Amendment to assisted dying bill is a degradation of a key promised safeguard

In order to convince people that the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill would have sufficient guardrails, such as a High Court judge’s approval being required.

However, the Labour MP behind the bill Kim Leadbeater, has announced a significant change that will take away the requirement for an assisted dying application to be approved by a High Court judge.

This will only erode confidence in a bill that even those who initially supported had reservations about.

The timing of the change will also set alarm bells ringing. And it endangers the bill.

The change is a degradation of the checks and balances that were promised when the bill was introduced.

There are clearly capacity issues in the judiciary. The process would be too time-consuming and could clog up courts. A surfeit of applications would only add to the strain that the judiciary is under.

While some still insist that the new proposals provide robust enough safeguards, the absence of the requirement of approval from a High Court judge, ethically astute individuals, will make people nervous. Especially as that was sold as one of the cast iron safeguards to MPs during the vote.

The amendments for a so-called “judge plus” system, where psychiatrists and social workers would be involved in approving assisted dying applications, would still fall short of the original promised safeguards.