[Abernathy]

I've read Kim Leadbeater's bill. You can read the full text here :

https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3774

I think it deals more than adequately with the most frequently cited objection to the enabling of choice at the end of life, that by doing so, it may become easier for unscrupulous relatives to exert pressure on a relative with a terminal illness to go sooner in order to relieve their families of a perceived "burden". Relatives found guilty of such coercion would receive a prison sentence of 14 years under the provisions of the bill. The requirement for the assent of two independent GPs/Consultants as well as a High Court judge, coupled with a 14 day "cooling off period", means that taking a decision about your own end will be properly onerous, but simpler, clearer, and more compassionate.

For me, it's a simple question of humanity. We all face death, but a humane, or at any rate aspirationally humane, society surely has a duty to ensure that where an individual's end entails all but intolerable suffering, a realistic means of removing that suffering from the equation is made available in law by that society.

I think Kim Leadbeater deserves immense praise for bringing this bill to parliament, and the meticulous way in which she has drafted the bill. Jo Cox's sister is proving a more than worthy successor to her. I sincerely hope that it will be enacted.

[Andy McDandy]

Similar safeguards have been brought in everywhere assisted dying has been legalised in the western world. All the pearl clutching was never justified, just the reactionary instinct when faced with anything icky.

[Abernathy]

Dear Tahir

I'm writing to ask you to support Kim Leadbeater MP's Bill on choice at life's end in the House of Commons on Friday 29 November. Kim's Bill will bring us closer to a more compassionate law to help terminally ill people in the UK.

This bill would provide compassionate choice for those that need it, and improve protections and safeguarding for everyone. Three quarters of British people support a change in the law, and there is majority support in every parliamentary constituency, across all age groups, genders, socio-economic statuses, and voting intentions.

Please attend the Second Reading of Kim's Bill on choice at the end of life on Friday 29 November, and vote in support of the Bill.

Dear Abernathy,

Thank you for contacting me about Assisted Dying and for the important points that you have made.

Assisted dying is a complex and emotive issue and I know there are strongly held ethical and moral views on both sides of the debate. My personal belief is that everyone has the right to choose how to end their life. Providing appropriate safeguards are in place, I would support a change in the law to enable terminally ill adults to receive, at their request, medically supervised assistance to end their own lives.

However, assisted dying should not be an alternative to high-quality palliative and end of life care. It must certainly not be considered as a response to disabilities or poverty. People deserve dignity in dying, and each person nearing the end of their life should feel reassured and safe in the knowledge they will receive the very best care.

Successive governments have taken the view that any change in the law would be a matter of conscience for MPs and should not be a whipped vote. Under this approach, a change in the law would be enacted via a Private Members’ Bill; that is a Bill introduced by a backbench MP, rather than by Ministers. I agree that, given this is an issue of conscience, it should be for individual Members of Parliament, rather than the Government, to bring forward a proposal to change the law. The new Government has ensured that parliamentary time is provided to allow Kim Leadbeater’s Private Member’s Bill to be debated further, so that Members of both Houses can put their views on record.

As your elected representative in Parliament, I will monitor the debate on this Bill closely and keep in mind your views.

Thank you once again for contacting me about this sensitive issue.

Yours sincerely,

Tahir Ali MP,
Member of Parliament for Birmingham Hall Green & Moseley.

[mattomac]

Sadly social media has dumbed down a debate (helped by some who shout loudest without thinking).

I do think quality of life is a big thing and I often look at these people who are effectively kept alive by incubator and haven’t moved in about 5 years and I wonder.

That kind of continued life should only be for a short time. I would personally abstain but I’ve got serious concerns that the use of “palliative care” as a stopper isn’t helping the debate.

[Bones McCoy]

The "Assisted dying is no replacement for universal high quality pallative care" brigade.

They won't give you universal high quality pallative care.
They win't listen to anybody who desires an assisted death.

Let us hope the sainted Esther Rantzen and her friends make a good counter-example.

[Youngian]

Sadly social media has dumbed down a debate (helped by some who shout loudest without thinking).

Lee Anderson has been asking peoples opinions on this debate which so you could say is a maturer than usual approach. Or rather doesn't know how to conduct himself in a complex debate, no idea how to position himself or if there's a woke left uniform view is for him to oppose.

From what I've heard from the debate, it's been conducted seriously as important non partisan issues usually are in parliament.
We should have more free votes on social issues if it fills the media cycle up with more considered opinions on subjects that matter. Instead of made up culture war outrage wiffle.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I'm not Liz Kendall's biggest fan, but pleased that she's said she'll vote in favour.

My worry is that a bunch of cowards are going to vote it down. I say cowards because very few of them are going to call for prosecuting the next person who takes their terminally ill partner to Dignitas. I fear we're going to get a lot of "ooh, not had enough time". This subject has been debated for yonks. Nothing stopping you "reading around the subject", as one of my teachers used to say.

[Admirable Chrichton]

It's striking how wary right wing publications such as the Mail and Torygraph (and some of their columnists) are regarding assisted dying, and I can't help but think why.

Perhaps I'm being cynical and mean-spirited of their motives (I'm sorry, I can never really credit that lot of acting out of any sort of genuine altruism or concern for their fellow human beings), but is it because they fear that should they become old and infirm one day, they themselves might be "bumped off" out of convenience - as they might secretly want to do to an elderly or sick relative who'd become a burden to them.

It might be thinking the worst of reactionaries - but outlets like the Mail are so constantly acting in bad faith, and are so unprincipled in everything that they do - I can't cut them any moral slack.

It's possible this is the reason. It's noticeable that the Mail and the Torygraph mindset has little time for intrinsic human worth. The people should serve the economy not vice-versa; fuck off with your four day week, the workers need to buck their ideas up and get digging ore out of the mines eighteen hours a day; lefties can't really care about minority groups, it's all virtue signalling.

They also constantly bitched about how much stuff like the furlough scheme was such a burden (It's not as if a government might have a moral duty to help society out when the shit hits the fan.) Remember, during lockdown, that there was more than one columnist who came close to admitting part of the reason they wanted kids back at school sooner rather than later, was that their offspring being at home all the time, was doing their heads in - rather than for pupil welfare or for their education.

Perhaps I'm overanalysing here. It could just be that those of a conservative disposition are just more icky about death and illness (as Andy McD said previously in this thread). Studies have shown that those on the right are more affected by disgust than on the left.

[Abernathy]

Hear hear @ Admirable Crichton. I was slightly disappointed in Tahir Ali’s somewhat non-commital reply to my email, but at least he replied this time.

[Watchman]

Yet the likes of the Mail and Express have been championing Esther Rantzen’s campaign to bring it in; although I can make a guess at why

[Crabcakes]

…but is it because they fear that should they become old and infirm one day, they themselves might be "bumped off" out of convenience - as they might secretly want to do to an elderly or sick relative who'd become a burden to them

I think this is precisely it for many of them, and it’s full-on Trump-like projection. They fear being sent off to Dignitas at the fist sign of a cough because their dear son/daughter, who was raised in the loving, caring environment of a boarding school so as not to disrupt mummy and daddy’s social life, wants to get their inheritance and is fed up waiting for Mother Nature. And they fear this because it is *exactly* what they would do, as they are equally cold and distant.

Paradoxically, the same people are usually very concerned about inheritance tax - because the only thing they want less than their children having their wealth instead of them is for the state to have it and give it to plebs.

[Abernathy]

I’ve just listened to an absolutely excellent discussion/phone-in on this topic, conducted by Matthew Wright on LBC, who really is doing some terrific work these days. He first personalised the discussion by giving an emotional, but also rational, account of his own father’s death from terminal cancer, and the suffering that his father had to endure in his final months of life - as well as the emotional and psychological suffering that the experience caused Wright and the other family members involved. He advocated powerfully for the provisions of Kim Leadbeater’s bill. He spoke to Tanni Grey-Thompson, who opposes the bill, and to Charlie Falconer, who has campaigned for several years for a change to the law. Most powerfully of all, he spoke to a succession of mostly female callers, who delivered heart-rending and articulate accounts of their experiences of the last days of their loved ones, including one very articulate and direct lady who had accompanied her beloved husband of 45 years to the Dignitas facility in Switzerland in order for him to secure the dignified death that he, and she, desired. Another woman spoke with considerable emotional force of the suffering her mother had, in essence, been forced to endure.


I would recommend listening back to this on LBC’s replay gizmo on their website. An absolutely cracking piece of journalism - so rare on LBC.


In another part of the forest, I was very disappointed to hear Shabana Mahmood grabbing the headlines by opposing Kim Leadbeater’s bill in incredibly simplistic terms. Something about “slippery slopes” and the state delivering “death on demand”.

Shabana, and others, cite the “risk” of terminally ill people being coerced into a premature assisted death by relatives with an eye on inheritance. But the bill recognises this and provides for judicial measures to counter the supposed risk. But do those taking this line really believe that these pressures on terminally ill people from relatives do not already exist? I cannot see how this bill would result in any significant increase in this behaviour.

Anyway, do listen back to Matthew Wright if you fancy being well informed on this difficult, sensitive, human topic.

[Andy McDandy]

You get it a lot when someone is determined to make their point regardless of facts. They've played out this argument in their heads and think it's a clincher. Then they try it out in reality.

"What I don't get is [issue]"

"No fear, it's comprehensively dealt with and here's the answer that I think satisfies your concerns."

............

"Yeah, but what I don't get is..."

[RedSparrows]

Or as I recently saw on Reddit (I know, I know):

'just do X'
'But if you do X you'll need to fix Y, and Z is a better choice as it doesn't impact Y'
'But just do X, easy'
'But it's not, I just told you. Do you have a repsonse to the point about Y and Z'
'X is all you need to do'
'...'

[Abernathy]

I see that Diane Abbott, “Mother of the House” has joined forces with the ridiculous Edward Leigh, “Father of the House”, to oppose the Leadbeater bill. She was at pains earlier today to emphasise that she agreed with Gordon Brown, who somewhat oddly opposes the bill because of the death of his young daughter at the age of only 11 days.

Diane’s argument is that we need more time to discuss the issue before legislating on it. We’ve only spent about 25 years talking about it so far. What she is in essence saying is that she does not trust the parliamentary process of making laws, which is in fact very thorough and robust. This Friday is the bill’s second reading, which in essence is the start of the process, not the end. If it passes on Friday, it still has to go through the Committee and Report stages, where it can be amended or augmented, then the third reading, then it must be passed, after going through identical stages, by the House of Lords, before being given Royal Assent and becoming law. Does Abbott really think that’s not good enough ?

[Abernathy]

Fuck. Danny Kruger MP, opposed to the bill, is on Newsnight, dissembling and peddling untruths for all he is worth. Vic Derbyshire is pulling him up at every turn, but the cunt is sticking to his position.

I cannot believe how dishonest and simply wrong Kruger is. A despicable shit (even his own mother thinks he is wrong).

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Kruger's a cunt.

Derbyshire is a mensch.

[The Weeping Angel]

Well that's me convinced

Honestly I have my doubts but stuff like this is making me support the bill.

[Abernathy]

Of the many " arguments" against the Leadbetter bill, there are two that have emerged today that are worth noting, one considerably less so than the other, I think. Though both can be rebutted convincingly.

"Three former Conservative Prime Ministers" are apparently opposed to Kim Leadbetter's bill. The three are Theresa May, [i]Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss[/i]. [i]Liz fucking Truss,[/i] for pity's sake. None of these people are any longer in the House of Commons, so will not, thankfully, be voting on the second reading of the bill, but May will have the opportunity to influence the final bill if it reaches the lords. Their opposition, in my view, can be instantly dismissed as irrelevant.

The second manifestation of the opposition to the bill comes in the form of a cross-party group of 3 MPs who have tabled a "wrecking" amendment to the bill aimed at preventing the bill being debated in the Commons at all. The logic is apparently that not enough time has been devoted to debate on the issue covered by the bill (we've only been talking about it for about 25 years).

Anna Dixon, a new Labour MP elected in July for Shipley, has been fronting this in the news media this morning, and doing so quite articulately. But it looks very much like a rather grim attempt simply to kick the whole issue into the long grass for the foreseeable future. Lindsay Hoyle will decide whether or not the wrecking amendment can be taken on, and I hope and trust that he will reject it without ceremony.

I did briefly think that Dixon might have a point about the practicalities of the role of High Court judges in carrying out the provisions of the bill, viz : what evidence will judges be invited to consider in making their decisions? Won't this be problematic ? But the admirable Ms Leadbeater dismisses this at a stroke : High Court judges do make, and have been making, decisions like these - for example on whether a patient suffering "locked-in" syndrome can have life support measures withdrawn, precipitating their death, for many years. High Court judges, in short, can be trusted in this matter.

[Crabcakes]

I think it’s quite simple really. I can currently give my cat a more dignified, comfortable and sympathetic send off when he gets old and infirm than I can ever plan for myself. And this is the case no matter how far in advance I make it clear that I do not wish my life to be dragged out for the sake of it if I am terminally ill with a poor and/or rapidly declining quality of life, and little time left.

That is an absurd situation.