Then, the High Court must approve the request. Proponents of the bill have made much of this. There are 18 judges in the Family Division of the High Court. Proponents of the bill estimate that there might be 1,000 requests per year, which comes to about 50 applications per judge each year. Yet if we use Oregon — America is also a very big country, but assisted suicide promoters like to use Oregon as the best-case scenario — as a baseline, we are talking about more than 400 applications per judge a year.

Mind you, these 18 judges have other things to do as well: divorces, child custody, and the rest. At eight cases per week per judge, they cannot be anything but rubber stamps. Alternatively, cases could be passed to judges lower in the family courts hierarchy, which would mean that a big-money divorce case, say, will be dealt with by a more senior judge than an assisted suicide application.

Doctors are supposed to satisfy themselves that the applicant has not been coerced into making the request. But doctors are explicitly allowed to broach the subject of assisted suicide with their patients. Put yourself in the shoes of a patient on their sickbed. The doctor comes in and says, sotto voce: “Have you considered… making a dignified exit? We are very short of beds, you know.” Is this coercion? Not according to the Leadbeater bill, which proposes that killing yourself is healthcare, so why not discuss it with your favourite medical professional?

How would doctors detect signs of coercion, since they are not trained in spotting coercive control? Christine Jardine, a Scottish Liberal Democrat MP and a co-sponsor of the bill, had a fun time on Newsnight, when presenter Victoria Derbyshire asked her this exact question.

“I think we are talking about people who are in a heart-breaking situation,” began the hapless MP for Edinburgh West. “Hopefully, there would be questions, hopefully they would examine the person”. Pressed again for an answer, Jardine mumbled something about sincerity on the deathbed, then said that safeguards would be put in place if the bill is passed. “I thought this bill had the strictest safeguards in the world,” said the incredulous interviewer.

If, after watching the excruciating nine-minute clip, you still have trust in the bill’s safeguards, you are made of sterner stuff. Or perhaps you have your eye on Granny’s bungalow in a nice postcode. In any case, not even the bill’s boosters really believe what they say about the safeguards. This week, Humanists UK told MPs to vote for the bill even if they “are concerned about the practicalities” therein, which does not sound like a vote of confidence in the “strictest safeguards in the world”.

Meanwhile, Leadbeater has been telling MPs to vote in favour even if they are undecided about the issue, simply because it could be a long time before they get another chance at legalising assisted suicide.

She needn’t worry: Parliament has debated or voted on the issue in 2021, 2015, 2014, 2009, 2008, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, and 1997. And if Leadbeater and her backers have their way, Parliament will continue to do so year after year, until they get the outcome they want, at which point it becomes a “settled question”, sacrilegious even to question.

But this is not a settled question. In a world of collapsing healthcare and social care systems, of strained NHS budgets, and of greedy relatives, there is no way to legalise assisted suicide safely. Parliamentarians knew this, which is why they rejected it 10 times in the last 30 years. They must now do so again.

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Yuan Yi Zhu is an assistant professor at Leiden University and a research fellow of Harris Manchester College, Oxford.

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