MPs are now going through the details of the bill to give terminally ill adults choice at the end of their lives.
The public have long backed a change in the law and in November Parliament supported the principle of assisted dying by a majority of 55.
The committee has a vital job to do, stress-testing every single line of the legislation to make sure it is safe, fair and workable.
We have heard from fifty experts spanning medicine, palliative care, disability rights, and the law.
Many others have submitted their views in writing. Having listened to them, I’ve proposed changes that will improve the bill and protect against the risk of anybody being coerced into making a decision against their will, or doing so when they didn’t have the mental capacity to understand the choice they were making.
My bill creates new protections for dying people, where none exist today. We have no way of knowing if terminally ill people are being pressured into taking their own lives, or travelling to Switzerland for assistance to die. This legislation will close those gaps. It makes the strongest bill in the world stronger still.
I am proposing a new Voluntary Assisted Dying Commission. It would be judge-led and bring skilled professionals like psychiatrists and social workers into the process of reviewing each individual request.
Multi-disciplinary panels would be a much improved safeguard compared to a single judge sitting alone.
At the same time, I have been careful not to make the process so difficult that it would put off the very people it’s designed to help from applying at all.
I think of the relatives of Pat Malone who gave evidence to the committee last month.
Pat told us very movingly about his father’s harrowing death from pancreatic cancer, his brother’s suicide after developing the same disease, and his sister’s lonely journey to Dignitas to avoid a prolonged death from motor neurone disease.
As he said, changing the law that led to so much suffering in his family is long overdue.
