1 week Ago By [email protected] (Dave Burke)
A long-awaited Bill that would legalise assisted dying will include lengthy jail terms for those who coercese someone to end their lives. On Tuesday new legislation, claimed to have the strictest safeguards anywhere in the world , will be put in front of MPs. If passed it will allow terminally ill people with less than six months to live to choose to end their lives.
New details reveal that two doctors must be satisfied a person is eligible, and a High Court judge must hear each application. There will be processes in place to ensure that they can change their mind. The controversial Bill follows campaigning by figures including Dame Esther Rantzen, who has stage 4 lung cancer.
Dame Esther says people like her should be allowed to "give up a life which has become unbearable". But the proposed assisted dying laws have sparked concerns, with Health Secretary Wes Streeting saying he will vote against it because he is worried about people feeling a "duty to die". Under the Bill.
put forward by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, a person must make two signed declarations in front of witnesses that they want to die. Anyone found to have pressured to deceived someone into ending their lives faces up to 14 years behind bars. Doctors will be required to verify that a person is eligible and that they're making an informed choice.
Once a High Court judge has agreed, the legislation states, at least two weeks must pass before a person is allowed to die. They will have to administer the fatal medication themselves, as it will still be illegal for anyone else - including medics - to give it to them. MPs will have their first chance to vote on the legislation on November 29.
If they back it, the Bill will go through lengthy scrutiny in the Commons and the Lords, during which time amendments can be made and voted on. It will need to be backed by both MPs and peers before becoming law, with seperate votes expected next year if the Bill clears all its hurdles. The last time assisted dying laws were put before the Commons, they were rejected by 330 to 212.
Ms Leadbeater said: “It has been nearly a decade since the Commons last voted on the issue and it could easily be as long before they get another opportunity, so I was determined to get this right. "I have consulted widely with medical and legal experts, the palliative care and hospice sectors, disability rights activists and faith leaders and have heard from many, many people with their own personal experience of why the current law is not fit for purpose. This has been a thorough and robust process.
" The Labour MP has she has looked at similar laws from other countries, saying her Bill " provides for the strictest safeguards anywhere in the world". In order to be eligible, a person must be terminally ill and expected to die within six months. They must be over 18 and registered with a GP for at least a year, have the mental capacity to decide when to end their life.
They will have to make two signed declarations in front of witnesses. As with the rejected 2015 Bill - which was supported by Keir Starmer - two doctors will have to support an application, which would be put forward to the High Court. The Chief Medical Officers in England and Wales, as well as the Health Secretary, would have to monitor and report back on the way the law is implemented.
Dr Gordon Macdonald, chief executive of campaign group Care Not Killing, claimed the Bill was being "rushed with indecent haste". He accused it of ignoring "the deep-seated problems in the UK’s broken and patchy palliative care system and the crisis in social care". Dr Macdonald pointed to research in the US state of Oregon, which found over half who chose assisted dying believed they had become a burden to friends and family.
He urged MPs to reject the Bill, which he said would "put pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives"..
