Scrutiny and Fairness

As the Committee also refuses to hear evidence from the Hourglass elder abuse charity, from Standing Together Against Domestic Abuse, and from the British Geriatrics Society, Yuan Yi Zhu writes:

Last November, when the House of Commons voted on her assisted suicide legislation, Kim Leadbeater told her colleagues that the Bill would face ‘further robust debate and scrutiny’, including ‘line-by-line scrutiny in Committee’. But judging by the disgraceful scenes at her Bill committee’s first formal sitting on Tuesday, Kim Leadbeater and her supporters have given up on any pretence of caring about scrutiny and fairness.

The procedural shenanigans began much earlier. First, Leadbeater, who gets to choose the committee’s membership as the sponsor of the Private Members’ Bill, subject to approval by the committee of selection, stacked it with strong supporters of assisted suicide (including five co-sponsors of her Bill and two government ministers who voted in favour of it), whilst turning down requests from experienced parliamentarians with relevant expertise to join the committee.

The handpicked committee belatedly issued a call for evidence in January, leaving little time for interested parties to send in submissions. Leadbeater then sent a list of witnesses for the committee to hear in person, only to submit a new list hours before its meeting this week.

Without any sense of irony, Leadbeater called her witness list ‘extremely balanced’. The numbers tell another story. Of the eight witnesses from foreign jurisdictions on Ms Leadbeater’s list, not a single one is opposed to assisted suicide, despite numerous foreign experts warning that Britain should not emulate their countries in legalising assisted suicide.

Of the nine lawyers on her list, not a single one is opposed to assisted suicide, despite numerous distinguished lawyers and former judges raising alarm bells about her Bill. Perhaps Leadbeater, who had to apologise for potentially misleading the House after she wrongly implied the judiciary was in favour of her Bill, did not want to be called out again by members of the legal profession. In total, according to MP Danny Kruger, of the names put before the committee, 38 were in favour of the Bill and the principle of assisted dying, while only 20 were opposed.

The committee will not hear from a single witness representing disability rights’ organisations, even though hundreds of them have raised concerns about the risk of coercion for disabled people. Not a single witness will speak about Canada’s disastrous ‘medical assistance in dying’ programme. Kit Malthouse, a committee member and one of the Bill’s co-sponsors, blithely dismissed Canada as irrelevant, even though British pro-assisted suicide organisations have been explicit about drawing their inspiration from the Canadian regime.

Most egregious of all, the pro-assisted suicide members of the committee, including both government ministers, voted down a proposal to hear oral evidence from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, which has expressed concerns about the Bill’s approach to mental capacity and coercion, because in Malthouse’s words, ‘it is not necessarily in the interests of time’ as the General Medical Council could represent the view of psychiatrists. Leadbeater later U-turned and allowed the College to testify: presumably she realised how contemptible it would be to exclude them.

The pro-assisted suicide majority on the committee voted to hold much of the session in private, which shielded their discussion from public scrutiny. Normally, a bill committee sits in private for a few minutes at the beginning of a session to discuss lines of questioning; on Tuesday the committee sat in private for more than an hour. We will never know what was said during this time, no record is kept.

It appears that Leadbeater has behaved since the Bill’s introduction as though her feelings override genuine concerns about the legislation. She behaved in the same petulant manner during the committee session, making aggressive points of order when she was challenged by other members. At one point, she angrily denied that the Bill had received significant input from pro-assisted suicide campaign groups, despite her close public association with the pro-assisted suicide group Dying in Dignity, which has made donations to her.

Jake Richards, another co-sponsor of the Bill, intervened only to describe two potential witnesses, a distinguished Chancery barrister and a Cambridge academic, as a ‘junior barrister’ and ‘junior lecturer’, while denying that he was ‘belittling’ them. Having called the witness list ‘objectively impressive and rigorous’, during the session it became apparent that he did not know who was on it, when he named two retired judges who were not on the list as witnesses.

The truth is that, to the Leadbeater Bill’s core supporters, the end justifies the means. After promising their colleagues that a vote at second reading meant further debate, Ms Leadbeater and her co-sponsors are trying to steamroll over their opponents. The many MPs who voted tor the Bill at second reading despite their reservations should watch the committee’s proceedings closely and ask themselves if they really want to associate their names permanently with this flawed legislation.

Dan Hitchens writes:

Back in November, MPs with doubts over the assisted suicide bill were told to wait and see. When introducing the bill, Labour’s Kim Leadbeater told the House of Commons that voting for it was not so much a vote for assisted suicide as “a vote to continue the debate. It is a vote to subject the Bill to line-by-line scrutiny in Committee.” That was the deal, and many wavering MPs seemed willing to take it.

Yesterday, the first meeting of the committee, was Leadbeater’s chance to show just how strong that scrutiny would be. First, we learnt that Leadbeater had introduced a last-minute motion: the crucial part of the meeting — the debate on which witnesses to call — would be behind closed doors. Journalists and the public would be asked to leave; Hansard would be left blank; those of us watching parliamentlive.tv would see a message reading “Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is currently in private.” Leadbeater said this was to protect the “privacy” of witnesses, though other committee members responded that they couldn’t see why that would be an issue. But there was another aspect to the story.

As we discovered during the public parts of the meeting, a major row was breaking out within the committee. The root cause is the powers given to Leadbeater with a private member’s bill such as this. With a Government bill, the pro side and the anti side both pick witnesses. Here, although Leadbeater asked for suggestions, the list was all up to her; she sent round a provisional list last week, and then an updated version at 10 o’clock yesterday morning. While the committee had a chance to amend it, Leadbeater had picked the committee as well, and in yesterday’s votes all challenges to her were easily defeated.

So why all the debate over the list? Simply put, it contains a surprisingly large number of vocal advocates for assisted suicide, and a noticeably small number of opponents — or even neutral figures who might raise difficult points.

There are eight witnesses from other countries, and they all back a change in the law. For example, there is no room for Theo Boer, a member of the Dutch Health Council who once enthusiastically worked for the euthanasia review board but now thinks his country made a terrible mistake.

Of the nine lawyers invited to speak, six are active supporters of assisted suicide and at least two of the remainder seem to be neutral. The committee will hear from Sir Nicholas Mostyn, the former senior judge who backs a law change. It will not hear from former senior judges who have criticised the bill — such as Sir James Munby, who says the safeguards fall “lamentably short”, or Sir David Bodey. There is nobody representing a disability organisation when the biggest, Disability Rights UK, leads a coalition of 350 such organisations against a change in the law.

Labour MP Simon Opher defended the imbalance, claiming that “a split of 38 to 20 […] is appropriate and actually reflects the vote in the House.” But the House split 55-45 just on whether to keep debating the bill. This is 66-34 in favour of passing it. And if scrutiny is the goal, then it should really be the other way round, given that it’s your opponents who are more likely to make you clarify points and address weaknesses.

The most startling moment of all was when Labour MP Naz Shah proposed an amendment to hear from the Royal College of Psychiatrists on crucial questions such as capacity and coercion. Leadbeater’s committee voted it down, by 14 votes to eight. Only this morning, after a storm of bad publicity, did Leadbeater decide to invite the Royal College after all.

Some MPs were alarmed by all this. Conservative James Cleverly tweeted yesterday: “This is not reassuring me that getting good legislation is the priority for the proponents of the bill.” Fellow Tory Saqib Bhatti claimed that it “completely undermines the promises made at second reading […] Plenty of MPs relied on those promises and lent their votes accordingly.”

How many MPs share those concerns? We won’t know until Third Reading, possibly as soon as April, when MPs get their last chance to vote. Then, Leadbeater’s strategy may turn out to have been recklessly overconfident — or brilliantly ruthless. Either way, yesterday undermined the idea that a Parliamentary committee is an impartial process operating above the messy realities of politics. To all appearances, Kim Leadbeater is playing to win.

And Nikki da Costa writes:

On Tuesday, the Committee charged with the detailed scrutiny of the Assisted Dying/Assisted Suicide bill voted to exclude the Royal College of Psychiatrists from giving evidence.

Despite coercion, mental state, and the role of psychiatrists being a key area of concern for many, Bill sponsor, Kim Leadbeater MP, led 14 MPs, including the two Government ministers, to oppose hearing from psychiatrists. Just 8 said they should be heard.

It was the second decision the Committee took that day. The first was to back the sponsor’s last-minute decision that the Committee should sit in private to discuss the list of who she had chosen to give oral evidence. A final list was only circulated to members at 10am that morning.

In just two hours we saw the extent of the sponsor’s control of the Committee, the advantage of being able to choose every member and every witness, and how outgunned concerned MPs are.

The next morning after public outcry a U-turn was performed. The sponsor announced they would, after all, hear from psychiatrists. Disability groups remain excluded.

Whatever side you are on, this does not bode well for careful, considered line-by-line scrutiny and improvement of the bill.

First, the Committee is much more strongly in favour of the bill then the House was at second reading (61/39 v 55/45). The sponsor is aided by Government inclusion of two pro-bill ministers permitted to vote as they choose.

Second, the ‘pro-bill’ side has been chosen for strength. Kim benefits from the moral support and presence of strong allies, including four co-sponsors, all willing to speak up even in favour of clearly daft positions like blocking the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Half (7) were elected prior to 2024.

In contrast, those on the Committee who voted against the bill are significantly disadvantaged. Only 3 of their number served prior to 2024, and some of the strongest Labour voices – such as Jess Asato, Meg Hillier and James Frith – have been excluded. Naz Shah – the only Labour MP with any experience of Parliament – is left to do the heavy lifting, alongside Conservative Danny Kruger MP.

In choosing Danny Kruger MP, one of the most vocal opponents, Kim has been canny. She will know how he riles up Labour MPs, and how difficult it will be for them to side with a Conservative, notably outspoken and on the right. No matter how reasonable the proposal, support will be portrayed as tribal transgression. He is to be their hate figure. And Team Leadbeater will do everything possible to portray this as a ‘one-man fight’ to discourage others joining in.

You could see it within the first ten minutes that the Committee did sit in public. Danny Kruger, speaking against sitting in private and making the case for transparency, was interrupted three times by Kim Leadbeater with ‘Points of Order’ that were not – as the Chair pointed out – actually Points of Order.

Her irritation at being challenged was clear.

We don’t know what happened in the hour the Committee sat in private, but when the MPs returned to a public sitting the dynamic was clear. You could see how difficult it was to challenge the sponsor; for Labour MPs to support a proposal from Danny Kruger; the quiet determination of Naz Shah and the courage it took for Sojan Joseph to back her up on the need to hear from psychiatrists.

Observing that, feeling the dynamic in the room, it will have made it that much harder for concerned MPs to push back in future meetings. Nobody should underestimate how difficult it is for MPs to speak up in a room where they know they will be labelled uncollaborative if they dissent.

Witnesses could help to redress that but it’s worth noting they skew towards a pro-bill stance. Perhaps that’s why they do not want to hear from Disability Rights groups?

Committee members are also at a further disadvantage as a result of Tuesday’s decisions. In agreeing to back-to-back sittings on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, rather than the more usual practice of an interval between each sitting day, MPs will have little time to prepare for the next day’s sitting, and all amendments for the following week have to be tabled on a Thursday. They’ve lost the weekend. Time to reflect on what is needed, and to get each clause right, has been curtailed procedurally.

Add to this, that ‘the opposition’ have no secretariat while pro-bill MPs and the sponsor can draw on the support of well-funded campaign group Dignity in Dying. Annual reports reveal the group has been typically spending £1.6m a year to secure this legislation.

At the risk of depressing readers further, they should also be aware that if an amendment is pushed to a vote in Committee and rejected it cannot be put to the House as a whole at report stage. This puts concerned MPs in an invidious position; they dare not risk pushing matters to a division on amendments that really matter unless they have a clear indication of support from colleagues. As a result, any changes that are made are likely to be highly curated and the risk is that they are made in order to appear reasonable, rather than to ensure the bill is as good as it possibly can be.

Despite appearances, this is not something assisted dying advocates should be cheered by. Each element undermines faith in the Committee. At the end of this process you want the Committee and its members lauded for the diligence of their approach, and the hard work to improve the bill.

Kim must do everything possible now to combat the perception that is taking hold. It is in her interests to explain every motion or procedural mechanism she seeks to use, to give advance warning, to foster co-operation, and to engage with genuine concerns. And MPs outside the Committee need to show their support for those doing the hard job in the Committee room on both sides – they’ll need moral support to keep making the case for improvements to the bill.