Those who support the Leadbeater Bill argue that there will be sufficient safeguards in it to prevent the UK sliding down a similarly slippery slope. On its face the Bill is limited to terminally ill adults with less than six months to live. The name of the Bill—“Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill”—has been chosen deliberately to prevent expansion by amendment when it is debated in Parliament. Parliament, the Bill’s supporters remind us, is sovereign, and no expansion of the law could ever happen without Parliament’s express approval. While such a defence is (on the whole) true in its basics, it only tells a partial story. For reasons I will now seek to explain, I don’t believe the Bill’s likely safeguards can be anywhere near as watertight as is promised. As such, there can be no guarantees that any assisted suicide law passed by Parliament will not expand in the future. The slippery slope is a legal reality, not a fiction invented by the Bill’s opponents
by Philip Murray, UK Constitutional Law Association:
Kim Leadbeater has recently introduced a Private Member’s Bill in the House of Commons which seeks to legalise assisted suicide for the terminally ill. Despite its second reading being scheduled for 29 November, the text of the Bill is, somewhat remarkably given its significance, still to be published. Yet the outline of Leadbeater’s proposals has already become known. As such, I seek to offer here a legal analysis of some of the issues relating to legalising assisted suicide in the UK, and particular the idea that any law can be effectively limited to terminally ill adults.
For those who are opposed to assisted suicide, one of the main arguments against it is the inevitability of post-legislative expansion. Critics point to the way most assisted suicide laws have widened after enactment (if they did not start out being relatively broad, as in Switzerland). A recent letter to the Observer from a number of legal academics and practitioners (myself included) put it this way:
Canada has dropped its legal requirement that death be “reasonably foreseeable” and is set to allow euthanasia for mental illness in 2027. The Netherlands already allows euthanasia for the mentally ill and has proposed extending the law to elderly people with “completed lives”. Oregon has repealed its residency requirement and it is only a matter of time until its limitations to assisting suicide and to terminal illness—now being criticised as “barriers to access”—are dropped.
Those who support the Leadbeater Bill argue that there will be sufficient safeguards in it to prevent the UK sliding down a similarly slippery slope. On its face the Bill is limited to terminally ill adults with less than six months to live. The name of the Bill—“Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill”—has been chosen deliberately to prevent expansion by amendment when it is debated in Parliament. Parliament, the Bill’s supporters remind us, is sovereign, and no expansion of the law could ever happen without Parliament’s express approval. While such a defence is (on the whole) true in its basics, it only tells a partial story. For reasons I will now seek to explain, I don’t believe the Bill’s likely safeguards can be anywhere near as watertight as is promised. As such, there can be no guarantees that any assisted suicide law passed by Parliament will not expand in the future. The slippery slope is a legal reality, not a fiction invented by the Bill’s opponents