December 5, 2024 - 10:00am
When it comes to assisted suicide, the “slippery slope” idea is a simple one. The first argument is that if you start making exceptions to suicide prevention based on tragic cases, you will soon discover new tragic cases which require new exceptions. If the terminally ill, why not the non-terminally ill who may be suffering even more? If physical suffering, why not mental suffering? If adults, why not children?
The second argument is that, even if the categories don’t change, the practice will. Strict requirements will turn into box-ticking, corners will be cut, rules creatively interpreted. Against this, Kim Leadbeater has insisted that her bill is simply unchangeable. “The model being proposed here,” she told the Commons during Friday’s debate, “is nothing like what happens in Belgium. It is nothing like what happens in Canada. There are strict, stringent criteria, and if the House chooses to pass the Bill, those criteria cannot be changed.”
But her co-sponsors — the MPs whose names are printed on the bill — seem not to agree. This week, Jake Richards MP — one of those co-sponsors and perhaps the bill’s most vocal Parliamentary defender after Leadbeater herself — published a striking article for LabourList, discussing various problems with the legislation. Among other things, Richards addressed the criticisms of Lord Justice Munby, who wrote that “in relation to the involvement of the judges in the process, the Leadbeater Bill falls lamentably short of providing adequate safeguards.”
Richards’s response is straightforward: the judicial safeguard can mostly be dispensed with. He writes that “the general challenge is to ensure the rules of court and other regulations provide for an exercise which is not mere ‘rubber stamping’ but not so time-consuming as to make the purpose redundant.” What’s more, he claims, “it may suffice for legislation to provide for third-party applications should they feel the statutory criteria had not been met. Indeed, perhaps this should have been the only means by which courts were involved.”
The phrasing is a little convoluted, but the meaning seems clear: the “only” time when courts should be “involved” is when there is a “third-party application”. In other words, when somebody who isn’t the patient or the doctor wants to challenge the approval of the assisted suicide.
Such challenges would be an exception, potentially a tiny one. After all, under Clause 9(2)(f) there is no obligation for the doctors or patient to inform anyone else. As Richards conceded online this week, this is an immediate problem with his suggestion.
In addition, if there are cases of coercive control or pressure from relatives, those are — by definition — among the least likely cases to receive an application. Court fees can run to hundreds of pounds. And — as Lord Justice Munby said, and as Lord Sumption has also pointed out — it is unclear whether the judge will be able to do more than check the paperwork.
So those “third-party applications” would form a potentially tiny minority of cases. In the rest, there would be zero judicial safeguard. Leadbeater’s most impressive safeguard, under her co-sponsor’s proposal, would effectively be abandoned.
Meanwhile, another co-sponsor is openly talking about a more expansive law. During last week’s debate Green MP Siân Berry told Parliament she hoped it would be considered that “other jurisdictions already allow for different time limits, or no time limits for terminally ill people, or a separate time limit for a number of well-known, specific neurological diseases, in which the period of terrible suffering can be much longer than six months.” Berry also believes that some of the safeguards might be dispensed with at committee stage, as “additional hurdles people might not want to have to take”.
Another co-sponsor of the bill, Conservative Kit Malthouse, said regarding other countries and particularly Canada: “We should not pretend that somehow we are special or different. They have thought as profoundly on these issues as we have over the past 10 years. We can learn from them.” Although Malthouse said the system in England and Wales would naturally be different, he did not criticise the Canadian system as Leadbeater has done. Rather, he suggested it could be a useful example to look into.
Yesterday morning I asked Leadbeater over email to comment on her co-sponsors’ remarks. At the time of writing, she has not responded.
Although we don’t know their names, we do know from a Telegraph report from October that “as many as 38 Labour politicians, including 13 who hold government roles,” wanted “the bill to go further and to apply not just to the terminally ill, but more broadly to those ‘incurably suffering’”.
The argument over the Leadbeater bill is not primarily about slippery slopes. It will be more about the danger to the vulnerable, and about how far it will corrupt our healthcare system. But for those worried about a slippery slope, the last week has offered plenty of evidence that their fears are justified.
Dan Hitchens is Senior Editor of First Things and co-author of the forthcoming Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Johnson.
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SubscribeTo argue that the Left has turned Fascist is quite simple too. They have fully embraced the transhumanism and bio-Fascism of the future. For that is the evolution of liberal individualism, no longer requiring any historical precedent.
They
Are in the business of immanentizing the eschaton. Beware those who think they can make heaven on earth.
Yeah! That’s what I was going to say!
They are bipolar. They vacillate between fascists and Marxist.
Through the back door it’s a short journey.
Ha, ha, ha! What a massive surprise!
What happens in Scotland? Will we have the situation that people will travel from one part of Britain to another – to get what they want.
To get cheap housing?
This is #BeKind 2.0, isn’t it? Sterilising children who think they’re trans was the original #BeKind orthodoxy, and now this. Anyone who opposes either of these transhumanist measures is not Being Kind, and is therefore some kind of cruel, antisocial monster.
I mourn the old days, when people respected one another’s opinions and supported their right to hold them. We’re veering towards left wing authoritarianism, and I say this as a life long leftie. The Left claim the BeKind moral high ground, and monster any who disagree.
It is actually kind, and compassionate, to express concerns that assisted suicide legislation will be misused. It is also kind to want children to be protected from unnecessary, irreversible medication that will leave some sterile for life, and most with long-lasting unwanted effects.
We must be clear about which policies are really based on kindness, and resist being monstered by the woke Left.
If I were to flip your comment over, I would say that the Christian Right goes on about kindness, compassion and “protecting children”, but it seems perfectly comfortable with the fact that its clergy sexually abuse minors on an industrial scale.
Who could have possibly predicted the emergence of mission creep on this matter?
Hey look it turns out the slope wasn’t just slippery it was oiled and is more of a vertical drop. Who could’ve predicted this? Only everyone who was opposed to this.
And since you Brits have seceded control of your healthcare entirely over to the government don’t be surprised when in 5 years from now there are adverts plastered all over London talking about “The noble choice.” And “I’ve chosen the better decision for my children.” Meanwhile the quality of palliative care will get worse and doctors will be bringing it up more and more often.
All the defenders of the bill on this site liked to point out all the wonderful places that things like this worked ignoring the fact that the UK bill much more closely resembled the legislation in places where it is working out poorly rather than the places it was supposedly successful.
Which are the places in which it is working poorly? Speaking as a resident of Australia, it seems to be working well here.
Leadbetter says: “There are strict, stringent criteria, and if the House chooses to pass the Bill, those criteria cannot be changed.”
How can an MP not understand that if the House can choose to pass the Bill as it stands, it can choose to change the criteria in the future?
The direction of travel is clear and the terminus is a station named ‘Universal Right to Die’.
Ok. And?
See the article on Canada. He’s wrong. It is at woke hell. Progressive do you know better. And they will weaken the guard rails. As night follows day
Maybe the “guard rails” do need weakening. The UK proposal is after all more restrictive than that operating in other countries”.
If the Bill is passed, with or without safeguards, it can and probably will be amended in the future.
That could be said of any Bill.
Money will be saved.
Pretty funny they are looking to Canada for pointers. I guess aspiring to being in a death cult is all the rage.
It seems only reasonable that Britain should look to the Canadian legislation. After all, it has been in place for a while.
They obviously didn’t get the message.
Maybe they got the message that it was a good thing.
That definitely is a scary prospect. People in government deciding on who lives are worth spending money on. Historically, that has not gone well.
The only safeguard needed is to have a guarantor signing each euthanasia.
If subsequent court challenge finds the criteria were not met beyond resonable doubt, the guarantor should be euthanized too.
Having the decision makers put their skin in the game will make sure that we won’t get tedious box-ticking or weaseling, but instead very reasonable decisions.
I am sure the guy who recently challenged the responsibility of the CEO of the biggest US healthcorp did more to restore medical accountability than thousands of hours of debate.
Who would have the legal standing as a third party to intervene? Strangers to the process who are suspicious of a particular case? We don’t allow this in contract or tort cases, just to take a couple of examples.
Extension of the act is inevitable; we can be certain that it will gradually be applied to cases not envisioned in the original legislation. To think that this act will be unique in being applied as written is naive. The important debate is not about how to rein in the functionaries who administer the act, but to decide whether the benefits to society of its extension are greater than their costs.