Sue Gray, once Sir Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff, has heavily criticised the Assisted Dying Bill in the House of Lords.
It is legislation close to her former boss’s heart. Though we are told that the Government is “neutral” and this is a Private Member’s Bill, Sir Keir has long supported a change in the law.
The bill is being debated in the Lords over numerous Fridays, with supporters alleging that some are deliberately wasting time in an effort to “time out” the bill so it fails to become law.
Baroness Gray as she is now, having been sacked as the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff and then later given a peerage by the Prime Minister, tore into what many see as a fundamentally flawed bill.
She told the Lords: “While I have other reservations about this bill and the pressuring effect it will have on disadvantaged groups, I am especially concerned that we are seeking to introduce it at a time when the cost of living means that homelessness has reached critical levels throughout the UK.”
That is an attack on both the bill itself and perhaps also on the Government’s performance so far. The fact that Gray highlights the cost of living is a reflection that despite Labour’s promises of “Change” before taking office in July last year, many feel that things are not getting better.
She spoke about the vulnerable: “How can we imagine that they will not be at risk of being offered an assisted death simply because those needs are judged too hard to meet or because someone else has decided their lives are not worthwhile.”
Kim Leadbeater spoke to GB News this morning and told me: “We are absolutely listening to experts” … “this is the most safeguarded piece of legislation in the world”.
Sue Gray has let her opposition to the bill be known
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PA
Yet a host of professional bodies say the bill is not safe in its current form: the Royal Colleges of Physicians, Psychiatrists, mental health charity Mind, British Geriatrics Society, Association of Palliative Medicine, and Disability Rights UK among them.
And Baroness Gray warns of the “slippery slope”: “We have seen this happen in jurisdictions like Canada, where the parameters for an assisted death were widened soon after the law was passed and we duly saw examples of individuals dying by Medicaid explicitly because they were affected by isolation and homelessness.”
The Prime Minister has long supported assisted dying; as Director of Public Prosecutions, he focused on assisted dying in his first interview with the Guardian in 2009, having taken the decision not to prosecute an assisted suicide within a month of starting the job.
His links to campaign group Dignity in Dying are well established. The group is well funded (spending £1.5 million last year on publicity) and has been boosted by the star power of Esther Rantzen, terminally ill with lung cancer.
Ms Leadbeater has called for the bill’s progress to be hurried
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GB NEWS
The Prime Minister “made a promise” to her and a report leaked to The Guardian last week showed that Labour in opposition made a plan for how assisted dying could be introduced via a Private Member’s Bill, with heavy involvement from behind the scenes, and without the Government being tied to it and putting it in their manifesto.
Ms Leadbeater announced she was choosing the subject for her Private Member’s Bill within weeks of being selected, though denied being “leant on” to GB News earlier.
It passed the Commons by just 23 votes, with 52 per cent in favour and 48 per cent against. Some MPs were reassured that the Lords could strengthen it.
But now Lord Falconer and other supporters are crying foul and accuse Lords of deliberately trying to block it.
Ms Leadbeater told GB News: “We are elected MPs. They are not elected … it is not their role to block legislation.”
Lords with concerns say they are simply doing their job. This afternoon Lord Falconer swatted away suggestions that a pregnant woman with a baby that is viable should not be allowed to qualify for an assisted death till after the baby is born.
Because the bill was not in Labour’s manifesto, the Lords are not obliged to pass it.
And while the Government funds just 30 per cent of hospice care for the dying, the state seems set to pay the costs to help people die, and to allow it for those who may feel they are a burden, as long as two doctors can agree there’s a 51 per cent chance or higher that they have less than six months to live.
But knowing how long someone has to live is notoriously difficult. Ms Rantzen is still alive three years after revealing that she had terminal lung cancer.
And many of the public will associate an already deeply unpopular Labour Prime Minister with assisted dying.
Nikki da Costa, former Director of Legislative Affairs at No 10, told GB News: “It is absolutely his bill.”
Anyone who is in emotional distress, struggling to cope or at risk of suicide can call the Samaritans anonymously for free from a UK phone on 116 123 or go to samaritans.org.
