Grave

Professor Kevin Yuill writes:

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which began life in October 2024 as a private member’s bill, has finally collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions after 18 torturous months.

Why did it fail? The narrative from supporters of the bill is that it failed due to dirty tricks by opponents. They claim that the democratic will of the people was thwarted by the unelected and evil House of Lords (think men in top hats twirling their moustaches and women draped in Dalmatian fur).

Since more than half of the 1,200 proposed amendments to the bill were introduced by only seven peers, supporters of assisted suicide accused these few of deliberately attempting to block the bill’s passage, instead of fulfilling the unelected chamber’s role of revising and improving legislation passed by the House of Commons.

In a press conference that resembled the sad café meetings of losing teams on The Apprentice, Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, the bill’s sponsor, said ‘this isn’t what democracy looks like’. She complained in a piece for The Guardian that the bill had faced ‘a relentless campaign of misinformation’.

On that we can agree. The bill did face a relentless campaign of misinformation, but most of that came from those on her side – and they are continuing to misinform anyone who will listen to them. Now, they are desperately scrambling to get an MP gullible enough to reintroduce the bill and ram it down the throat of parliament using the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949, which would circumvent the Lords’ opposition.

In fact, whether one thinks an unelected chamber is a good idea or not (spiked would abolish it), it would be untrue to accuse peers, in this case, of simply being blockers. They pointed to the bill’s many problems and suggested solutions.

Many pro-assisted death figures mocked some of the amendments, such as one put forward that would require all those opting for assisted suicide to take a pregnancy test – seemingly including men and the elderly. But the vast majority of amendments were straightforward and humane. They included preventing doctors from raising the subject of assisted suicide with patients, inserting the phrase ‘conscientious objection’ so that doctors could opt out, and allowing care homes and hospices to opt out of having assisted suicides take place on their premises.

The truth is that even the most ardent supporters of assisted death felt that the bill was simply not good enough. As The Times – long supportive of legalising assisted suicide – said in an editorial, the Lords ‘spoke to the fact the bill is not fit for purpose’.

The lucky – or lunatic – MP who brings back a zombified resurrection of the bill will face formidable obstacles. For one thing, the public simply does not prioritise this issue, even if polls show soft support for it. Besides, how do those complaining that ‘this is not what democracy looks like’ explain Scotland, where a very similar bill fell in its democratically elected chamber, 69 votes to 57?

Supporters of the bill have the air of football fans who, after accepting VAR as an arbiter of when the game began, demand its removal after it’s used to award the opposition a penalty. Alastair Campbell has complained bitterly about the ‘conduct of a tiny minority in the House of Lords who have used every tactic imaginable to make sure the assisted-dying bill fails’. ‘I have long believed the Lords is simply not fit for purpose as a second chamber. This has cemented my view’, he said. This is the same Alastair Campbell who, in 2018, praised the Lords for placing obstacles in front of Brexit. Nor is he alone in his hypocrisy. Indeed, at the third reading in the Commons, wavering MPs were urged to back the bill by assisted-suicide campaigners, who insisted that it could be tidied up by the Lords…

The political climate has also changed since the bill’s introduction. UK prime minister Keir Starmer was an early champion, but his interest appears to have waned amid his political woes and plummeting popularity. In 2024, he could soft-whip the more than 200 new Labour MPs into supporting Leadbeater’s bill, trading on their gratitude for delivering them a seat in the Commons. He dare not risk raising such a divisive issue today. Indeed, the PM has made clear that no additional time will be given to this bill by the government.

Reintroducing the bill would also be far from straightforward. As the Hansard Society has noted, it would take an unusual combination of circumstances for a private member’s bill to be passed using the Parliament Acts. It would also be unprecedented. A backbench MP would need to get it through the Commons in the limited time available. MPs would then have to vote again on identical – and identically inadequate – legislation. The chances that a bill with a majority of just 23 at third reading (down from the 55 at second reading) will pass, particularly after the level of criticism it has received, are low.

The bill failed – just as it did in Scotland – in part because of the strategy of Dignity in Dying, the main force behind both pieces of legislation. Rather than brave political discussion, rather than campaign for a referendum like the one in Slovenia last year (which was also rejected), Dignity in Dying sought to schmooze important celebrities, journalists and, ultimately, politicians. They tried to glamourise death, and it simply did not work.

What the bill’s defeat really reveals is that the more people hear about and discuss assisted suicide, the more they dislike it. It tells us that politics works, that campaigns attempting to push important legislation over the heads of the people, using policy capture strategies and lobbying techniques, will ultimately fail.

Let us hope that this zombie bill, which seems to rise from the dead again and again, at least stays in its grave for some time yet.