EHRC calls for Govt intervention over assisted suicide Bill

Plans to legalise assisted suicide should be subject to proper Government scrutiny, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has told MPs.

Appearing before the parliamentary committee tasked by Kim Leadbeater to examine her Bill, EHRC Chair Baroness Falkner of Margravine said the Government should intervene and conduct a thorough assessment of its ramifications.

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill would allow those in England and Wales diagnosed as terminally ill, and deemed to have less than six months to live, to receive help to kill themselves.

Human rights ignored

Lady Falkner expressed surprise that a human rights assessment had not been carried out on the proposals, and questioned whether a Private Member’s Bill was a “suitable vehicle” for an issue of “such import”.

She explained: “Were it a Government Bill, or a Government sponsored Bill, even at this late stage, it could have a whole of Government approach to looking at the different aspects that are engaged: of disability rights, of older people’s rights, ethnic minorities have very differential attitudes to some of these things, cultural rights. I think that would be a better place for Parliament to actually engage with this”.

The draft law is so “unclear”, she added, that it is “impossible to understand” the scope of its reach in a whole host of areas, including terminal illness, capacity, coercion and the role of the judiciary.

She called on the Government to do “an impact assessment and a human rights conformity assessment that would draw out all of these concerns in a more effective manner. Even now, as the Bill is going through, it’s not too late for the Government to do that.”

‘Nonsensical’

The Committee also heard evidence from disability policy expert Dr Miro Griffiths of Not Dead Yet UK, who said there was a “nonsensical division” in people’s minds, reflected in the Bill, “between a terminal illness and what constitutes being a disabled person”.

He explained: “My condition is a neuromuscular condition. I have had meetings with clinicians where some have referred to it as a terminal illness, some have referred to it as a life limiting condition, others have referred to it as a progressive condition”.

He also described the six-month-to-live rule as ‘arbitrary nonsense’. If he ended all treatment, he asked, will he then be seen to have a terminal illness because his “rapid acceleration towards death becomes more evident.”

Eating disorder expert Chelsea Roff asked MPs: “How many deaths are you okay with? If the safeguards fail once, that is a human being who may be in a despairing moment who was handed a lethal medication instead of the care, and the treatment, and the help they need.”

Choice and abuse

Sam Royston, Marie Curie’s Executive Director of Research and Policy, said: “We need to get palliative care sorted out and improved right now as part of this Bill because they’re fundamentally connected.

“This Bill is about choice. It’s about choice at the end of life. If people can’t choose to access palliative care, they cannot make a free choice about the care and support that they receive.”

Addressing the matter of coercion, Richard Robinson, CEO of Hourglass – a charity committed to ending the exploitation of over 65s – said it was “witnessing an epidemic of abuse against older people”.

Family pressure

On the final day of hearing evidence, Professor Gareth Owen, a psychiatrist and medical ethicist, addressed the interrelationship between cognitive impairment, strong family bonds,  and someone’s decision to ask for assisted suicide.

He explained: “I think it’s important to draw attention to pressure, not necessarily as malign in its intention, which is nevertheless operating in these situations, which can have subtle impact on the functional test of decision-making capacity.

“And just to bring us back to what is the decision-making capacity we’re talking about, it’s the decision to end one’s own life.”

In contrast,  practitioners of assisted suicide in Australia branded safeguards “impediments and barriers” to people seeking help to kill themselves and advocated their removal or weakening.