from Christian Concern
We produced this briefing after the assisted suicide bill Committee finished their scrutiny of the bill last week. It is a recap of what happened in Committee and is designed to expose how, despite promises to the contrary, this bill is even more flawed, dangerous and open to abuse than it was originally.
Overview
The assisted suicide bill committee has now completed its scrutiny of the bill. The committee process has come in for some strong criticism. Firstly, the make-up of the committee was stacked to favour proponents of the bill, and witnesses called during oral evidence were either mostly in favour or neutral on assisted suicide in principle.
Secondly, committee members were hostile to concerns of the bill’s opponents, and the latter were accused on several occasions of scaremongering. Additionally, the majority of amendments intended to add safeguards to the bill were rejected – the majority of those accepted were from the bill’s proponents.
There were some important changes to the bill – most notably removing the requirement for a High Court judge, and changing the basis of the NHS – which further weakened the bill. Also, the government forced the committee to delay implementation of the bill till 2029 because of the complexity of implementing such a significant change to the NHS.