Media Watch: The Observer
27th March 2025
The Observer newspaper has published a letter expressing the concerns of 34 palliative care experts about recent changes to the Assisted Dying Bill currently making its way through the UK Parliament.
Headed ‘Questions on assisted dying’ the letter said:
“The eminent lawyers, judges and academics who wrote in support of Kim Leadbeater’s amendment to her terminally ill adults bill describe the new proposal – which would swap the high court judge for a panel comprising a lawyer, a social worker and a psychiatrist – as sensible and practical, and as guarding against any misuse.
They don’t mentioned the glaring limitation of this proposal, which is that there is no requirement for the panel members to ask questions of the patient. Without this, there can be no meaningful assessment, for example, of capacity or coercion. Presented as an important layer of scrutiny, the proposed panel needs to do little more than check the paperwork.
At the second reading of this bill, parliamentarians were assured this would be the safest assisted dying law in the world. Found to be unworkable, and unsupported by senior judges, the high court safeguard has now been abandoned. In its place, a panel that doesn’t even need to ask questions of the person requesting lethal drugs. It may make the bill more practical. But it does not make it more safe.”
The letter was signed by 34 experts, including Professor Katherine Sleeman, Laing Galazka Professor of Palliative Medicine at the Cicely Saunders Institute, Professor Mark Taubert, Dr Sarah Cox and Professor Fliss Murtagh.
