Falconer dismisses attempts to protect four groups of disabled people in assisted dying bill

The Labour peer trying to steer the assisted suicide bill through the House of Lords has rejected attempts to remove eligibility from disabled people who are homeless, in prison or pregnant, and from many young disabled people.

Lord Falconer rejected amendments – several of which were suggested by disabled crossbench peer Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson – that would have prevented disabled people in all four groups from being eligible for an assisted death.

The amendments were dismissed by Falconer as the Lords again debated some of more than 1,150 amendments proposed to the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill, which would offer the possibility of an assisted suicide to terminally-ill people in England and Wales who have been found to have less than six months to live and are over the age of 18.

Baroness Grey-Thompson had proposed amendments that would have protected those impacted by imprisonment, pregnancy and homelessness, and which she said she had suggested to “invite debate” on how these groups could be affected by legalising assisted dying.

On homelessness, she said: “We have to understand the impact that homelessness might have on people’s decision-making abilities.”

Baroness [Sue] Gray, former chief of staff to prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, told fellow peers: “Not only are people who are homeless by definition cut off from and invisible to key public services, including healthcare, but they often have complex further needs, such as abusive relationships, poor mental health and addiction.

“How can we imagine that they will not be at risk of being offered an assisted death simply because those needs are judged too hard to meet, or because someone else has decided that their lives are not worthwhile?”

She said that had happened in Canada, where “the parameters for an assisted death were widened soon after the law was passed, and we duly saw examples of individuals dying by Medicaid explicitly because they were affected by isolation and homelessness”.

She said: “While I have other reservations about the bill and the pressuring effect it will have on disadvantaged groups, I am especially concerned that we are looking to introduce it at a time when the cost of living means that homelessness has reached critical levels throughout the UK.”

She added: “It is wholly impossible to justify leaving out safeguards that would prevent homeless people being coerced into an assisted death, whether through abuse, absence of choice or simply their despair.”

Baroness [Nuala] O’Loan, the human rights expert and former police ombudsman for Northern Ireland, told peers on Friday (12 December): “Solutions to things such as poverty and homelessness should not involve offering people assisted death rather than a home, possibly in sheltered accommodation, in which they may be able to flourish.”

On pregnancy, Baroness Grey-Thompson said: “A woman may or may not know that she is pregnant. She may be more or less than 24 weeks pregnant.

“A woman may prefer to terminate the pregnancy prior to requesting assisted death, or she may not; she may just choose to carry on to end her life.

“But having information available is a really important part of making an informed decision.”

She said states and countries around the world that had legalised assisted dying had come up with varied ways of dealing with the issue, which she said were “really important things that we need to have much more clarity on”.

On prisoners, Baroness Grey-Thompson said they “can be very vulnerable and prone to suicide” and can also “experience a lack of care and palliative care”.

Baroness [Claire] Fox, the former Brexit Party MEP, said prisoners should be omitted from any bill.

She said: “Letting prisoners have access to and be eligible for assisted death would be very close to reckless state abandonment of those prisoners to something very deeply dark.”

The state “effectively putting a prisoner to death via lethal drugs” was “far too like capital punishment, which I have long opposed and do not approve of”, she said.

Lord [Kevin] Shinkwin, the disabled Conservative peer, supported an amendment that would have prevented any young disabled person with an education, health and care plan (EHCP) from being eligible for an assisted death.

He said it would protect “vulnerable young adults who deserve and need extra protection on account of their disability” and that such protection was “neither patronising nor discriminatory”.

But Lord Falconer dismissed all four sets of amendments, around homeless people, prisoners, those who are pregnant, and young disabled people with EHCPs.

On terminally-ill people who were homeless, he said he was “very strongly against that right to an assisted death being taken away from them, but the safeguards will apply, to be sure that it is their clear and settled view and not the product of coercion”.

He said he believed prisoners “should be entitled to exactly the same position as everybody else” because the safeguards in the bill were “sufficient” and it would “be wrong to exclude prisoners from this right”.

On pregnancy, he said that “safeguards can adequately deal with this, and I am not in favour of any change in relation to it”.

And he said he was also “very against” excluding anyone with an EHCP being excluded from the bill’s provisions, again because of the safeguards already within the bill.

He pointed to comments he made the previous week, in which he said it was right to consider whether “enhanced protection” was needed for all those under 25 – which will include those with an EHCP – although he believed 18 was the right minimum age for an assisted death.

The issues around further protection for prisoners, homeless people, disabled young people and pregnancy are likely to be discussed again at the bill’s report stage.

Peers have now dealt with only 10 of more than 80 groups they will need to debate to finish the Lords committee stage of the bill, with all the bill’s remaining stages needing to be completed by the time parliament’s current session ends, probably in May, for it to become law.

Picture: (From left to right) Lord Shinkwin, Lord Falconer and Baroness Grey-Thompson