Sir Keir Starmer is Britain’s best hope for legalising assisted dying

This NEWSpaper believes people should have the right to choose the manner of their own death. That idea is gaining ground around the world; some 30 jurisdictions have legalised it to date. Yet in England and Wales the latest attempt to pass legislation, and the one that has come closest to succeeding, is now certain to fail. This is a tragedy.

The bill, introduced by Kim Leadbeater, a Labour backbencher, has enough support to become law. It was passed in the House of Commons in June. Most Britons, including the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, have consistently supported the principle of assisted dying. The bill’s imminent failure is due to a handful of unelected peers in the House of Lords, who have made sure it will run out of time by submitting an unreasonable number of amendments. But the root cause is an absence of leadership by Sir Keir. In an attempt to avoid making the issue a partisan one, he relegated it to a private-member’s bill; these are not introduced by government ministers and are a weak legislative instrument. This was a misjudgment which he must now put right.

Delays in Parliament might be more understandable if Britain were a newcomer to this debate. But it is not. The Lords first formally debated an assisted-dying bill in 1936, years before any other country. An effort to legalise it has been made almost every decade since the 1960s; Ms Leadbeater is the fifth parliamentarian to propose a bill of this kind since 2003. Yet whereas healthy debates in other countries led to legislation, British politicians continue to dawdle.

Opponents of the Leadbeater bill raised concerns that are now well-worn: the risk of coercion; whether the poor state of palliative care and the health service deny people a proper choice; and the fear that the bill would be a “slippery slope” to broader eligibility. These worries do not stand up to scrutiny.

Coercion? The bill restricts access to assisted dying to people who have at most six months to live and who have made sustained requests to two doctors. The idea that an evil relative might use this process to kill someone who will soon be dead is far-fetched. It would be good if palliative care improved, and it would be wise to invest in it while legalising assisted dying, as happened in New Zealand. But inadequate care is not a reason to oblige those who truly wish to die, and who meet all the criteria, to suffer in the meantime. Least convincing of all is the slippery-slope objection. It implies that Britain’s Parliament could carelessly allow a more liberal regime to emerge. If the past century shows anything it is that Parliament will do nothing of the sort.

The most compelling argument against this bill is that it is too narrow. As extra layers of scrutiny have been added, eligibility criteria have arguably become tighter than in any such bill passed elsewhere. The risk is not that it would be too easy to get an assisted death but that vanishingly few people would qualify.

Still, a narrow bill is better than none; and more delay would be intolerable. Rather than let another backbencher champion it, Sir Keir should offer his wholehearted support and ensure it gets enough parliamentary time. To do that, the government should itself introduce the same bill later this year and let MPs vote according to their conscience. This is the path David Cameron took in 2013 with a bill to legalise same-sex marriage; it is the one Sir Keir should take now. Alas, this is unlikely: putting the weight of the government behind assisted dying would upset some in Sir Keir’s own party and cabinet. But if he cannot take the heat over one of the issues he strongly believes in, what is the point of being in the kitchen?■

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