This is Prospect’s rolling coverage of the assisted dying debate. This page will be updated with the latest from our correspondent, Mark Mardell. Read the rest of our coverage here
5pm
As the clock ticks down to the debate on the 16th of next month anti-bill forces are getting their game on. The Times reports this morning “a new survey of 103 MPs by the pollster Whitestone Insight, commissioned by the anti-euthanasia group Care Not Killing, suggests that more MPs now oppose the bill than support it.”
The poll, carried out over March and April, at the same time the bill committee was scrutinising the draft legislation, asked those surveyed how they intended to vote. Four in 10 (42 per cent) said against, one-third (36 per cent) for, 13 per cent were undecided, 5 per cent planned to abstain and 8 per cent preferred not to say. I suppose 103 is not a bad sample size out of 650 MPs.
Data was weighted to be representative of the House of Commons by party, region, length of service, sex and age, as well as to ensure the sample was representative of the second reading vote.
There is no previous survey to compare this with. Dr Gordon Macdonald, CEO of Care Not Killing, commented: “This bombshell poll confirms that the more MPs hear about assisted suicide and what it entails, the less likely they are to support changing the law.”
But one strong supporter of the bill in Westminster retorted: “the Times has an editorial line consistently opposed to assisted dyingand to give prominence to a so-called poll commissioned by an organisation that is vehemently opposed is not serious journalism. The paper—like every other media outlet that is looking to run ‘support draining away’ stories—has so far failed to identify a single MP other than two from Reform who have switched to opposing the bill”.
1st May
3pm
If there were anything as unseemly as a race to become the 11th US state to make assisted dying legal, New York (see below) would be neck-and-neck with Delaware. I’m told by a source closely involved that it is likely to become law in Delaware this month. Some might say about time too.
Delaware, the US’s second smallest state, has the distinction of passing the very same assisted dying bill twice. The Ron Silverio/Heather Block Delaware End-of-Life Options Act is named after two terminally ill people who campaigned for the change in the law but died before it could come into effect. The bill, more prosaically known as HB 140, most recently passed in the state senate just before Easter: just 10 months after the exact same body first approved the exact same bill.
Why this delay and duplication? Because the first time it passed the then governor vetoed it, despite an opinion poll indicating 72 per cent of people in the state support assisted dying.
Governor John Carney, a devout Catholic, wrote: “although I understand not everyone shares my views, I am fundamentally and morally opposed to state law enabling someone, even under tragic and painful circumstances, to take their own life.
“As I have shared consistently, I am simply not comfortable letting this piece of legislation become law. For the reasons set forth above, I am hereby vetoing House Bill 140 with House Amendment 1 by returning it to the House of Representatives without my signature.”
The main sponsor of the bill, Paul Baumbach, who had campaigned for the change for ten years, fulminated: “I think he’s ill-informed and ill-advised, and I think he did a major decision that is going to be harming people who least deserve it, those who are dying.” He added: “I think it’s heartless. It’s unfortunately not a surprise. We’ve seen the governor disregard the vast majority of Delawareans multiple times, but I thought there was more humanity in him, and I was wrong.”
But now there is a new man in Delaware’s historic Governor’s Mansion. Matt Meyer promised in his election campaign he would sign the bill: “Everyone deserves the right to a compassionate and humane end to life’s journey when faced with a terminal illness.
“I stand with those who support medical autonomy and the right to die with dignity and, if elected, will make this law. We must continue together to champion policies that respect the personal freedoms of all Delawareans.”
The bill would allow “a terminally ill individual who is an adult resident of Delaware to request and self-administer medication to end the individual’s life in a humane and dignified manner if both the individual’s attending physician or attending advanced practice registered nurse (APRN) and a consulting physician or consulting APRN agree on the individual’s diagnosis and prognosis and believe the individual has decision-making capacity, is making an informed decision, and is acting voluntarily”.
The safeguards include that: “An individual cannot qualify for medication to end life under this chapter solely because of the individual’s age or disability. A mental illness or mental health condition is not a qualifying condition under this Act and a mental illness or mental health condition may be the reason that an individual does not have decision-making capacity and is thus ineligible for medication to end their life in a humane and dignified manner.”
It will still face opposition. All the state’s Republican senators opposed the bill, along with three Democrats. According to one report, “many of them said they were concerned it was a slippery slope that could lead to the guardrails being chipped away to allow people with disabilities, the mentally ill and the elderly to request the medication”.
And what happened to the governor who behaved like a rather unconstitutional monarch and vetoed a law passed by the legislature because he didn’t agree with it? He resigned. Not because the voters were angry at this exercise of power. Not for the reason the first governor of Delaware, then known as “the president”, resigned in 1777 (he was forced to because he was captured by a British warship). Carey’s reason for going wasn’t quite as exciting—he wanted to become mayor of Wilmington, the state’s largest city.
30th April
It's not just in the UK that a series of votes on assisted dying are taking place. There is also a flurry of activity across the Atlantic. If both supporters and opponents are to be believed, New York is set to become the 11th US state to legalise assisted dying and the first to do so for four years. According to reports, the state assembly has just taken a bold step towards changing the law—now progress depends on whether the senate will also allow a vote.
Although there have been plenty of debates on such bills in state senates and assemblies, before New York none had passed since assisted dying became legal in New Mexico in 2021. In the coming months, we may also see critical decisions on assisted dying in Delaware, Missouri, Illinois and Montana. More on these over the next few days.
There’s a pattern that will be familiar to anyone watching the debate here: against a background of overwhelming, but perhaps not very well thought out, public support, campaigning politicians bring forward a proposed law. It’s then up to their very cautious fellow lawmakers, who tend to be fearful of both making real mistakes and prompting a backlash from their electorate as a fierce opposition makes hay. There always will be plenty of strong emotion on all sides as this is truly a matter of life and death—but at least in the UK it isn’t party political. Everything is political in the Disunited States of America, and medically aided dying is no exception.
The vote passed yesterday in New York’s state assembly and reports suggest supporters of change have also got enough backing in the senate to bring it to a vote there. But the outcome still hangs in the balance. “State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins acknowledged that the proposal has gained traction over the last few years and that she would discuss it with members. She did not commit to bringing it up for a floor vote,” the New York Post reported.
“The conversation had begun in earnest last year. So I think we have time to look at it seriously,” Stewart-Cousins said.
The proposed legislation would change the state’s public health law to allow a terminally ill adult with a prognosis of six months or less to request medication that would “hasten” his or her death. It would also set out the responsibilities of health care providers, as well as their protections and immunities.
It will face stiff opposition from not only the New York State Catholic Conference but also the Murdoch-owned New York Post, which blasted the plan in a recent editorial, arguing: “New York’s progressive legislators have reportedly gotten behind what may be their most morally disgraceful bill yet: an assisted-suicide legalisation push… a slap in the face to the nearly 3 million Catholics in the state who oppose assisted suicide on religious grounds…Even under the sanest and stablest of governments, state-sanctioned euthanasia is obscene... Here, it would be a Boschian nightmare.”
The Post, a Sun-style tabloid, is known for its verbal brutality, but it isn’t every day it adjectivises the name of a 15th-century Dutch painter in order to do so. But clearly his hellish, trippy visions rather suit not so much this debate as the state of the US today.
28th April
With just three weeks to go before the assisted dying bill returns to the Commons, it is worth looking at what happens next—and what is going on behind the scenes. Obviously, the biggest danger to the bill is if enough MPs change their minds from last year. But there’s little evidence of that happening and the potential pitfalls are a lot more technical, and all about running out of time.
Private members’ bills usually have their report stage, when MPs vote on the committee’s amendments and any new ones, and third reading—the vote on the whole bill as amended—in the same five-hour sitting. If they haven’t got it all done by half past two in the afternoon it is often curtains for the proposed law. It goes to the back of the queue with other private members’ bills waiting for their report stage. An Institute for Government report says: “This can, in practice, spell the end of the bill’s passage, particularly late in the session when there are a large number of bills waiting. Attempts to talk out a bill are, therefore, most likely at this stage.”
(This comes from its handy guide, which I am cribbing from—although the dates in the piece are now wrong, as it was written before the date got shoved back into May.)
How likely is this? No one except, perhaps, the Commons speaker Lindsay Hoyle, knows. For it is up to the speaker which amendments he accepts—all, none or somewhere in between—and how he bundles them together. Given that uncertainty there’s a general expectation that if more time is needed it will be found. This could mean either that the report stage will be on 16th May and the third reading on 13th June or, if the report stage needs even more time, it could run across both those dates, pushing the big vote back until 20th June.
Then, if the bill does clear these hurdles it goes to the Lords. The number crunchers are fairly certain a majority of peers are in favour so that is not the danger. The problem could come from new amendments. The Lords doesn’t tend to amend private members’ bills, because that is likely to mean the bill will die.
Indeed, the government’s own guidelines say: “Given the limited amount of parliamentary time available for private members’ bills, this is likely to kill the bill. Time for private members’ bills is even more limited in the Lords, so departments should contact the Government Whips’ Office in the Lords to discuss Lords handling in good time before the bill reaches the Lords, and discuss any proposed amendments with the Government Whips’ Office in both Houses. Government time is given to private members’ bills in the Commons only in the most exceptional circumstances.” In this case, of course, killing the bill is exactly what many desire—and I’ve heard of one former cabinet minister loudly proclaiming that is his intention.
He is likely to be thwarted simply because the conventional wisdom relies on the supposition that the bill would fail because there would be no time for the Commons to consider new Lords amendments. But it is widely expected that the government will extend this session—the next King’s Speech will probably not be until spring next year, giving plenty of time to consider the amendments. But it all means this will be a long, strung-out process strewn with unexpected obstacles.
