‘Strengthen assisted dying Bill to protect those who feel they are a burden’

Stronger safeguards are needed in the proposed new law on assisted dying to protect against people requesting to end their lives because they feel they are a burden on society, James Cleverly has said.

The Conservative MP, who voted against the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill in November, said he wants to “make sure” that people who opt for assisted dying are “genuinely doing this for their own benefit”.

The former home secretary said he is seeking to amend the legislation, which will begin being scrutinised by a committee next week.

He told Times Radio: “I want to make sure that the same protections that we put in place against coercion are in place for people who are doing it for what I believe are the wrong reasons, which is because they don’t want to be a burden on society, rather than the reasons put forward by the proponents of the Bill.

“That’s what my amendment does. It makes sure that people don’t apply pressure to themselves to request assisted dying.”

He claimed that, looking at other places in the world which have made it legal, a feeling of “not wanting to be a burden is a significant proportion of those people asking to have assisted dying”.

He added: “In the debate that we had in the House of Commons (in November), a number of MPs seemed to think that this was already a protection in the Bill, but it isn’t.”

He said he is proposing to amend the Bill to “ensure as best we can that people are not doing this because they fear the burden they’re going to place on others, whether it be the NHS or their family or the state or whatever it might be”.

Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP behind the Bill, has already described it as containing the strictest protections anywhere in the world.

It could see terminally ill adults in England and Wales with less than six months to live legally allowed to end their lives, subject to approval by two doctors and a High Court judge.

The 23 MPs on the committee to scrutinise the proposed legislation will this week hear three days of oral evidence from some 50 witnesses, including various medical and legal professionals as well as international experts.

Ms Leadbeater previously said: “The Bill already contains the strictest protections anywhere in the world, but if people have workable suggestions for how those safeguards can be strengthened even further I will be very open to those.”

Following the three days of evidence, which will begin on Tuesday with England’s chief medical officer, Professor Sir Chris Whitty, MPs on the committee were due to begin their line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill on February 4.

But Ms Leadbeater is expected to propose that this will instead begin a week later on February 11, to give MPs more time to consider the “large” amount of written evidence so far put forward to the committee.

In a letter to MPs, she said: “The invitation for written evidence has produced a large number of submissions already, with more yet to come.

“I have consulted all members of the committee and in order to assist them in digesting both the oral and written evidence and to consider any amendments that might be forthcoming as a result, I will be proposing that the line-by-line examination of the Bill now commences on Tuesday 11th February.”

It is expected the committee stage would last a week longer to account for the later start to the line-by-line scrutiny, meaning overall timetabling would not be affected.

No date has been given yet for the Bill to return to the Commons for further debate by all MPs at its report stage but it is expected to be towards the end of April.