Disabled activists working with peers to address serious flaws in ‘dangerous’ assisted dying bill

Disabled activists who are working with sympathetic peers to address the serious risks posed by the assisted dying bill believe there is also still a chance that the legislation could eventually be thrown out by the House of Lords.

Not Dead Yet UK (NDY UK) said there were grounds for “hope” after the completion of the first two days of debate on the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill in the Lords.

Friday’s debate saw speakers opposed to the bill outnumbering supporters by about two to one.

NDY UK said the campaign was “in the best place it could have been, because we can’t kill the bill at this stage.

“While NDY UK continues to oppose the bill in principle, it recognises the need to engage with the legislative process to help ensure, if the bill does pass, it contains the strongest possible safeguards to protect disabled people.”

Almost two-thirds of peers who spoke during the debate on Friday (19 September) were opposed to the current version of the bill, while a little over a third were in favour, a similar proportion to the first day of the debate the previous Friday (12 September).

Of 15 Labour peers who spoke on 19 September, nine were in favour, five were against, and one – speaking for the government – was neutral.

But of 29 Conservative speakers, just seven were in favour and 22 were opposed to the bill in its current form.

Liberal Democrat peers were split, with two on each side, while of 11 crossbench speakers, five were in favour and six were against, while seven non-affiliated peers spoke against the bill and just one in favour.

George Fielding, a member of NDY UK’s coordinating group, who watched both days of the second reading debate from the floor of the Lords – as he is a wheelchair-user – said he was “genuinely moved by the quality of the debate, by the nature of the debate”.

He said NDY UK and other opponents of legalisation had formed “a hotchpotch alliance” among cross-party and crossbench peers.

He said: “We are building a network and a consensus across the Lords and I think that is emblematic of the fact that this bill will touch pretty much every corner of our society, and every corner of the House of Lords has people we have found are sympathetic to our views.”

Fielding said NDY UK was convinced that the bill would be “significantly amended” by peers “because the consensus is, at the very, very least, that this is a dangerous bill, it will foreshorten lives.

“At the very least, this is going to be one of the most significantly-amended bills in parliamentary history.”

He said NDY UK was “working closely with cross-party peers and allies to propose amendments aimed at closing loopholes and reducing risks, especially around coercion, eligibility, and judicial oversight.”

Fielding said there was an “incredible effort going in the Lords” – with input from NDY UK – to make the bill safer through amendments, because it was currently “unworkable”.

NDY UK welcomed the decision on Friday to set up a select committee of peers that will take expert oral evidence from ministers, professional bodies and legal experts, which Fielding said would be “another public opportunity” for peers to probe the bill’s weaknesses and to “demonstrate how dangerous this bill is”.

He added: “NDY UK plans to contribute evidence and research to inform the committee’s understanding of how disabled people may be affected by the bill.”

This committee will hold six evidence sessions over three weeks, beginning in the week of 20 October.

The committee stage will then follow, with its clause-by-clause examination of the bill.

Among those who spoke in Friday’s debate was disabled Conservative peer Lord [Kevin] Shinkwin, who said the bill would “prise open” a “Pandora’s box” that would be “the stuff of nightmares”.

He said the bill “gives the state a licence to kill the wrong type of people.

“I am the wrong type. This bill effectively puts a price on my head.”

He told fellow peers that, if the bill’s scope was expanded over time, he faced “the realistic possibility, as a severely disabled person, of being killed as a result of legislation passed by [the House of Lords]”.

And he pointed out that no organisation of or for disabled people supported the bill.

Another disabled Conservative peer, Lord [Craig] Mackinlay, who became disabled in 2023, said he had found the “joyous, tear-flecked celebrations” by some MPs when the “unwholesome” bill was passed in the Commons to be “quite bizarre and chilling”.

Among his concerns was the risk of coercion, and he told peers: “I am professionally trained and licensed to do probate work through the Institute of Chartered Accountants; believe me, post-death battles over inheritance can get very ugly.

“I am fearful of the coercion of the elderly and the vulnerable. It is so obvious.”

Baroness [Luciana] Berger, a former Labour MP and minister, recalled her shock when hearing a constituent speak of wanting their family member dead.

She said she had also not forgotten “the words and realities of too many former constituents: people isolated and abused in their own homes, sometimes for decades, in fear for their own lives; people who felt like a burden because of long-term illness or serious mental health conditions, especially the elderly; and people treated as though their lives were worth less because they had a disability.

“Many were from low-income backgrounds, facing not only poor health but the crushing stress of unaffordable care costs.”

She was another peer to point out that there was “no organisation of or for disabled people in this country that supports the bill”, and she added: “In considering who the bill might benefit by giving them more autonomy, we must equally consider who it may harm by taking their autonomy away.”

The former Conservative minister for disabled people, Lord [Mark] Harper, told fellow peers that many of the disabled people he had met as minister and shadow disability minister were “profoundly concerned by what the bill will do to society’s view of people who have challenges thrown in front of them”.

He said the bill was “not supported by a single organisation in this country that represents disabled people – not a single one – and we should listen to their views and take them very seriously”.

The Liberal Democrat peer Lord Beith said: “I have this fear – this instinct – that this is one of those big decisions that society may one day regret. There will be no way back.”

Lord Falconer, the Labour peer sponsoring the bill in the Lords, told fellow peers: “One of the features of this debate was the personal experience that so many people have had of how, had that option been available, it would have ended terrible suffering.

“That suffering is not often about the pain but about the lack of dignity and the profound desire to keep control, because that is what people want.

“I believe, from my own experience and from talking to so many people, that having that option is important.”

NDY UK argues instead – with many other disabled-led organisations – that the bill risks embedding discrimination into end-of-life law, “especially at a time when many disabled and terminally-ill people still struggle to access basic care and support”.

Lord Falconer also apologised for not declaring in the first day’s debate that he had benefited from an assistant funded by Bernard Lewis – founder of high street retail chain River Island and a supporter of legalisation of assisted suicide – to support him with his work on the bill, and that literature he had sent to fellow peers had been funded by the pro-legalisation organisation Dignity in Dying.

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