UK has unique chance to allow assisted suicide, says Labour peer | Assisted suicide

Parliament faces a unique opportunity to give terminally ill people the choice to end their lives, the Labour peer who is pushing for a change in the law has said.

Charlie Falconer, the former Lord Chancellor whose bill was introduced in the House of Lords last month, revealed he had been reassured by Downing Street that it would not stand in the way of a historic Commons vote on assisted suicide if his supporters got it through.

In an interview with the ObserverHe said some of the tragic stories already expressed by politicians on the issue were “just the tip of the parliamentary iceberg” in terms of the strength of feeling some peers and MPs had expressed to him. He proposed allowing assisted dying for terminally ill adults.

Lord Falconer said the best chance of getting a vote would be to introduce a private member’s bill in the House of Commons. An attempt to get such a vote would be launched as soon as MPs return from their summer recess. If successful, the law could be changed before the end of next year.

He warned that history suggested that any vote represented a rare opportunity to effect change. “If we lose the vote, then this issue will be off the table for who knows how long,” he said. “It all depends on that vote in the House of Commons.”

“This is an opportunity. The last time this bill came up for a vote, there was a clear vote against it in the House of Commons. But of the 650 MPs who were there in 2015, 477 left. This is a completely new House of Commons, with a completely new atmosphere, with a Prime Minister who says: ‘You have to decide by a free vote – and if you decide for it, the government will ensure that procedural tricks do not doom the bill.'”

“For almost a decade, there has been a growing interest in this issue. Many countries around the world have addressed the issue and changed their laws. But there is also a growing awareness in this country of the legal mess. And people are increasingly interested in the quality of their lives and deaths.”

The issue of medical assistance in dying was thrust into the spotlight in December 2023 when the Observer revealed that actress Diana Rigg recorded a message shortly before her death in 2020 calling for a law that gives “human beings true autonomy over their own bodies at the end of life.”

After Esther Rantzen, the TV presenter suffering from terminal cancer, joined calls for change, Keir Starmer said he was also in favour.

Before the election, he promised Rantzen that he would guarantee parliament enough time to debate the issue and allow a free vote.

Falconer said that while his bill in the House of Lords had encountered procedural difficulties in reaching a vote in the Commons, an identical bill proposed by an MP could be passed. “10 Downing Street has made it clear to me that they support what Keir has said,” he said. “There is no doubt that Keir is sticking to that commitment.”

The Labour peer said his personal experience led him to apply his legal mind to the issue years ago. “Like many people, I have had the experience of the death of a loved one,” he said. “And the last few weeks and months are a period where there is clearly nothing but imminent death – the person is withdrawing more and more. And all they have to look forward to is more indignity, more pain, more struggle.”

“In the case of a person who is terminally ill, the opportunity to have assistance to end that process is, in my view, a necessary compassionate measure that that person should be able to take. Having had that personal experience and having studied the issue more and more deeply, I have seen how unfair the law is. Esther Rantzen has recently drawn attention to this problem with considerable effectiveness. And that is partly the result of a ten-year period in which people have really talked about it.”

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He said he limited his proposals to people with terminal illnesses and six months or less to live, to ensure the bill would not be “the weakest part of the list,” as some opponents fear. He also said he was against applying the bill to anyone living in “unbearable suffering,” as some other countries have done, because he believed it could lead to unintended cases.

“In general, I don’t think the state should help people commit suicide,” he said. “I think the state should give people with terminal illnesses options about how to die. And I think the two situations are very different.”

“When a law starts out as a law about terminal illness, and not a law about unbearable suffering, that’s where it gets stuck in every jurisdiction in the world. That’s not the weakest part of the solution.

“The first one was in Oregon. It started as a terminal illness law and it’s remained a terminal illness law. People sometimes say they’re very concerned about Oregon. But a lot of people who were against it now feel that it’s the right thing to do – that people should have that option.

“Having this option allows people who are terminally ill to cope with their final months. They know that this option exists.”