If MPs aren't up to the job on assisted dying, there's an alternative

Of all the things for which Boris Johnson will never be forgiven, the biggest will always be parties in Downing Street while grieving families were kept apart from dying relations during lockdown.

Death and dying are elemental.

Normal people make allowances for one another, business as usual is suspended, and the breakneck pace of life slows down for the precious time around the end of life.

Or at least it should. Families forced to wave goodbye through windows are haunted by the experience. Nurses and carers too.

Friends, partners and children are always changed by the final moments of folk they’ve held close. Especially when they turn into weeks and months of suffering.

READ MORE: John Swinney: Assisted dying bill decision 'more challenging' than before

There can hardly be an adult reading this who hasn’t watched a prolonged, hospitalised death – and that’s no criticism of excellent caring staff.

Yet now, as assisted dying is finally making headlines – it’s tempting to look away.

Not wishing to die in pain is one thing. Deciding how to produce a “good death” is quite another.

And yet it’s time to try.

The list of Labour Cabinet members opposed to Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is formidable and includes Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who says it means the state offering “death as a service”.

Wes Streeting opposes assisted dying being legalisedBut there will be a free vote after tomorrow’s debate and MPs with an ear to their constituents are aware that most want legislation passed.

In a YouGov poll conducted last week, 74% of those sampled said they back legalising assisted dying with 13% opposed. 59% say it’s something they’d consider for themselves if they had a terminal illness that was painful or debilitating.

Reform and Tory voters were more likely to be opposed than Labour and LibDem voters – maddeningly SNP voters are not even mentioned. But more than two-thirds of each voting group are still in favour – not just of assisted dying in principle but Leadbeater’s bill in particular.

In short, there’s a fairly thought-out public consensus across age, geography, class and political perspective that this bill should pass.

And whilst political debate may turn on whether to impose religious beliefs on others, relatively few poll respondents cited ethical and religious issues as their main priority.

READ MORE: ‘No one has grappled with detail’ of assisted dying impact on courts, peer warns

According to YouGov the “top theme” was personal autonomy. The next biggest concern was the alleviation of suffering.

I guess none of this is too surprising.

Members of the BMA have opted for neutrality. But nurses in the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) narrowly backed assisted dying at their conference in June. In short, this is a decision whose time has come.

But here’s the big problem.

Some MPs will decide that a rushed Private Member’s Bill is not the right way forward.

The fact this huge issue has been assigned an utterly inadequate path to legislation is shameful, making it entirely possible tomorrow’s debate will be dominated by procedural worries, not the issue itself.

And if that happens, how will the watching public react? I’d guess they’ll be quietly furious.

It didn’t have to be this way. Private Member’s Bills in Scotland – like the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill – get due process before they reach a vote. LibDem MSP Liam McArthur’s bill was launched in March and is still being scrutinised by Holyrood’s Health, Social Care and Sport Committee. It called for public and professional responses this summer and the results were published last week, showing a roughly even split between supporters and opponents.

LibDem MSP Liam McArthur (Image: Jane Barlow) Last week an RCN committee witness called for an opt-in system for nurses if the legislation goes ahead – which seems very fair. There will be five more specialist committee hearings before February and that’s just Stage One of the Bill.

By contrast a Private Members Bill in the Mother of Parliaments gets none of this. No policy reviews beforehand, public consultation or departmental sign-off. And as it proceeds, debate is held on Fridays, when most MPs are at home.

A paper by Hannah White and Jill Rutter of the Institute for Government doesn’t pull its punches: “A well-led review, involving people on both sides of the argument and with a mandate to engage the public, could have addressed the whole range of issues MPs are now trying to navigate.

“It could have explored international experience. It could have looked at the practicalities and implications for the NHS.

It could have seen if there was any way of satisfactorily addressing the concerns about coercion and of disabled people – and drawn up the best safeguards possible. It could have explored eligibility criteria.”

But it didn’t.

They continue: “The idea that backbench MPs have a reasonable prospect of getting their own legislation onto the statute books without government support is essentially a fiction perpetuated by MPs and parliamentary staff alike.”

And they speculate that Keir Starmer may have devised this “solution” to keep his promise of a Commons vote to the terminally ill Esther Rantzen, without provoking an internal Labour Party row or tying up government time. Cynical. But also very visible.

Dame Esther Rantzen was promised action on assisted dying by Keir StarmerClearly, this UK Government – like many before it – hasn’t had the courage/bandwidth or interest to take the assisted dying debate seriously. So, a massive issue will possibly be kyboshed because the pre-scrutiny process was completely inadequate.

It was precisely this bind that led the Irish government to “outsource” important moral issues they were bluntly too feart to tackle themselves – abortion and equal marriage. The Citizens’ Assemblies they set up heard all the evidence and produced recommendations passed in referendums. Elected politicians simply had to accept those results. Why can Westminster or indeed Holyrood not see the value of such a people’s route to policy-making?

And if MPs do bottle it or pass a law with perceived defects through lack of time – many are worried about the need to have each assisted death approved by a judge given court backlogs – how much will that increase the current disillusionment with politics?

Sure the petition calling for a General Election has a fair number of Mick E Mouse signatories and is geographically concentrated in English rural and probably Conservative constituencies.

READ MORE: Esther Rantzen tells MPs every vote is crucial in assisted dying debate

But the rise in the Reform vote everywhere suggests voters despair that government will come to the rescue on any of the truly big issues.

Seriously, if MPs or later MSPs cannot decide – they should delegate these tough decisions to folk that can. The people.

Westminster’s process is unlike that in Scotland, where committees have been hearing evidence for more than a year and unlike Ireland where a committee was set up by the Dail to produce a 96-page report, endorsed last month by TDs.

If ever there was a case for Westminster to liven up and use a citizens’ assembly to decide this important but contentious issue – this is it.

But they won’t.

Instead, one of the issues people really care about (both ways) and overwhelmingly support will turn on a one-day debate, since Starmer won’t give the issue more of “his” parliamentary time.

It’s another demonstration of archaic Westminster governance.