Press Release – Politeia Publishes Paper by Anscombe Centre Director Outlining Dangers of Assisted Dying Bill Ahead of Key Vote

Ahead of the Third Reading vote on Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill on Friday, think-tank Politeia has published a paper by the Anscombe Bioethics Centre’s Director, Professor David Albert Jones, Assisting Suicide: An Ever More Dangerous Bill, which shows how the Bill falls dangerously short of providing necessary safeguards for protecting vulnerable patients.

A series of papers written by Professor Jones and other authors, and statements by the Royal Colleges of Psychiatrists and Pathologists, over a thousand doctors, the British Geriatric Society, and a coalition of eating disorder charities, have all raised serious concerns that the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is severely unsafe.

Professor Jones’s paper follows the Bill’s flawed process and the hazardous form it has now taken, pointing to amongst other things:

• the imbalance of its Committee membership and the witnesses this called;
• the weakening of its already problematic High Court ‘safeguard’ by the replacement of judicial oversight with that of what amounts to a Committee quango;
• the disturbing Government impact assessments which indicate:
• the ‘savings’ estimated due to early deaths by assisted suicide and the perverse and anti-medical logic this entails;
• the greater risk of people with disabilities, women and the elderly ending their life under the Bill as a result of coercion due to the prevalence of abuse of people with those characteristics.

Professor Jones concludes that after the last few months of Parliamentary process, the Bill is both weaker and more evidently problematic, with greater dangers ‘of coercion, of pressure, of expansion’, and the necessity of the House of Commons rejecting the Bill at Third Reading.

Professor Jones says, ‘no one could watch the chaos of the House of Commons struggling to debate 133 amendments in two mornings and early afternoons and conclude that this Bill has had rigorous scrutiny. The process has been rushed, the fundamental flaws in the Bill have not been addressed, and the Bill as amended is even more dangerous than the Bill as introduced. The Second Reading vote was “a vote to continue the debate”. The Third Reading vote must be a vote to prevent a dangerous Bill from becoming law.’   

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Notes to Editors:

• Any part of the above can be quoted as coming from our Director, Professor David Albert Jones.
• For more information, please see the Centre’s full Guide on ‘Assisted Dying’ (euthanasia and assisted suicide) which includes a guide to the latest evidence concerning EAS internationally, the Centre’s series of briefing papers on EAS since 2021 and videos on subjects relating to EAS.
• If the issues discussed here affect you or someone close to you, you can call Samaritans on 116 123 (UK and ROI), visit their website or contact them on: jo@samaritans.org
• If you are reporting or writing about a case of death by suicide, whether assisted or non-assisted, please consult the Samaritans’ media guidelines on how to do so responsibly.
• For more information on the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, see our website: www.bioethics.org.uk

For interviews or comment, contact: media@bioethics.org.uk