Fears Are Justified

Dan Hitchens writes:

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.