Care NOT Killing needs donations to stop assisted suicide legalization in the UK (Donation Link).
Dr Gordon Macdonald
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| Dr Gordon Macdonald |
I am delighted to report that the fruits of many months of campaigning could be about to pay off.
FIRST: England & Wales (Westminster)
Victory is now a real possibility.
Concerns over the Leadbeater assisted suicide Bill in the House of Lords are growing.
Peers deserve great credit for refusing to be railroaded into rushing the Bill through the House of Lords.
They are coming under huge pressure from our opponents.
They are being wrongly accused of ‘filibustering’ (a term from US politics to describe deliberately blocking legislation by endless debating so that time runs out and it falls).
In fact, what is being misleadingly cast as blocking tactics is simply Parliamentary due diligence.
As one senior Labour MP put it:
Experts and professional groups that have opposed or raised significant concerns include:
Former President of the Family Division of the High Court, the late Sir James Munby, stated the Bill falls "lamentably short of providing adequate safeguards".
Former Chief Coroner of England and Wales, Thomas Teague KC, has warned that a key provision in the Bill would prevent coroners from routinely investigating assisted deaths as they would other unnatural deaths, potentially allowing cases of coercion to go undetected.
Disability Rights Groups: multiple disability rights organisations have opposed the Bill, citing concerns that it could put pressure on disabled and vulnerable people to end their lives.
The National Down Syndrome Policy Group has warned that every person with Down Syndrome would be eligible for assisted suicide under the Bill.
Illustrating how dangerous a step this would be, a professional who works with people with Down Syndrome warned:
As things stand, the Bill is set to run out of time and fall.
It looks unlikely that Peers will have time to debate all the proposed amendments before the current Parliamentary session ends (late April/early May).
When a session ends, any legislation that has not completed its passage through both Houses of Parliament is generally 'lost' and must start from scratch in the new session.
We must guard against complacency
However, it is too soon to celebrate victory, because:
(FACT CHECK: a firm majority – around two-thirds – of the 160 Peers who spoke or else were represented across two days of the Second Reading debate last September expressed opposition to the Leadbeater assisted suicide Bill.)
While APPGs have no official law-making powers, when they are well-funded – as pro-Bill groups tend to be – they can have considerable influence among fellow politicians and feed friendly media outlets propaganda to print and broadcast.
The coming weeks and months will be crucial.
Winning the media war is vital.
We are bracing for media attacks on those Peers who refuse to be bullied into allowing vulnerable people to be abandoned to systematic killing or see the ‘checking and balancing’ role of the House of Lords undermined.
Indeed, former Telegraph and Spectator editor Lord Moore, warned in December that lobbyists working for our opponents are already attempting to influence the debate in Parliament:
Major question marks also hang over the Scottish assisted suicide bill.
BUT should these legal wrangles be settled in time and the final (Stage 3) vote scheduled for mid-March be lost, the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill would pass.
Should that happen, our opponents would gain valuable political capital for law change south of the border, arguing on ‘equality’ grounds that the people in other parts of Great Britain (including England and Wales) should also be legally entitled to an assisted death.
The best outcome would be for the Scottish bill to be voted down next month.
The final vote is expected to be very close.
A CNK social media campaign targeted at Scottish voters is a major priority.
We urgently need Scots to contact their MSPs to make their concerns over the Bill clear, and with the Scottish elections due in May, there couldn’t be a better time to make their case.
THIRD: Isle of Man
The Isle of Man’s landmark Assisted Dying Bill – the first to be passed in Great Britain – is being held up.
It needs to secure Royal Assent before the end of the current administration (September 2026) before it can come into force.
But this may NOT happen.
Major development
Last year, I wrote to the then-Lord Chancellor & Secretary of State for Justice, Shabana Mahmood, arguing that the Manx Bill contravenes the European Convention on Human Rights.
I pointed out that, should the Lord Chancellor recommend the Bill for Royal Assent (the final stage in a bill becoming law), it may breach the UK’s international obligations.
The Manx bill requires the UK government’s approval before it can receive Royal Assent.
Last week, the island's Chief Minister, Alfred Cannan, announced that the UK Ministry of Justice had asked for clarification on codes of practice to accompany the Manx bill, regarding matters relating to human rights law compliance mentioned in my letter, specifically:
If amendments have to be made on the face of the bill, the proposed legislation would need to be debated again by the House of Keys, and considered also by the Legislative Council, the upper chamber of the Manx Parliament (Tynwald). At present, the two Governments are considering a Code of Practice which CNK believes is insufficient to meet the requirements of Article 2.
FIRST: England & Wales (Westminster)
Victory is now a real possibility.
Concerns over the Leadbeater assisted suicide Bill in the House of Lords are growing.
Peers deserve great credit for refusing to be railroaded into rushing the Bill through the House of Lords.
They are coming under huge pressure from our opponents.
They are being wrongly accused of ‘filibustering’ (a term from US politics to describe deliberately blocking legislation by endless debating so that time runs out and it falls).
In fact, what is being misleadingly cast as blocking tactics is simply Parliamentary due diligence.
As one senior Labour MP put it:
“It [the Leadbeater Bill] only just scraped through the Commons by 23 votes because MPs were told that the Lords would scrutinise it carefully.In addition, a More in Common poll published last week found fewer than half of those questioned (44%) expressed the belief that the House of Lords is deliberately trying to delay the Bill rather than taking time to go through legitimate concerns.
And that’s what the Lords are doing, with every debate revealing more holes and more problems with this proposed law.”
Experts and professional groups that have opposed or raised significant concerns include:
- The Royal College of Pathologists warned that its members would have to “review the process leading up to the decision to authorise an assisted death and the circumstances of the assisted death, which they are not qualified to do.” That could include probing whether safeguards were followed or if there was coercion, deception or other serious issues at play.
- The Association for Palliative Medicine, representing over 1,300 palliative medicine doctors in the UK, has stated it “opposes any change in the law to license doctors to supply or administer lethal drugs to a patient to enable them to take their own life.”
- The British Geriatrics Society reported that many of its members are “not confident that effective legal safeguards could be developed to protect older people from unwarranted harms.”
- Academics and Barristers: 73 leading academic experts in the fields of health, end-of-life care and the law signed an open letter to MPs warning that the Bill's safeguards are insufficient and would put vulnerable people at risk.
“Laws must be concerned for the safety of the whole population, especially the most vulnerable.”It also noted that “research has shown that a person’s stated wish to die is frequently unstable and depends on the care and support they receive [or lack of]”.
Former President of the Family Division of the High Court, the late Sir James Munby, stated the Bill falls "lamentably short of providing adequate safeguards".
Former Chief Coroner of England and Wales, Thomas Teague KC, has warned that a key provision in the Bill would prevent coroners from routinely investigating assisted deaths as they would other unnatural deaths, potentially allowing cases of coercion to go undetected.
Disability Rights Groups: multiple disability rights organisations have opposed the Bill, citing concerns that it could put pressure on disabled and vulnerable people to end their lives.
The National Down Syndrome Policy Group has warned that every person with Down Syndrome would be eligible for assisted suicide under the Bill.
Illustrating how dangerous a step this would be, a professional who works with people with Down Syndrome warned:
“Years ago, I did a benefit appeal for a client with Down syndrome.The list goes on.
He was so suggestible [that] he agreed with the benefits assessor that he could successfully navigate across town.
I got the same positive answer when I asked if he could fly an aeroplane.”
As things stand, the Bill is set to run out of time and fall.
It looks unlikely that Peers will have time to debate all the proposed amendments before the current Parliamentary session ends (late April/early May).
When a session ends, any legislation that has not completed its passage through both Houses of Parliament is generally 'lost' and must start from scratch in the new session.
We must guard against complacency
However, it is too soon to celebrate victory, because:
1. Our opponents are threatening to use the Parliament ActsThese allow the House of Commons to bypass the House of Lords should it repeatedly block a public bill. The Bill’s supporters could circumvent the Lords altogether—avoiding its scrutiny—by reintroducing the Leadbeater Bill in the House of Commons at the next session of Parliament (May 2026), then (if it passes) seek Royal Assent without the Lords’ consent.
- This would require MPs to pass the Bill in the same form it last left the Commons. It could include Lords’ changes from this session, but most of the changes currently under discussion (a) won’t be voted on until report stage, and (b) have in any case been rebuffed by Lord Falconer.
2. Disgruntled opponents could push legislation through in other waysPresently, some are working to weaken the House of Lords’ powers to scrutinise legislation.
- The Observer reported this month that a new All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for “wholesale” House of Lords reform is being set up by pro-assisted suicide MPs Simon Opher and Kit Malthouse.
(FACT CHECK: a firm majority – around two-thirds – of the 160 Peers who spoke or else were represented across two days of the Second Reading debate last September expressed opposition to the Leadbeater assisted suicide Bill.)
While APPGs have no official law-making powers, when they are well-funded – as pro-Bill groups tend to be – they can have considerable influence among fellow politicians and feed friendly media outlets propaganda to print and broadcast.
The coming weeks and months will be crucial.
Winning the media war is vital.
We are bracing for media attacks on those Peers who refuse to be bullied into allowing vulnerable people to be abandoned to systematic killing or see the ‘checking and balancing’ role of the House of Lords undermined.
Indeed, former Telegraph and Spectator editor Lord Moore, warned in December that lobbyists working for our opponents are already attempting to influence the debate in Parliament:
“I know very well what happens—how to recognise when we’re being pushed to do a story.SECOND: Scotland (McArthur) Bill
“In the last two weeks, all the British media have been pressed very hard, by lobbyists in favour of this [Leadbeater] Bill, to produce a series of highly contentious arguments which attack anybody who tries to debate this Bill fully.”
Major question marks also hang over the Scottish assisted suicide bill.
- With the McArthur bill set to be voted on again on 17th March, just 7 weeks before the Scottish Parliament election, Holyrood proponents of that bill are getting nervous. Many MSPs who have doubts about the bill are worried that this might be an election-defining issue for many of their constituents.
- The Health Committee at Holyrood wrote to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as important legal questions have arisen as to the Bill’s compatibility with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
- Provisions for the protection of conscientious objection rights for NHS clinical staff — those who would be tasked with carrying out assisted deaths — will have to be stripped out of the Bill at Stage 3 in March because medical regulation is a power over which Holyrood has no legislative competence.
BUT should these legal wrangles be settled in time and the final (Stage 3) vote scheduled for mid-March be lost, the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill would pass.
Should that happen, our opponents would gain valuable political capital for law change south of the border, arguing on ‘equality’ grounds that the people in other parts of Great Britain (including England and Wales) should also be legally entitled to an assisted death.
The best outcome would be for the Scottish bill to be voted down next month.
The final vote is expected to be very close.
A CNK social media campaign targeted at Scottish voters is a major priority.
We urgently need Scots to contact their MSPs to make their concerns over the Bill clear, and with the Scottish elections due in May, there couldn’t be a better time to make their case.
THIRD: Isle of Man
The Isle of Man’s landmark Assisted Dying Bill – the first to be passed in Great Britain – is being held up.
It needs to secure Royal Assent before the end of the current administration (September 2026) before it can come into force.
But this may NOT happen.
Major development
Last year, I wrote to the then-Lord Chancellor & Secretary of State for Justice, Shabana Mahmood, arguing that the Manx Bill contravenes the European Convention on Human Rights.
I pointed out that, should the Lord Chancellor recommend the Bill for Royal Assent (the final stage in a bill becoming law), it may breach the UK’s international obligations.
The Manx bill requires the UK government’s approval before it can receive Royal Assent.
Last week, the island's Chief Minister, Alfred Cannan, announced that the UK Ministry of Justice had asked for clarification on codes of practice to accompany the Manx bill, regarding matters relating to human rights law compliance mentioned in my letter, specifically:
- Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which upholds the ‘right to life’
If amendments have to be made on the face of the bill, the proposed legislation would need to be debated again by the House of Keys, and considered also by the Legislative Council, the upper chamber of the Manx Parliament (Tynwald). At present, the two Governments are considering a Code of Practice which CNK believes is insufficient to meet the requirements of Article 2.
Care NOT Killing needs donations to stop assisted suicide from being legalized in the UK (Donation Link).
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