Sequels to horror films can be a mixed bag. Some become classics in their own right, others fall into the category of things better left forgotten. Think Leprechaun: Origins. The House of Commons was back this week debating assisted suicide again. Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the chamber, here we were, the same arguments in favour, the same cast, the same lingering air of horror. The quality was not good: this was Children of the Corn II territory.
This was partly due to the Bill’s new sponsor. It is quite hard to imagine a downgrade from the Grim Leadbeater, but Dignity in Dying (the quondam Voluntary Euthanasia Society) had found it in the form of Lauren Edwards. Edwards gave a wooden introduction to the debate, skating over, as you might expect, the problems of expert opposition to the bill, and instead trying to frame it as a simple issue of Lords versus Commons, Peers vs People. The mood in the Commons, however, felt restive, irritable. Her speech immediately drew repeated interventions, to which her answers were either monosyllabic or downright peevish.
The redoubtable Dame Meg Hillier sniffed out the dirty tricks of the bill’s sponsor. The primacy of the Commons has been one of the reasons why those in favour have insisted it has to be reintroduced in the same form as last time, as it was accepted (just) by the lower house but fell during scrutiny from the House of Peers. However, there was a problem. If the Commons were so important, presumably Edwards would be accepting amendments from it, asked Dame Meg. Obviously the answer came back ‘no’. If the Commons amended the bill it can’t be rammed through the Lords using the Parliament Act. This was a point that came up again and again across the House and revealed the real intention of reintroducing the Bill – revenge against the House of Lords for daring to point out its obvious flaws. But in the event, this overreach proved a miscalculation.
We heard some familiar soundbites – though these triggered groans, as when Lauren Edwards repeated the Orwellian canard that the removal of judicial oversight actually strengthened the bill, or when Simon Opher regurgitated the line that this was ‘the safest Assisted Dying Bill in the world’ (which is why every royal college was against it). Kit Malthouse, the Ozempic Ankou, was his usual charming and conciliatory self. He reproduced precisely the same arguments he’d made last time but with a threat of ‘if you don’t do what I say, you’ll be sorry’ tagged on the end. It was the sort of argument advanced by a villain in a children’s film.
Immediately after Malthouse came Ashley Dalton, which was like travelling from one galaxy to another in terms of quality and grace. One of the most affecting speakers in the debate, she revealed that last time MPs considered the issue, she had just been given a terminal cancer diagnosis. She gave an excoriating and passionate speech in which she called out the attempt to ‘terrorise’ recently diagnosed people like her, with horror stories that do not represent the reality of palliative care. She pointed out too, a reality which many members of the House of Commons seem to forget – they are legislators, not members of a debating society and so the quality of law matters. And in this case, the bill is such a dog’s dinner that it might as well be sponsored by Pedigree Chum.
Dalton was then followed by a smug Lib Dem woman who couldn’t possibly see how there would be problems and insisted that assisted dying and palliative care were actually ‘rooted in the same instinct’. We were truly through the looking glass now. Once again, for all the House has congratulated itself for how it has conducted the assisted suicide debate, it has often shown parliament at its worst. The Bill’s supporters return again and again and refuse to listen to the people whose job it will be to actually carry out their macabre orders.
There was a monstrously insensitive speech by Jess Phillips, who used her remarks to unsubtly rubbish all the painstakingly made points about the limits of individual choice. She also called herself ‘a scholar of coercion’, which for someone who failed so catastrophically on the rape gangs is quite the admission. In the event, her argument basically amounted to: ‘coercion is happening already, so what’s the harm in having more of it?’
Equally unimpressive was Alicia Kearns, who gave an analysis of the relationship between Lords and Commons and the ability to amend the bill that was either wilfully ignorant or downright dishonest. As she gave a description of parliamentary sovereignty which would have made Oliver Cromwell blush with shame, her constituency association might reasonably ask how it is that she continues to represent herself to them as a Conservative.
There were better moments. Rosie Duffield delivered a quiet, dignified speech which sought actually to quote disabled people, an astonishingly rare occurrence in a bill of this magnitude for them. Surgeon and former health minister Zubir Ahmed spoke of the ‘quietly vulnerable, the constituents and patients… who concede to me, in the sanctity of a clinic room usually, that they do not wish to be a burden.’ Kim Leadbeater had earlier heckled Ahmed and accused him of ‘making it up’, which in a nutshell was the bill sponsors’ general attitude towards anyone with professional expertise.
Eventually the Commons fell into a palpable hush as members headed into the lobbies. Did parliament really have the appetite for all this again? No, as it turned out. It was close – but then it had been close in favour too. The Commons split 270-286 and the Bill was, for the time being, at least temporarily, buried. Only a few switched outright from supporting to opposing: the swing was largely driven by previously supportive MPs deciding to abstain, and former abstainers electing to vote down the bill altogether. Was this a sign that the nuclear threat of the Parliament Acts had spooked wavering MPs? Or perhaps, with an assisted suicide sceptic having replaced a frothing enthusiast in Downing Street, more backbenchers no longer thought a matter of life and death equal to the question of their careers. Either way, for now, it’s over: this was the rare sequel that’s actually better than its predecessor.
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