Shadow Leader of the House of Commons Jesse Norman raises concerns about procedural defects in the way the assisted dying Bill was rushed through Parliament without proper scrutiny, impact assessments, or legal analysis.
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)
This week we have seen a Government who talk about growth but have proved themselves unwilling to support transformational investment at the AstraZeneca plant in Liverpool. At the same time, they appear keen to expand the sums being paid in relation to the Chagos islands to a number some 250 times larger than that being considered for AstraZeneca. I can see the degree of shame and embarrassment about that on the Government Benches, and their concern that important cities in this country are being deprived of local investment as a result.
In business questions on 28 November, I raised the issue of the assisted dying Bill and highlighted a host of procedural defects in the way it was being rushed through the House by the Government. The Bill was published barely two weeks before the vote on Second Reading, as the House will recall. No impact assessment or legal issues analysis had been published. The promoter of the Bill had circulated a document purporting to answer questions, but which actually left a host of important questions entirely untouched. Those questions included the Bill’s impact on the medical profession and the relationship between medical staff and patients, and the impact on the provision and regulation of the different drugs and drug cocktails required. The questions included the involvement of the judiciary in the process and the balance of probabilities test for coercion that the Bill proposed.
It is not surprising that the Bill was and is being opposed by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and the Secretary of State for Justice, with the former saying:
“I do not think that palliative care, end-of-life care in this country is in a condition yet where we are giving people the freedom to choose, without being coerced by the lack of support available.”
I am sorry to say that the Leader of the House responded to my remarks in a very patronising way, suggesting that it was somehow inappropriate and “political” for me to raise these matters at all. Of course, that was nonsense. I was not taking and do not take a position on the underlying issue. The whole purpose of business questions is to highlight and debate the passage of legislation through this House. But the Leader of the House’s defensiveness was itself revealing. It showed the extent to which the Government are quietly and wrongly standing behind this private Member’s Bill.
If we fast-forward two months, what do we find? A Supreme Court justice has told the Bill Committee that it is not clear what the judge’s role is supposed to be in this legislation. They called the judicial protection “largely illusory” and echoed many other legal experts in highlighting the lack of capacity in the High Court. The Government’s own chief medical officer specifically warned the Bill Committee that the NHS should not be rushed into becoming what would amount to a death service and said that most doctors would not wish to take part in the final stages of an assisted dying process, and emphasised the medical vagueness of the idea of qualifying people as terminally ill. We have heard about the serious potential for misdiagnosis through the horrendous case of Peter Sefton-Williams, who was incorrectly diagnosed with motor neurone disease and given as little as six months to live. Those were not my words; they are testimony on the Bill by leading experts from a range of fields.
All this has been made much worse by the rushed and secretive way in which the Bill Committee has been handled. The membership is disproportionately weighted towards supporters of the Bill. The schedule has been highly congested, with back-to-back sittings that do not allow MPs to prepare. Some of the sessions have been held in private. Attempts have been made to prevent key institutions, such as the Royal College of Psychiatrists, from appearing in front of the Committee at all. The effect of all these measures is to impede and inhibit external and internal scrutiny, and we now hear that the impact assessment will now not be published before Report stage. All these things are shocking attempts to undermine and short-circuit the proper scrutiny of the legislation.
The Leader of the House has said in terms that the Government are not supporting the legislation. She should therefore have an undiluted interest in ensuring that such an important and controversial Bill is properly handled. After all, she, more than any other, is supposed to be the custodian of proper parliamentary scrutiny of legislation. Will she therefore now act to address these obvious failures, or will she stick to her position that everything is fine and there is nothing to see here?