental health conditions and to set up a disability advisory board to advise on legal implementation and impact on disabled people. Amendments added earlier this month during report stage in the Commons will also see assisted dying adverts banned if the Bill becomes law, and a prohibition on medics being able to speak to under-18s about assisted dying. – Do we know much more about the potential impact of such a service coming in? A Government impact assessment, published earlier this month, estimated that between 164 and 647 assisted deaths could potentially take place in the first year of the service, rising to between 1,042 and 4,559 in year 10. The establishment of a Voluntary Assisted Dying Commissioner and three-member expert panels would cost an estimated average of between £10.9 million and £13.6 million per year, the document said. It had 'not been possible' to estimate the overall implementation costs at this stage of the process, it added. While noting that cutting end-of-life care costs 'is not stated as an objective of the policy', the assessment estimated that such costs could be reduced by as much as an estimated £10 million in the first year and almost £60 million after 10 years. – Do healthcare staff have to take part in assisted dying? Doctors will not have to take part in assisted dying (Lynne Cameron/PA) It was already the case that doctors would not have to take part, but MPs have since voted to insert a new clause into the Bill extending that to anyone. The wording means 'no person', including social care workers and pharmacists, is obliged to take part in assisted dying and can now opt out. Amendments to the Bill were debated on care homes and hospices also being able to opt out but these were not voted on. Ms Leadbeater has previously said there is nothing in the Bill to say they have to, nor is there anything to say they do not have to, adding on the Parliament Matters podcast that this is 'the best position to be in' and that nobody should be 'dictating to hospices what they do and don't do around assisted dying'. – What will happen next? MPs debated the Bill in the House of Commons (Malcolm Croft/PA) Friday's vote in the Commons makes it more likely for the assisted dying Bill to become law, now that it has the backing of a majority of MPs. But this is not guaranteed, and first it must continue on a journey through Parliament. The Bill now heads to the House of Lords, as both Houses of Parliament must agree its final text before it can be signed into law. During the next stages, peers are expected to put forward amendments to the Bill. If the Commons disagrees with these amendments, this will spark a process known as 'ping pong' which will continue until both Houses agree over its text. – Will the Bill definitely become law? There is a risk that the Bill could be stuck in a deadlock between the House of Commons and House of Lords, as it goes back and forth in disagreement. If this continues until the current session of Parliament ends, then the Bill would fall. Ms Leadbeater told journalists on Friday she hoped there were no attempts to purposefully wreck it by peers. 'I really hope there are no funny games, because the process has been extremely fair,' she said. The Spen Valley MP said she did not know when the current parliamentary session would end, but suggested it could stretch into late 2025, giving her Bill the best part of six months to complete the full parliamentary process. Speaking about the end of the session to reporters, Ms Leadbeater said: 'I am not imagining that is going to be imminently, but it could be before the end of the year.' One member of the House of Lords, Bishop of London Dame Sarah Mullally, has already indicated she is against it. The Church of England bishop said peers 'must oppose' the assisted dying Bill when it reaches them because of the 'mounting evidence that it is unworkable and unsafe'. – What about assisted dying in the rest of the UK and Crown Dependencies? The Isle of Man's parliament took its final vote in favour of assisted dying in March (Alamy/PA) The Isle of Man looks likely to become the first part of the British Isles to legalise assisted dying, after its proposed legislation passed through a final vote of the parliament's upper chamber in March. In what was hailed a 'landmark moment', members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) in May voted in favour of the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill, backing its general principles. It will now go forward for further scrutiny and amendments but will become law only if MSPs approve it in a final vote, which should take place later this year. Any move to legalise assisted dying in Northern Ireland would have to be passed by politicians in the devolved Assembly at Stormont. Jersey's parliament is expected to debate a draft law for an assisted dying service on the island for terminally ill people later this year. With a likely 18-month implementation period if a law is approved, the earliest it could come into effect would be summer 2027.
Spectator
32 minutes ago
- Politics
- Spectator
Diane Abbott's masterful Assisted Dying speech will come back to haunt us
If yours is a sentimental bent, you'll have been terrifically moved by the spectacle of Jess Phillips MP giving Kim Leadbeater a big hug after the Assisted Dying Bill was passed. Ms Leadbeater has a tendency to look agonised at the best of times. When MPs paid tribute to her in the course of the debate for her compassion, she looked as if she was on the verge of bursting into tears. Now, it'll be tears of joy – at least for her. I should right now retract all the unkind things I have ever said about Diane Abbott Quite how this reaction, and the hugs, can be elicited by a measure which will mean people can be given lethal drugs courtesy of the state is beyond me – because that's actually what it entails – but you can dignify almost anything in our politics if you designate it as being motivated by compassion. There was one contribution to the debate which will stay with me. It was made by Dr Neil Hudson, one of those Tory MPs who looks as if he'll never rouse a rabble; he was in his previous incarnation, a vet. Almost apologetically, he declared that he had been involved in participating in euthanising various animals, large and small, in that job, and while he absolutely wasn't comparing human beings with animals, he wanted to make the point that the substances and procedures were very similar to those used for humans. 'The final act,' he said, 'doesn't always go smoothly'. What a vista that conjures up. All very different from the talk in the chamber, which was all about dignity. Hudson isn't the first person to make this point. Several months ago, I talked at some length to parliament's premier palliative care practitioner, Professor Ilora Finlay. Her verdict? Assisted suicide 'was not a Hollywood death'. Not clean, not quick. Or as she observed, the length it takes actually for the drugs to work – from the experience of those countries which have euthanasia – varies enormously, from under half an hour to over a day. The debate has glossed over this kind of gritty stuff. In the Lords at least, where the bill goes to next, Finlay will have the chance of pointing out how the thing works in practice. She can also say that the agonising deaths that pro-euthanasia MPs described graphically, as a sort of clincher, during the debate are not necessary with proper palliative care. It took the daughter of a male hospice nurse, Labour's Lola McEvoy, to point out that this choice, between dying with hospice provision or without it is not universally available. Making assisted suicide a ready option will, she said, 'deprioritise good palliative care'. Masterly understatement there. It was, moreover, the odd philosophical basis of Leadbeater's speech as the bill's sponsor which was most striking. Passing over her insistence that this bill wouldn't mean more deaths (yes, Kim, we all know that everyone must die eventually, one way or another), she waxed lyrical about the way some patients could already, all by themselves, without any supervision, opt to have their life support or ventilation turned of. Yet, she suggested, MPs were making a fuss about euthanising people who did have the benefit of a supervisory panel. Look, if we can't tell the difference between not doing something (like not opting for artificial life support), and actually – and actively – giving someone drugs that would kill them, it's hard to know how to argue about these things at all. But the MPs who really undermined the cant about choice were those who talked about coercion. I should right now retract all the unkind things I have ever said about Diane Abbott, Mother of the House. She was brilliant, even though she was panicking a bit when she couldn't read her speech on her phone (go for paper!). She was utterly convincing when she dismissed witheringly the notion that, in approved cases of assisted suicide, there would have to be no police evidence of coercion. 'There wouldn't be!' she said. 'In the family the most powerful coercion is silent.' Abbott went on to observe that 'if the police can't spot coercion dealing with domestic violence, why should they spot it in assisted dying?' Her most powerful point was to look at the assembled parliamentarians and observe that every single one of them was 'confident in dealing with authority and institutions. But what about choice for all those who all their lives have lacked agency, particularly in a family situation?' That needed saying. It's one thing for Esther Rantzen to say that she'll die in a fashion of her choosing; quite another for some poor put upon individual being made to feel that they're selfishly taking up other people's time and money (if we're sinking to the level of emotional anecdote, my mother, with Parkinson's, said just that about herself). But it's the wretched Rantzens who dominate this debate, people who've never been pressurised by anyone. There was another unexpectedly brilliant contribution on coercion, Labour's Jess Asato, who works with victims of domestic abuse. She declared that coercion was 'a certainty' – it would be 'the most vulnerable people who will experience wrongful death…as a self-perceived burden'. As she pointed out, other family members will only find out about these deaths when it's too late. She warned that 'there can be no room for doubt, and no room for error'. Except there will be errors, but who'll be complaining, and how? On a Ouija board? It's been quite the week in parliament for life and death. The vote earlier this week – for Tonia Antoniazzi's amendment to allow mothers to abort unborn babies up to birth without criminal sanction – was to do with one end of the life spectrum; the victims being the foetuses who will die. Today's vote was about the end, rather than the beginning of life. But allowing doctors to give drugs to ill people to bring about their death is a similarly warped notion of choice. It's been a good week though for the hooded man with the scythe.
Glasgow Times
41 minutes ago
- Health
- Glasgow Times
Historic vote brings assisted dying closer to becoming law in England and Wales
More than 300 MPs backed a Bill that would allow terminally ill adults with a life expectancy of less than six months to end their lives. Yes campaigners wept, jumped and hugged each other outside parliament as the vote result was announced, while some MPs appeared visibly emotional as they left the chamber. Others lined up to shake hands with Kim Leadbeater, the Bill's sponsor through the Commons, with some, including Home Office minister Jess Phillips, stopping to hug the Spen Valley MP. Despite warnings from opponents around the safety of a Bill they argued has been rushed through, the proposed legislation has taken another step in the parliamentary process. MPs voted 314 to 291, majority 23, to approve Ms Leadbeater's Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill at third reading. Kim Leadbeater has been the MP behind the assisted dying bill (Jonathan Brady/PA) This means the Bill has completed its first stages in the Commons and will move to the House of Lords for further debate and scrutiny. Both Houses must agree the final text of the Bill before it can be signed into law. Due to the four-year implementation period, it could be 2029 – potentially coinciding with the end of this Government's Parliament – before assisted dying is offered. Encouraging or assisting suicide is currently against the law in England and Wales, with a maximum jail sentence of 14 years. Supporters of assisted dying have described the current law as not being fit for purpose, with desperate terminally ill people feeling the need to end their lives in secret or go abroad to Dignitas alone, for fear loved ones will be prosecuted for helping them. Public support for a change in the law remains high, according to a poll (James Manning/PA) Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer remained supportive of the Bill, voting yes on Friday as he had done last year. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who had urged MPs to vote against the legislation, describing it as 'a bad Bill' despite being 'previously supportive of assisted suicide', voted no. Friday was the first time the Bill was debated and voted on in its entirety since last year's historic yes vote, when MPs supported the principle of assisted dying for England and Wales by a majority of 55 at second reading. Labour MP Ms Leadbeater has argued her Bill will 'correct the profound injustices of the status quo and to offer a compassionate and safe choice to terminally ill people who want to make it'. During an hours-long date on Friday, MPs on both sides of the issue recalled personal stories of loved ones who had died. Conservative former minister Sir James Cleverly, who led the opposition to the Bill in the Commons, spoke of a close friend who died 'painfully' from cancer. He said he comes at the divisive issue 'not from a position of faith nor from a position of ignorance', and was driven in his opposition by 'concerns about the practicalities' of the Bill. MPs had a free vote on the Bill, meaning they decided according to their conscience rather than along party lines. Campaigners in Parliament Square, central London, ahead of the vote (PA) The proposed legislation would allow terminally ill adults in England and Wales, with fewer than six months to live, to apply for an assisted death, subject to approval by two doctors and a panel featuring a social worker, senior legal figure and psychiatrist. Public support for a change in the law remains high, according to a YouGov poll published on the eve of the vote. The survey of 2,003 adults in Great Britain, suggested 73% of those asked last month were supportive of the Bill, while the proportion of people who feel assisted dying should be legal in principle stood at 75%.
Evening Standard
an hour ago
- Politics
- Evening Standard
Assisted dying: All you need to know following the crunch Commons vote
Ms Leadbeater has previously said there is nothing in the Bill to say they have to, nor is there anything to say they do not have to, adding on the Parliament Matters podcast that this is 'the best position to be in' and that nobody should be 'dictating to hospices what they do and don't do around assisted dying'.
Rhyl Journal
an hour ago
- Health
- Rhyl Journal
Historic vote brings assisted dying closer to becoming law in England and Wales
More than 300 MPs backed a Bill that would allow terminally ill adults with a life expectancy of less than six months to end their lives. Yes campaigners wept, jumped and hugged each other outside parliament as the vote result was announced, while some MPs appeared visibly emotional as they left the chamber. Others lined up to shake hands with Kim Leadbeater, the Bill's sponsor through the Commons, with some, including Home Office minister Jess Phillips, stopping to hug the Spen Valley MP. Despite warnings from opponents around the safety of a Bill they argued has been rushed through, the proposed legislation has taken another step in the parliamentary process. MPs voted 314 to 291, majority 23, to approve Ms Leadbeater's Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill at third reading. This means the Bill has completed its first stages in the Commons and will move to the House of Lords for further debate and scrutiny. Both Houses must agree the final text of the Bill before it can be signed into law. Due to the four-year implementation period, it could be 2029 – potentially coinciding with the end of this Government's Parliament – before assisted dying is offered. Encouraging or assisting suicide is currently against the law in England and Wales, with a maximum jail sentence of 14 years. Supporters of assisted dying have described the current law as not being fit for purpose, with desperate terminally ill people feeling the need to end their lives in secret or go abroad to Dignitas alone, for fear loved ones will be prosecuted for helping them. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer remained supportive of the Bill, voting yes on Friday as he had done last year. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who had urged MPs to vote against the legislation, describing it as 'a bad Bill' despite being 'previously supportive of assisted suicide', voted no. Friday was the first time the Bill was debated and voted on in its entirety since last year's historic yes vote, when MPs supported the principle of assisted dying for England and Wales by a majority of 55 at second reading. Labour MP Ms Leadbeater has argued her Bill will 'correct the profound injustices of the status quo and to offer a compassionate and safe choice to terminally ill people who want to make it'. During an hours-long date on Friday, MPs on both sides of the issue recalled personal stories of loved ones who had died. Conservative former minister Sir James Cleverly, who led the opposition to the Bill in the Commons, spoke of a close friend who died 'painfully' from cancer. He said he comes at the divisive issue 'not from a position of faith nor from a position of ignorance', and was driven in his opposition by 'concerns about the practicalities' of the Bill. MPs had a free vote on the Bill, meaning they decided according to their conscience rather than along party lines. The proposed legislation would allow terminally ill adults in England and Wales, with fewer than six months to live, to apply for an assisted death, subject to approval by two doctors and a panel featuring a social worker, senior legal figure and psychiatrist. Public support for a change in the law remains high, according to a YouGov poll published on the eve of the vote. The survey of 2,003 adults in Great Britain, suggested 73% of those asked last month were supportive of the Bill, while the proportion of people who feel assisted dying should be legal in principle stood at 75%.
