Cliff Notes
- The committee voted 15 to 7 to remove the High Court judge’s oversight from the assisted dying bill, with Leadbeater asserting this change enhances the law’s robustness and safety for terminally ill individuals.
- Despite positive dialogues about a proposed commissioner and multi-disciplinary panel, 26 Labour MPs expressed concerns that removing judicial oversight undermines promises made by bill proponents and diminishes protections for vulnerable people.
- The dissenting MPs described the proposal as creating an unaccountable body rather than increasing judicial safeguards, labelling the legislative process as disorganised.
MPs vote to scrap judge sign-off in assisted dying bill
After the bill committee voted 15 to seven in favour of dropping the High Court judge’s role, Leadbeater said the change would make the law “even more robust”.
“And it is much safer than the current ban on assisted dying, which leaves terminally ill people and their families without any such protections at all,” she said.
“I have been encouraged that in the course of this debate there have been positive responses to the proposal for a commissioner and a multi-disciplinary panel from colleagues across the committee, regardless of how they voted at [its] second reading.
“That tells me that whatever our views on the Bill itself, there is a shared commitment to getting protections for terminally ill adults right. That means we are doing our job.”
However a group of 26 of her fellow Labour MPs warned that scrapping the High Court’s oversight “breaks the promises made by proponents of the bill, fundamentally weakens the protections for the vulnerable and shows just how haphazard this whole process has become”.
In a statement, the group – made up almost entirely of MPs who voted against the bill at second reading – said: “It does not increase judicial safeguards but instead creates an unaccountable quango and to claim otherwise misrepresents what is being proposed.”