Thousands could sign up to assisted dying if bill passes, ex-justice secretary says

Former Justice Secretary Lord Falconer has said ‘some thousands’ of people in the UK could end their own lives through assisted dying if a new Bill on the issue passes.

The peer, who served in the cabinet role for four years under Tony Blair, is one of the highest-profile supporters in Parliament of Kim Leadbeater’s proposed law.

MPs will vote on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on November 29 to decide if it will move ahead to the next stage of scrutiny.

Under the legislation, people over the age of 18 who are terminally ill and of sound mind would be able to end their lives, following the agreement of two independent doctors and a High Court judge.

It will be the first time the highly charged issue goes to a vote in Parliament since 2015, when MPs voted 330 to 118 against changing the law.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said the matter will be a free vote, allowing every MP to decide where they stand on the issue without being pressured into a certain stance by party whips.

Appearing in front of reporters in Tory MP Andrew Mitchell’s parliamentary office, Ms Leadbeater and other supporters of the Bill explained why they believed the time was right to legalise assisted dying and what the effects may be.

Lord Falconer told Metro ahead of the beginning of the event that ‘after it’s up and running, some thousands’ may take advantage of the choice offered by the law to die.

He later told reporters the figure would ‘start quite slowly, it’s quite difficult to predict’, adding: ‘If you look at different countries, different percentages apply, so we’ve never put a specific number on it.’

Sally Talbot, an MP in the Parliament of Western Australia, said more than 1,851 people had requested assisted dying in the state since its legalisation came into effect in July 2021, and 738 of those had gone ahead with it.

Reflecting on those statistics, Ms Leadbeater said: ‘What people who have been through this will tell me is that the relief that registering provides is huge, and it allows them to enjoy however many weeks or months of their life they have left to the very best of their ability, because the fear is lifted.

‘The fear of what the end could look like is lifted. And often they don’t use it, there’s really quite low levels of people who go through, in the end, with the process.’

Many MPs are believed to still be undecided on the issue as the debate approaches its final two weeks.

Kit Malthouse, a Conservative supporter of the Bill, told reporters: ‘What we can say is there’s been a big shift since 2015, that’s definitely the case.’

But Peter Prinsley, an ENT surgeon who was elected as a Labour MP in July, said he was ‘not as confident of this thing passing’ after having conversations with his colleagues.

He said: ‘What I have observed, as I have had many conversations about exactly this over the past few weeks, is that older MPs are more inclined to support this and younger MPs are less inclined to support it.’

Ms Leadbeater added: ‘I think that if you have been touched by this issue and you’ve been touched by the status quo, which generally can happen when you’re older, I think you really understand what we’re dealing with at the moment.

‘And if you’re a bit younger and you haven’t had a loved one die in horrible circumstances, or take their own lives, maybe you’re a little bit removed from it.’

Among the cabinet ministers who have said they will vote against the bill are Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Health Secretary Wes Streeting.

Streeting told Good Morning Britain earlier this month: ‘I worry about palliative care, end-of-life care, not being good enough to give people a real choice.’

Speaking in Baku at the Cop29 climate conference, Keir Starmer told journalists: ‘I will not be putting pressure on any MP to vote one way or the other.

‘I personally will study the details of the Bill which has now been published today because safeguards have always been extremely important to me and were an essential part of the guidelines that I drew up when I was chief prosecutor.’