With the benefit of hindsight, it was always likely that the involvement of a Judge in every single application for an assisted death would have to be removed. There weren’t enough Judges to go round, they didn’t have the training and they would have charged too much. So Kim Leadbeater’s decision to replace them with a “panel of experts”, albeit one with judicial oversight, was right and understandable.
The result, however, seems to have been to reduce overall Parliamentary support. The argument is that the safeguards against “coercion” have somehow been weakened and that vulnerable elderly people are now prey to greedy relatives who want to inherit their money. Frankly, this fear seems bizarre.
Even after the change, the proposed new law will have more safeguards than any other country that has legalised assisted dying. The cost and procedural burden of such an application will still be greater than anywhere else. The reaction of many MPs has been to say that any legalisation must be accompanied so many “safeguards” as to make the whole process unworkable.
The evidence from other countries is that coercion does indeed exist. However, most frequently it is done by relatives who are seeking to persuade an elderly person not to end their life. The loved one may have been given the legal right to an assisted death but the relatives do not want them to exercise it. Is that really what opposing MPs want ?
