The lives of disabled and vulnerable people will not be at risk from a proposed assisted dying law because it will only apply to terminally ill adults, and each case is likely to be ruled on by two doctors and a judge, the MP sponsoring it has said.
Kim Leadbeater said her historic “choice at the end of life” bill will include “stringent” criteria and a cooling-off period in what is likely to be one of the most controversial pieces of legislation to go before parliament in years.
But people who are facing intolerable suffering but are not dying will still be denied medical assistance to end their lives, under the likely terms of the bill to be introduced on Wednesday.
That decision will prompt debate over whether the threshold for medical assistance to die should relate to suffering rather than time left to live.
Some campaigners argue people whose conditions mean they can be trapped and suffering in their bodies long before they meet a narrow definition of terminal illness will be left out.
A major poll has suggested most of the public support an assisted dying law in every constituency of Great Britain apart from Bradford West.
It found 74% agreed that adults “who are intolerably suffering from an incurable condition and who wish to end their lives” should be allowed medical help to do so. More than 7,000 adults were canvassed this month in an MRP poll by Electoral Calculus for Humanists UK, a campaign group that supports assisted dying.
A separate poll for King’s College London last week found 66% support for a bill becoming law restricted to people with six months or less to live, but about half of respondents said they would probably change their mind if it turned out someone had been put under pressure (55%) or ended their life because they were denied the care they needed (48%).
Opponents of the bill, which would become law in England and Wales only, are planning to protest outside parliament on Wednesday, where supporters will also rally. Gordon MacDonald, the chief executive of Care Not Killing, claimed the bill amounted to “state-sanctioned killing”.
“This bill sends a dog-whistle message to the terminally ill, vulnerable, elderly and disabled people, especially those on low or fixed incomes, that their lives are worth less than others,” he said on Tuesday.
But campaigners in favour of an assisted dying law welcomed the first reading of the bill as a “historic day”.
“This bill gives dying people hope that they will live the rest of their lives with the comfort of knowing they will have a say in how they die,” said Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying.
The broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby, who alongside Esther Rantzen is one of several high-profile backers of a law change, said: “My brother Nicholas was required to die from motor neurone disease and he wanted that right [to choose assisted dying] … he fervently wanted the choice … he would have welcomed the fact that this bill is going before the Commons.”
Dimbleby also accused “the leadership of some parts of the church” of “scaremongering” by warning of a “slippery slope” towards assisted dying for people who are not terminally ill. He called for the debate to be “measured and balanced and not overwhelmed by emotive assertions”.
Speaking to the Guardian, Leadbeater confirmed the bill will require adults to have a prognosis of being no more than a fixed number of months from death, with options including six, nine and 12 months all still under consideration.
“My concern about the conversation around people with disabilities is that issue … has been conflated with this piece of legislation, which is actually about people who are already dying – shortening their deaths because of terminal illness,” she said. “So I will be the loudest voice in the room shouting for the rights of people with disabilities.”
Concerns were expressed to a recent parliamentary inquiry into assisted dying that people living with a disability, and elderly people, may worry about being a burden on their family and may pursue assisted dying for that reason.
“I get a bit worried there’s a panic and potentially some scaremongering about people having to do this,” Leadbeater said.
“No one has to do anything. This is about finding a choice for people. The two other really important words that will be on the face of the bill tomorrow are ‘safeguards’ and ‘protections’.”
She insisted there would be “no slippery” slope towards wider interpretation of the bill. The Catholic church this week launched a letter-writing campaign targeting MPs and encouraging the faithful to oppose the bill, warning “a right to die can become a duty to die”.
Leadbeater added: “[The bill] will send a very clear message to people that this is not about disabled people. It’s not about people with mental health conditions. It is about terminally ill adults.”
The proposed law will be closer to those already in use in Oregon in the US, Australia and New Zealand than more widely drawn laws in Canada and the Netherlands where illness need not be terminal. In the Netherlands some children are included in a law that allows assisted dying where a doctor agrees suffering is “lasting and unbearable”.
Leadbeater will publish the detail of the bill in the coming weeks before a first Commons debate in late November.
“We need law that is robust and clear and by having really strict, stringent criteria, [we] will create a much better situation than we have currently got,” she said.
However, Dr Graham Winyard, a former medical director of NHS England, warned that the proposal would not end “death tourism” to Switzerland.
About 40 people travelled from the UK to Dignitas last year to end their lives and Winyard’s research found that less than half of UK residents who have obtained an assisted death in Switzerland in recent years would have been spared the journey by a law limited to terminal illness with a six-month prognosis.
Writing to the Guardian, he urged Leadbeater to “ensure that those who are incurably suffering – as well as the terminally ill – are provided with the comfort of choice. It is our strong belief that a bill which encompasses both the terminally ill and the incurably suffering would best reflect the values of compassion and dignity that we all strive for in end-of-life care.”
• This article was amended on 16 October 2024 to clarify that the assisted dying bill would become law in England and Wales only.
