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
23rd June
Cynics used to say the House of Lords is where MPs go to die. Now some are arguing the second chamber should be where Kim Leadbeater’s bill receives its quietus.
There’s no doubt, after the narrow victory secured by Leadbeater on Friday with a much reduced majority, opponents feel emboldened. Catherine Robinson, spokesperson for the charity Right To Life UK, which campaigns against what it calls “assisted suicide”, said: “Although the bill passed the Commons, momentum remains with its opponents, with support consistently falling every time MPs have considered it. The bill leaves the Commons lacking a majority, with fewer than half of all MPs voting for it at its final stage.
“We will be fighting this bill at every stage in the House of Lords, where we are confident it can be overturned given its continued loss of support.”
Others will feel confident that would be a constitutional outrage. Esther Rantzen, the woman who extracted the promise from the prime minister that led to this bill, told the BBC that she did not “need to teach the House of Lords how to do their job”.
“People who are adamantly opposed to this bill—and they have the perfect right to oppose it—will try and stop it going through the Lords.”
But she said the duty of peers was to make sure “law is actually created by the elected chamber, which is the House of Commons, who have voted this through”.
We will hear a lot in the coming weeks and months of the proper duties of the Lords, but I have been reflecting on what happened on Friday and why. I have a lot of sympathy with my wife Jo shouting at a particularly virulent opponent on the radio: “Can’t you just put a sock in it for a moment?” I too feel fury at those continuing to peddle what I regard as falsehoods about the bill, and even more exasperation at those MPs I consider feeble-minded for falling for what is little better than a string of lies. And yet this polemical self is at war with what I regard as an imperative of good journalism—to understand the motives and worldview of those one profoundly disagrees with. So I’ve been trying to work out if there is any merit in their arguments. That will be coming soon.
