MPs’ committee votes to scrap High Court judge approval in assisted dying Bill

A requirement for a High Court judge to approve assisted dying applications has been scrapped, with an opponent branding the expert panel suggested to replace it a “weird creature”.

A committee scrutinising the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill voted to remove a clause which had been hailed as the reason the proposed legislation for England and Wales would be the strictest in the world.

Campaigners opposed to a change in the law said the High Court safeguard was being “ditched in favour of unworkable panels”, but Humanists UK said the change was a “welcome improvement”.

When introduced to Parliament last year, the Bill proposed terminally ill adults in the two nations with less than six months to live should be legally allowed to end their lives, subject to approval by two doctors and a High Court judge.

On Wednesday, MPs on the scrutiny committee voted 15 to seven in favour of removing the court-approval clause. Labour MP Jake Richards was absent from the vote.

Kim Leadbeater, the MP behind the Bill, has proposed to instead establish a voluntary assisted dying commissioner – a judge or former judge – and expert panels featuring a senior legal figure, a psychiatrist and a social worker who would decide on assisted dying applications.

These amendments will be voted on at a later stage – possibly later this month – as parliamentary procedure dictates that new clauses are only voted on after amendments to all existing clauses have been considered.

It has been suggested some MPs who supported the Bill at Second Reading last year could change their minds.

Conservative MP Danny Kruger, who voted against the Bill last year, suggested there were 60 MPs who previously specified the High Court safeguard as a reason for having supported the proposed legislation.

Of the expert panels suggested in its place, he told the committee: “It’s not a judicial entity in any sense. It’s a weird creature, neither one thing nor the other, a quasi multi-disciplinary team at the wrong stage of the process for the wrong purpose.”

He said the change drops a much-heralded “gold-plated” judicial safeguard, “totally transforms” the Bill, and lamented that MPs had not had a chance to hear expert views on the suggested replacement.

Mr Kruger’s mother, Great British Bake Off judge Dame Prue Leith – who is at odds with her son on assisted dying, having spoken out frequently in favour of a change in the law – was present to listen to part of Wednesday’s committee session.

Ms Leadbeater has insisted the amendments she has put forward will give her Bill “additional patient-centred safeguards” by providing a “range of expertise” via the three-member panel, which she said “is a strength, not a weakness”.

She said she had “listened carefully” to expert evidence in January on concerns around the pressure on judicial resources if each case was to automatically go before the High Court, and on calls to involve psychiatrists and social workers in assessing mental capacity and detecting coercion.

Labour MP Jack Abbott, who also voted against the Bill last November, said he was supportive of the panel idea.

He told the committee: “I think it’s important that it’s robust. We’re including social care workers and psychiatrists alongside legal professionals.”

He told his fellow MPs that one “can’t expect legal professionals to also be experts in palliative care or psychiatry” and so having a multidisciplinary panel deciding on applications from people wanting an assisted death would be “an enormous improvement”.

Mr Abbott and fellow Labour MP Sojan Joseph were the only two of the committee members who voted against the Bill last year to vote for the removal of the High Court clause.

The committee’s line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill continues before it returns to the House of Commons – most likely towards the end of April – for further debate and a vote.

A group of 26 Labour MPs who previously voted against the Bill said scrapping High Court approval “breaks the promises made by proponents of the Bill, fundamentally weakens the protections for the vulnerable and shows just how haphazard this whole process has become”.

They argued against Ms Leadbeater’s claim her new amendments will strengthen the Bill, saying instead the panel “creates an unaccountable quango”.

Claire Macdonald, director of My Death, My Decision, said they “support the move towards a specialist panel that can provide expertise and fairness in assisted dying decisions”, while Andrew Copson, chief executive of Humanists UK, said the panels have the potential to “make assisted dying decisions more efficient and accessible while strengthening already rigorous safeguards”.

Former MP Caroline Ansell, who is director of advocacy and policy at the Christian Action, Research and Education (Care) group, said the “High Court safeguard has been ditched in favour of unworkable panels”.