The UK assisted-dying bill gets more dangerous by the day

This article was published by Spiked on March 1, 2025.

Kevin Yuill

By Kevin Yuill

Kim Leadbeater’s promise to create the ‘safest’ assisted-dying legislation in the world unravelled even further this past week, as MPs rejected yet another proposed safeguard to her Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which would legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales.

Labour MP Rachael Maskell tabled [introduced] an amendment that would have required a patient to meet ‘with a palliative-care specialist for the purposes of being informed about the medical and care support options’ before an assisted suicide could proceed. In other words, they would have to consider options for alleviating their pain. Yet this most innocuous amendment was defeated by 15 MPs to eight on Tuesday.

This was hardly a surprise. Having been voted through in the House of Commons last November, the bill is now in the committee stage. Yet Leadbeater stacked the committee of MPs in her favour. Although the committee is supposed to ‘improve’ the bill, it has repeatedly thrown out sensible amendments.

Maskell’s amendment would have done nothing more than reassure terminally ill patients that there are alternatives to killing themselves. Given the severity of the decision, you would hope that the assisted-dying process would leave as many opportunities for patients to reconsider as possible.

As one observer noted on X, you currently have to undergo far more rigorous checks to be able to donate a kidney than Leadbeater envisages for an assisted suicide.

Conservative MP Danny Kruger, who leads a minority of cross-party MPs on the committee fighting Leadbeater’s bill, noted how important it is that ‘a patient has clearly understood their palliative-care options’ before choosing to end their own life. The assisted-suicide advocates on the committee took a very different view. Tory MP and supporter of the bill Neil Shastri-Hurst worried that requiring a consultation with a palliative-care specialist would ‘bog down the whole process with layer upon layer of bureaucracy’.

As far as the likes of Shastri-Hurst are concerned, the fewer obstacles in front of the proverbial man on the ledge, the better.

In order to try to keep up the pretence that assisted dying is a ‘compassionate’ cause, Leadbeater resorted to relaying emotional anecdotes. ‘There are cases where palliative care cannot meet a patient’s needs’, she said. ‘We have a lady in the public gallery this morning whose mother had a horrible death, having had ovarian cancer and mouth cancer; she had to have her tongue removed, so she could not eat and drink, and she essentially starved to death.’

This is certainly tragic, but it hardly makes sense as an argument. There will also be plenty of cases where palliative care can meet a patient’s needs.

Fellow Labour MP Stephen Kinnock was clearly less concerned with the optics when he complained that ‘the amendment would increase demand on palliative-care specialists’. He is right that the existence of patients demands doctors. But there is an undeniably sinister undertone whenever questions of money and resources raise their head in the assisted-suicide debate. Death, all too often, appears as the ‘cheaper’ option than healthcare or to assistance to carry on living.

The rejection of Maskell’s amendment is merely the latest in a long line of attempts to ensure the Leadbeater bill has as few meaningful safeguards as possible. So far, the committee has also voted down amendments to prohibit ‘encouraging’ someone towards assisted suicide, exerting ‘undue influence’ prompting someone to choose assisted suicide or ‘manipulating’ someone to choose assisted suicide. It has also rejected the requirement that a six-month diagnosis of a terminal illness must have ‘reasonable certainty’ before an assisted suicide approved. It has even rejected a request, backed by eating-disorder charities, for illnesses to not be regarded as terminal for the purposes of this law if they can be caused by stopping eating and drinking.

All these failed by 15 votes against and eight in favour, reflecting the bias of the committee, except for one, which lost 14 votes to nine.

This won’t be the end of it, either. Leadbeater’s ‘judge plus’ amendment, which has yet to be considered by the committee, will try to remove a safeguard originally included in the bill that would have required each assisted death to be signed off by a High Court judge. This was initially a big selling point for her bill, with more than 61 MPs citing it as a reason to vote in favour. Now, Leadbeater plans to replace the judge with ‘death panels’ of social workers, lawyers and psychiatrists.

Clearly, Leadbeater and her pro-assisted suicide colleagues are hell-bent on ramming this legislation through parliament, whether or not it is fit for purpose. Let us hope that enough MPs are paying attention to these insidious developments – and that they vote this disastrous bill down at the earliest opportunity.

Kevin Yuill, emeritus professor of history at the University of Sunderland and CEO of Humanists Against Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia (HAASE).

Previous articles by Kevin Yuill:

• Why is the Labour Party putting assisted suicide ahead of social care? (Link)
• Why we need to kill the UK assisted dying bill (Link).
• No safe way to legalize euthanasia (Link).

UK assisted suicide bill is losing support and can be defeated.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, 

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The UK assisted suicide bill that is sponsored by Kim Leadbeater (MP) is losing support and can be defeated.

The British parliament voted on Friday, November 29, 2024 (330 to 275) at second reading to support Kim Leadbeater's private members assisted suicide bill.

Some MP's who voted Yes to the assisted suicide bill remain concerned about the implementation of a law. There are many MP's who may change their vote as they learn more about the bill or as the bill is amended in committee.

An article by David Maddox that was published in the Independent on February 12 indicates that Rupert Lowe (Reform party) who voted in favour of the assisted suicide bill at second reading has indicated that he will now be voting against the bill at third reading.

Rupert Lowe's colleague Lee Anderson (Reform party) is also changing his vote on the legislation. Maddox reported Anderson as stating:

“I support assisted dying, but this bill becomes less credible by the day. It looks like it’s being forced through at any cost, therefore I fail to see how I can support this bill at third reading.”

Maddox also reported that Liberal Democrat Alistair Carmichael had also backed the bill at second reading, but is now rethinking his support.

The bill passed by 55 votes at second reading and yet, according to Maddox, approximately 140 MP's are considering a change to their vote at third reading.

Weakening support for the assisted suicide bill crosses party lines. Maddox reported:

But critics including veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott believe the bill should now be pulled because of the removal of the safeguard.

Ms Abbott said in a post on X (Twitter): “Safeguards on the Assisted Dying Bill are collapsing. Rushed, badly thought-out legislation. Needs to be voted down.”

Former Lib Dem leader Tim Farron added: “Lots of MPs voted for the bill at second reading in the expectation that there would be stronger safeguards added at committee stage, and yet we now see that even the weak safeguards that existed are being dropped.”

And Tory MP Danny Kruger, who led the opposition at the bill’s second reading, said: “Approval by the High Court – the key safeguard used to sell the Assisted Suicide Bill to MPs – has been dropped. Instead we have a panel, NOT including a judge, of people committed to the process, sitting in private, without hearing arguments from the other side. A disgrace.”

More articles on this topic:

• Patients applying for assisted suicide won't need to tell their family (Link). 
• UK assisted dying bill is being rushed (Link).
• Why is the UK Labour party putting assisted suicide ahead of social care (Link).

Words matter. Euthanasia is about killing people

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Michael Deacon challenges the use of language in the UK assisted suicide debate in: MPs daren’t admit the awful truth about ‘assisted dying’ published in The Telegraph, December 3, 2024.

Deacon emphasises that language, used to hide the reality of assisted suicide, is Orwellian. Deacon writes:

As Parliament debated the merits of enabling sociopaths to coerce the vulnerable into a premature death, a peculiar little row broke out. The Tory MP Danny Kruger – who opposes the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill – had just uttered the words “assisted suicide”. Horrified, the Labour MP Cat Eccles – who supports the bill – leapt up to complain.

“The honourable gentleman is using incorrect language,” she protested indignantly to the Speaker. “It is not suicide. That is offensive. I ask him please to correct his language.”

The same reaction happens in Canada where euthanasia is legal under the term MAiD. Euthanasia was legalized in Canada by creating an exception to homicide (murder) in the criminal code. "MAiD" activists regularly say it's not euthanasia, it's MAiD, but what is MAiD?

Deacon continues:

This was a curious intervention. Because, even if one supports the bill, one should at least be able to see that “assisted suicide” is an accurate description of what is being proposed. A patient, having asserted that he or she wishes to end his or her own life, will deliberately ingest a substance that will cause his or her death. That, incontestably, is suicide. So it can hardly be “incorrect” – let alone “offensive” – to refer to it as such.

Indeed, if any term is “incorrect”, it’s “assisted dying” – because it’s a euphemism, chosen by campaigners to make what they want sound more palatable. Much like the euphemisms George Orwell noted in his 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language.

Deacon states:  "... the euphemism “assisted dying” isn’t designed merely to fool the public. It’s designed to help its advocates fool themselves."

Thank you Michael Deacon for reminding us to use accurate language. Euthanasia is about killing people (literally) and assisted suicide is about assisting in their death.

Danny Kruger: Assisted dying is NOT about freedom

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Danny Kruger

Danny Kruger, a British MP representing East Wiltshire, was invited by the Economist (a pro-euthanasia publication) to provide a position opposing assisted suicide. 

Kruger, with his mother, Prue Leith, participated in a TV production based on their trip to Canada examining the euthanasia law. Leith is a long-timer supporter of euthanasia. Kruger was the co-chair of the All-Party parliamentary group on Dying Well.

Danny Kruger's article: Assisted-dying advocates’ claims of freedom have it backward was published in the Economist on November 21, 2024. 

Kruger states that the primary purpose of the assisted dying bill is to give people the right to ask the state to kill them:

The practical problems with the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill are stark and inescapable. The proposed law would require doctors and judges—both are needed, in a reflection of the fact that neither is really competent to do so—to confirm that a patient may reasonably be expected to die within six months, and that he or she genuinely and freely wishes to die.

A 6 month prognosis can be assigned to a person who refuses treatment (drugs) and refuses to eat. Kruger continues:

If our only object were—as it should be—to relieve suffering at the end of life, to address the practical realities of death, there is a simple solution: to properly resource palliative care. Modern pain-relief drugs mean almost no one needs to die in unbearable physical agony. Everyone can be helped to die well, but end-of-life care at the moment is patchy and shamefully underfunded.

Many of the assisted dying campaigners view the bill as a beginning. Once legalized assisted dying will soon be expanded as Kruger points out:

The idea that animates the bill is that of absolute patient autonomy.

But the opposite becomes true:

... the crucial paradox is that it will have precisely the opposite effect. A religion of individual control, of personal freedom, is not liberating in practice, but rather deeply disempowering. There remain Labour members of Parliament who remember that “progressive” politics used to be about protecting the vulnerable from abuses of power—that individual autonomy is not the highest good, because different people have different degrees of agency and in a liberal free-for-all the powerless get trampled....

Under the bill, doctors will be allowed to suggest assisted dying to patients who have not mentioned the idea themselves. If the patient requests it from a doctor who does not agree with the practice, that doctor will be obliged to refer them to a colleague who does. Here we see the dynamic established: this is presented as a plausible, even a good choice for patients to make, and the system will help them to make it. The echoes of the Liverpool Care Pathway, a notorious scheme of ten years ago by which patients were essentially assigned by the National Health Service to die, should sound in our ears.

The law’s very existence would put pressure on each patient and their family to have “the conversation”, whether openly at the bedside or whispered outside the room: is it time for Mum or Dad to die? Patients would bear the awful responsibility of deciding whether to go now—sparing their loved ones the cost and distress of caring for them—or to hold on selfishly, messily, expensively.

This is not freedom. It is not autonomy.

It is a terrible burden to place on people at their most vulnerable. It is not “choice” when one option is so total and potentially compelling. It speaks of a profound disrespect for the frail, and raises over the disabled a spectre that haunts them: the awareness that others might think them better off dead.

Kruger calls for a greater commitment to caring:

The dignity that we need at the end of life is to be fully cared for as we die. There is no disgrace in dependence or being a “burden” to others. And the choice we need is that over our care, including using advanced health-care directives to provide clear wishes on being resuscitated or kept alive if we were to lose cognition or the ability to communicate.

Not for nothing do campaigners for assisted dying call it “the last right”. For this is the unintended object of the theology of control. Cross this Rubicon and, as with Julius Caesar, the republic of liberty falls. In the name of progress we will obliterate the key protection which all of us have need of as we grow old and ill and burdensome: that the people at our bedside will not connive to kill us.

Previous article related to Danny Kruger:

• The cruelty of assisted dying (Link).