Leadbeater drops High Court judge safeguard from assisted suicide Bill

Kim Leadbeater has announced that she will scrap a major proposed safeguard to her assisted suicide Bill, leading critics to claim that patient protections are being removed before the draft legislation has even become law. In November, the Labour MP for Spen Valley was able to persuade the House of Commons to vote for her The post Leadbeater drops High Court judge safeguard from assisted suicide Bill first appeared on Catholic Herald. The post Leadbeater drops High Court judge safeguard from assisted suicide Bill appeared first on Catholic Herald.

Feb 13, 2025 - 04:00

Leadbeater drops High Court judge safeguard from assisted suicide Bill

Kim Leadbeater has announced that she will scrap a major proposed safeguard to her assisted suicide Bill, leading critics to claim that patient protections are being removed before the draft legislation has even become law.

In November, the Labour MP for Spen Valley was able to persuade the House of Commons to vote for her Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill at Second Reading by 330 to 275, partly because she gave robust assurances of its safety.

Among the key proposed safeguards was the requirement for a High Court judge to scrutinise and approve each application for doctor-assisted death. Ms Leadbeater announced today, however, that the judiciary will not be involved, but that each application will instead go before a multi-disciplinary expert panel which will include a social worker, lawyer, and psychiatrist.

James Cleverly, the former Conservative Home Secretary who opposed the Bill, took to social media to warn voters that safeguards were being removed by a loaded committee chosen by Ms Leadbeater to scrutinise the Bill.

“The protections that were promised in the assisted dying Bill are being watered down even before this becomes law,” Mr Cleverly said on X. “This Bill is being rushed, it is not properly thought through, and none of the concerns raised at Second Reading have been addressed.”

Diane Abbott, the veteran Labour MP who spoke against the Bill during the Second Reading debate, also said on X: “Safeguards on the assisted dying Bill are collapsing. Rushed, badly thought out legislation. Needs to be voted down.”

Florence Eshalomi, the Labour MP for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green, tweeted: “The key safeguard that was used to persuade MPs who raised valid questions about the Bill has now been dropped. To say this is worrying is an understatement. Can they explain why lawyers, psychiatrists, and social workers won’t be overwhelmed? Just a farce.”

Conservative MP Danny Kruger, who led the opposition to the Bill in the Commons and who sits on Ms Leadbeater’s committee, also described the move by Ms Leadbeater as worrying.

“Why, if this is the plan, why isn’t this the plan that was put to MPs when the whole House of Commons voted it through?” he said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “At that point, it was made very strongly that the principal safeguard for the Bill, where people could have confidence that it was going to be safe for vulnerable people, was that there would be a High Court judge approving the application. That’s now been removed. This new system… doesn’t involve a judge, it involves a panel of people, all of whom presumably are committed to the principle of assisted dying, not an impartial figure like the judge.”

Ms Leadbeater defended her proposed change on BBC Breakfast as “an additional safeguard within the Bill.” She said: “I think it is really difficult to say that it is somehow a change for the worse. It is definitely a change for the better.”

During the Second Reading debate, Ms Leadbeater falsely claimed that her Bill had the support of the judiciary.

Even though she was forced to correct the record, the Bill passed with the support of wavering MPs who signalled that they might vote against the Bill at Third Reading in April if they were unconvinced that safeguarding concerns had been properly addressed.

Ms Leadbeater has made repeated claims throughout her campaign that oversight of a High Court judge would prevent abuses.

The conduct of Ms Leadbeater throughout committee hearings has left spectators exasperated by her apparent misrepresentations of evidence in her summaries and her discourteous treatment of experts who are warning of the dangers of the Bill.

Writing for The Spectator, former Catholic Herald editor Dan Hitchens noted how Ms Leadbeater was called to order after she interrupted expert evidence given by Sarah Cox, the head of the Association of Palliative Medicine, which opposes the Bill.

The Catholic Church has consistently and robustly opposed the assisted suicide Bill, and the bishops are expected to once again ask the faithful to lobby MPs ahead of Third Reading in the hope that they might vote to reject it.