The former president of the supreme court who ruled on the most high-profile assisted dying cases has declared his support for the law change, as MPs backing the bill say they believe they have the numbers for Friday’s historic vote to pass.
David Neuberger, who ruled against high-profile assisted dying applications including Debbie Purdy in 2009 and Tony Nicklinson in 2015, told the Guardian he believed the status quo was failing “the fundamental aims of the law – to respect people’s right of personal autonomy, and to protect the vulnerable”.
Neuberger said his experience sitting on cases involving assisted dying meant he was confident the tight terms of Kim Leadbeater’s bill – that it would apply to only those who are terminally ill – could not be expanded by judicial challenge.
Both sides in the debate have been making their final calls to MPs in the last days before the vote, with dozens still telling colleagues they are undecided.
The Guardian can reveal MPs are also preparing to announce a new independent commission on palliative care – spearheaded by the Labour MP Rachael Maskell – which they are hopeful will get backing from the health secretary, Wes Streeting, when it launches in December.
High-profile charities backing the new commission include the Association for Palliative Medicine of Great Britain and Ireland, Hospice UK, Marie Curie and Sue Ryder, though all say it must take hearings from all sides of the debate.
The focus would be on improving end-of-life care and a favoured chair is the palliative care doctor Ilora Finlay, though she has been explicitly anti-assisted dying.
MPs this week have also heard impassioned pleas from disability activists against assisted dying. Pam Duncan-Glancy, the Scottish Labour MSP who uses a wheelchair, said she felt disabled people’s voices were being forgotten and wrote a letter to Labour MPs saying the state would be at risk of making it easier for disabled people to die than to access the right help to live comfortably.
On Wednesday evening former prime minister David Cameron said he was in favour of the bill.
Writing in the Times, Lord Cameron – who opposed previous moves to legalise assisted dying – said: “Will this law lead to a meaningful reduction in human suffering? I find it very hard to argue that the answer to this question is anything other than ‘yes’.”
“If this bill makes it to the House of Lords, I will be voting for it.”
The MPs backing Leadbeater’s private member’s bill are understood to believe they have solidified support in recent days and now have enough to get the bill past its first parliamentary hurdle, though some support is conditional on changes at the next stage.
In the first Westminster vote on the issue in nearly 10 years, MPs at Westminster have been given a free vote, meaning they can vote according to conscience.
Esther Rantzen, the TV presenter who has been one of the most high-profile advocates for change, also wrote to MPs on Friday saying “my time is running out” but the issue was one “the public care desperately about” and said it might not be debated by MPs “for another decade” if the legislation did not pass.
But a slew of new Labour MPs – who could be the decisive votes on Friday – came out against the bill on Wednesday evening, having not made their views public previously. Those include Imogen Walker, the PPS to Rachel Reeves, Zubir Ahmed, PPS to Wes Streeting, and Blair McDougall, a former aide to David Miliband.
Lord Neuberger said that those concerned about a slippery slope after the bill passed should be confident that could not occur through the courts, saying it could only occur if MPs in parliament decided to change the law again to expand its definition beyond terminally ill adults.
“The European court of human rights has repeatedly ruled that legislation on assisted dying is a matter for individual states,” he said. “As for domestic courts, seven of the nine judges including me in the Nicklinson case held that assisted dying was a matter for parliament not the courts,” he said.
“The present law … prevents those who genuinely and understandably wish to end their lives and who need help to do so, from getting such help. It also fails to protect the vulnerable, because the blanket ban can drive terminally ill people to end their lives in secret.”
Another former supreme court president, Brenda Hale, and former supreme court judge Jonathan Sumption have also backed the law change.
But a number of other senior members of the judiciary have voiced concern about the bill, including Sir James Munby, the former president of the high court’s family division; and the former lord chief justice Lord Thomas, who has warned “no one has grappled with the detail” of the impact of the legislation on family courts.
About 130 MPs are already down to speak in the five-hour debate on Friday and at least four amendments have been submitted, sparking fears speeches will be severely limited.
Duncan-Glancy, who has been meeting MPs in parliament, wrote an emotional letter to her Labour colleagues asking them to reconsider supporting the bill. “My opposition to the bill is based on one simple point; that it should not be easier to get assistance to die, than to live,” she wrote.
“If this bill was to pass, the former could become the case. I know some MPs support the principle of assisted dying but that you have some doubts about what is in – and not in – this bill. You are right to have doubts and you are not voting on a principle. You are voting on a piece of legislation that I believe could put disabled people at risk if passed.
“During Covid-19, my husband and I wrote letters to say: ‘Please do not put a DNR notice on us’ because such was the opinion and low value that we felt that was placed on disabled people’s lives, that we, even as supported as we are, were scared. No one should feel their existence is a burden on others.”
In her letter to all 650 MPs, Rantzen urges them to listen to Friday’s debate and to vote, whatever their view. “This is such a vital life-and-death issue, one that we the public care desperately about, so it is only right that as many MPs as possible listen to the arguments.”
Rantzen will not attend Friday’s debate in person but her daughter Rebecca Wilcox will be in the public gallery on her behalf. Wilcox told the Guardian Rantzen had been in contact with “so many brilliant families and relatives of people that have experienced trauma”, Wilcox said.
“They are looking down the barrel of a terrible diagnosis and are just hoping for the vote to go their way so that there’s more compassion and more empathy in the law.”
