Assisted dying bill is “one of the most pernicious pieces of draft legislation to come before Parliament,” says Diane Abbott
Veteran MP Diane Abbott has blasted The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill currently passing through Parliament, describing it as “one of the most pernicious pieces of draft legislation to come before Parliament in recent memory.”
Writing on the PoliticsHome.com parliamentary affairs website, Ms Abbott also said she believed that the bill has been blatantly mishandled, with some of its leading supporters “making statements that are clearly false, blocking opponents of the bill from giving evidence in committee, and generally treating them with contempt.”
These two factors are linked, said Ms Abbott, who is the Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington. She belives that supporters of the bill seem generally reluctant to argue the bill on its merits, although she notes that there are a small number of exceptions.
“Instead, underhand and anti-democratic measures are used, such as a parade of Australian advocates of the bill giving evidence (and Australia has one of the worst models for this type of legislation) while campaigners against the bill, including key groups advocating for disabled people, are effectively denied a voice,” she said.
“The deeply flawed content of the bill is commensurate with the deeply flawed process that is taking place. I have seen many very fine Private Members’ Bills die instantly without government support. Instead, this has been given fast-tracked government support, preventing proper scrutiny of the bill. In effect, this is a bill with the lack of scrutiny of a Private Members’ Bill but with the accelerated passage of a key government priority.
“In the debate in the Commons, we were repeatedly assured that a key guarantee regarding the application of the bill would be the safeguard of a High Court judge in the process. We are now told that this is unfeasible, and that it would further clog up the courts. Replacing judges with a ‘panel of experts’ is a joke in bad taste. If the panel repeatedly strikes out applications for assisted suicide, it will be regarded as thwarting the will of Parliament and the members would soon be replaced. Over time, there will be an in-built bias to allow applications.
“And who will this affect? It will not be celebrities, TV personalities and the very well-to-do who have been the prominent advocates for this radical change. It will be the poor, the disenfranchised and ethnic minorities who already feel pressured by our leading institutions,” said Ms Abbott.
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