THE failure of the assisted suicide Bill to pass into law spells a bad week for ‘the Killing Parliament’ of Sir Keir Starmer.
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill will fall when the Parliamentary session ends because it did not complete the final day of its Committee Stage and pass through the House of Lords.
Its demise represents a major setback for the Prime Minister, who, for all his dishonesty about the Government being neutral on assisted suicide and euthanasia, wanted the Bill to succeed.
Indeed, Sir Keir went on ITV News ahead of the general election to promise assisted suicide campaigner Dame Esther Rantzen that he would change the law just for her. A policy document leaked to the Guardian revealed that assisted suicide became Labour Party policy under his leadership and that a Private Member’s Bill was selected simply as the vehicle to deliver it, with Kim Leadbeater the willing lackey.
The Bill failed because even Larry the Cat could see that assisted suicide was a stepping stone into full-blown Dutch or Canadian-style euthanasia, not least because some of those who were campaigning for a change in the law were so confident of its success that they were often terrifyingly indiscreet about their true intentions.
Mounting fears about the implications of the Bill subsequently prompted peers not to ‘filibuster’ or ‘deny democracy’ – as proponents such as Lord Falconer and Lord Baker of Dorking have alleged – but to do their jobs properly.
In the Lords the Bill met with unprecedented opposition as nearly 80 peers tabled or signed amendments highlighting concerns and 131 peers spoke against it.
The more they studied the Bill the more obvious it was to them that it was unworkable, and the more they grew anxious about clear dangers to public safety and the futility of safeguards, which appeared weak and cosmetic, there only to reassure obtuse politicians and the public that everything would be okay but destined to be stripped away by the courts once the Bill became law.
Contrary to the Bill being sabotaged, Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, the Paralympian gold medallist and disability rights campaigner, told Medscape that it fell simply because ‘there are too many gaps in it’.
Her view was shared by Tory leader Kemi Badenoch who described the Bill as ‘hopelessly flawed’. https://pa.media/blogs/pa-editors-picks/assisted-dying-bill-runs-out-of-time-but-supporters-vow-fight-is-not-over/
‘It’s something that Keir Starmer wants to see,’ said Ms Badenoch. ‘He said he made a promise to Esther Rantzen. I think he should focus on the rest of the country.’
With U-turn after U-turn and then the Mandelson scandal, it would appear that some Labour MPs are finally waking up to the fact that anything this Prime Minister ‘wants to see’ is not necessarily a recommendation.
Some of them are now swapping sides to oppose the assisted suicide Bill which last year they supported.
Polling carried out by Whitestone Insight found that only 41 per cent of MPs surveyed can be relied upon to vote for assisted suicide again, while 45 per cent would vote no. Just 12 MPs are required to change their positions for the Bill to fail were it to be reintroduced into the Commons.
Furthermore, 61 per cent of MPs said they supported the constitutional authority of the House of Lords to amend, block or reject the legislation if safeguards are deemed inadequate. Only 28 per cent of MPs disagreed.
Another poll showed that public support for Ms Leadbeater’s Bill is also fading rapidly. Nor does the public support forcing assisted suicide on to the statute books via the Parliament Acts following its failure to progress through the Lords.
Alisdair Hungerford-Morgan of the Right to Life UK campaign group said the assisted suicide Bill was as a result ‘mortally wounded’.
He said: ‘The Bill has not failed because of a determined filibuster by a select few. This is a misleading and dishonest myth. Rather, it has failed because it is a badly drafted piece of legislation and after appropriate and necessary scrutiny peers have rightly determined that the Bill would not be safe or workable.
‘Using the Parliament Acts to bypass House of Lords scrutiny of a Private Members’ Bill would be unprecedented and wholly inappropriate. The Parliament Acts have never been used to force through a Private Members’ Bill before.’
It is a shame that the Lords could not show the same moral resilience and clarity of vision when the Crime and Policing Bill was hijacked by Labour MPs to decriminalise abortion up to birth as abortions in the UK hit record levels.
Are there never enough abortions for Starmer’s Killing Parliament? Apparently not, given that this month the Government announced bribes for abortion clinics to provide ‘lunch-hour’ or ‘same-day’ procedures.
The changes, announced as part of the Renewed Women’s Health Strategy for England, offer an incentivised alternative to the NHS Payment Scheme in which abortion clinics are typically paid separately for each part of the abortion pathway – the consultation, scan and procedure. The existing process encouraged abortion providers not to rush abortions but under the Government’s new approach (page 28) they will receive an enhanced bundled payment for providing all stages of the procedure together.
Sir Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP for Gainsborough, said the announcement provided further evidence that the Government is ‘intent on ever more extreme laws regarding life and death issues’.
He said: ‘Having just waved through abortion up to birth proposals tabled by one of its own MPs with minimal scrutiny and against the will of the public, it beggars belief that abortion providers may now be allowed to benefit financially from rushing women into abortions. Are abortion providers now writing government abortion policy?’
Surely Britain deserves a government more in keeping with its historic, cultural and religious respect for innocent human life and with the tradition of medicine that cures instead of kills.
