When Pat Malone gives evidence to the committee reviewing my bill to give the choice of sick to the end at the end of their life, each word goes to the heart as to why the law needs to change.
Pat’s father died of a terrible death as a result of pancreatic cancer. He told Pat to help him die, something he couldn’t do. Helping a suicide is currently attracting a sentence of up to 14 years in prison. When Pat’s brother contracted the same illness he could not imagine suffering the same way, so he took his own life. Her husband held her hand as she did so. Both her and her daughter, who was also at home at that time, underwent a monthly police investigation. When Pat’s brother learned that he had a motor neurone disease, he was determined to go to Dignitas, and died alone, away from home, without his loved ones to support him.
I believe we have the duty to help families like Pat and to free people with a terrible death when no other choice can be used to them.
But we have to do this in a way that protects others from the risk of being forced or forced into a decision that they do not voluntarily take.
I pay attention to all the evidence we have received, both orally and written, which is why I now suggest making my bill more stable, without so hard to navigate that this is a great burden for people in the last months of their lives to perform.
Advice from a wide range of witnesses, including medical professionals, lawyers, palliative care specialists, and experts in the field of disability, urgent control and other disciplines, is to introduce a Multidisciplinary layer of protection. What they told us had made, so next week I would propose an amendment to create a voluntary assisted commission. It is led by a high court judge or a former senior judge, thus maintaining the judicial element in my bill. The commission then allows expert panels to view each application for a helped death. Those panels will have a legal chair, but also include a psychiatrist and a social worker, which will bring their own expertise in analysis of mental capacity and recognizing any risk of coercion. In short, I propose what could be called “Judge Plus”.
The evidence we have heard from other constituents who have already introduced strictly drawn laws such as mine is the fear of vulnerable people who are forced to request a helped death rarely, in case, are conducted In practice. Family and loved ones are more likely to try to encourage someone not to do so. But I promised to do everything I could to make sure my bill had the strongest care anywhere in the world, and that this change would meet that promise by doing so even more stable than before.
So I look forward to the process of the line-by-line investigation of the law starting this week. But it is very clear that we should keep people who are sick and dying relatives like Pat Malone who have failed through the legal quagmire they are facing today.
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Kim Leadbeater is MP for SPEN Valley and Sponsor of Assisted Dying Bill
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