Alleged ‘abuse of parliamentary process’ prompts call to withdraw assisted dying bill

Right to Life UK, a charity that opposes the introduction of assisted suicide and euthanasia and campaigns instead for greater investment in palliative care, has called for the assisted suicide bill to be withdrawn after a leaked policy document suggested the Labour Party already planned to introduce assisted suicide by a private member’s bill, similar to Kim Leadbeater’s, before the election.

Alisdair Hungerford-Morgan, chief executive of Right To Life UK, said, “If these reports are true, the Government has misled MPs, Peers and the public about the bill. The bill must be withdrawn immediately, as it constitutes an abuse of parliamentary process for the Government to use a private member’s Bill to push through its own agenda, while claiming neutrality. Voters were not told that voting Labour would mean voting for a Government-backed assisted suicide law.

“Only last week, the Government took the highly irregular step of adding seven additional sitting Fridays for the bill after Christmas, including when the House of Lords was due to be in recess, to try to rush it through, further casting doubts on its impartiality. How many other genuine private member’s bills have been denied time because the Government has seemingly clogged up the process with an assisted suicide bill mired in controversy and widely deemed unfit for purpose?”

The leaked document, disclosed in a Guardian report on 3 December, implies that the party had a draft policy ready before the election and had decided to use the private member’s bill process after coming to power. This would raise concerns that Labour intentionally did not have assisted suicide debated as a manifesto commitment, but pushed quietly once the party was in government. Using a private member’s bill instead of a government bill means that the government could appear neutral, without the same level of accountability for the bill.

Keir Starmer has consistently voted in favour of assisted dying. However, Kim Leadbeater’s spokesman told the BBC that neither Leadbeater nor anybody on her behalf had any discussions with Downing Street or party leaders before she decided to adopt assisted dying as the subject of her private member’s bill, and that the government has remained “scrupulously neutral”.

A Labour source who opposes the bill, on the other hand, said the leak exposed “a shadow policymaking process, outside of the Labour manifesto, and with no consultation with MPs, unions or members, that sought to evade scrutiny on an issue of huge importance”.

“At a time when the Lords are being told democracy requires them to nod this bill through, it is now clear that the process in the Commons bypassed the usual processes for developing laws of this magnitude and that everyone has been misled about the nature and origin of the bill. It’s bitterly disappointing that No 10 have sought to use the machinery of government and other parties as cover on an issue that needs more scrutiny, not less.”

David Jones, professor of bioethics at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, told The Tablet: “The revelation that some senior people inside the Labour Party were planning to legalise assisted suicide through a private member’s bill, even before the election, is deeply concerning. It is not only that laws of this kind are inherently dangerous to the most vulnerable in society, and it not only that the bill currently in the House of Lords is particularly badly drafted. It now seems that the process by which the law was introduced also lacked transparency.

“Many will find it sinister that such perilous designs were discussed behind closed doors in a shadowy and unaccountable policy-making process. This proposal was not put before the electorate in the Labour Manifesto. The House of Lords are under no obligation to rubber stamp this legislation. They have the power to amend, delay or reject a bill that is not a government bill and they must use this power to prevent law being passed which is a threat to public safety.”

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