This is not how you should legislate assisted dying reform

Good morning. The big policy story today is the government announcing a new national inquiry into grooming gangs after Louise Casey, who conducted a “rapid audit” of the evidence on the nature and scale of group-based child sexual abuse, concluded that despite what she had previously believed, there is value in a further inquiry.

I continue to be sceptical: the British state hasn’t implemented all of the recommendations of previous inquiries yet. Some of those proposals will further illuminate the problem. The judge-led, statutory model used in Telford that this inquiry will probably follow took four years to report last time, with a smaller geographical scope. I think it’s better, on the whole, for the government to focus on things that we can actually hold it accountable for, rather than on another inquiry.

When Casey’s report is published today, I will read it, and over the next few weeks or so I’m sure I will have more to say about it, one way or the other. For now, some thoughts on another consequential matter this week: what is set to be the final Commons vote on the assisted dying legislation.

A flawed path

Will MPs pass assisted dying on Friday? My impression, from my own contact book, is “yes”: that is also borne out by ITV News’ tracker of publicly declared MPs, and by LabourList’s tracker of Labour MPs.

Another indication — call me unduly cynical — is that some opponents of the bill have written a letter to Lucy Powell, the leader of the House of Commons, calling for more parliamentary time to ensure greater scrutiny. (All the letter’s signatories either voted against the measure at second reading or have said they plan to do so at third reading.)

As some readers will remember, I did not think that passing this legislation via a private member’s bill was the right route. My concern remains that this legislation is a poor “starter home”, as it were.

The bill, which would allow people with six months or less to live to seek help to end their own life, is deliberately limited in scope to terminal illnesses and would not apply to those with disabilities or mental illness. It is poorly designed to expand into a more extensive “right to die” (every indication we have is that this law is still drawn more narrowly than the public would like), meaning that it will either stall or lead to a riskier version of assisted dying being passed into law.

Some of the MPs who wrote to Powell had actively opposed anything that might have led to a better process, and at that level I find it hard to be all that sympathetic.

They are, nonetheless, right that the private member’s bill process is not the best way to go about this legislation. Introducing the “right to die” is a major change in public policy. Thus it would be much better, in my view, if the government had remained neutral on the outcome but had been the explicit author of the legislation, just as it was on seatbelt law in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and it continues to be on anti-smoking legislation.

Everyone — myself very much included — saw this legislation as falling within a similar pattern to the legislation passed under Harold Wilson in his first term, when a series of liberalising measures were passed by free votes. Those measures changed the kind of society the UK was, but they did not change the nature of what the state did, as this legislation will.

As it stands, however, this is the route parliament has chosen to take: and opponents, as much as supporters of the bill, are the authors of that.

Now try this

I saw The Ballad of Wallis Island again this weekend, because my partner has been too busy to go to the movies recently, and I was keen that she see it too. It really is excellent and Tim Key’s performance only acquires a greater level of brilliance on a second time around.

I also re-read Helen Warrell’s excellent 2022 piece about female spies, following the appointment of Blaise Metreweli as MI6’s first female leader. Metreweli was interviewed for Helen’s story under the name of “Ada”, which you can read here.

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