The Assisted Dying Bill is flawed, rushed and dangerous …

… Flawed, because important safeguards have been watered down or scrapped. Take the proposal for the High Court to oversee each application as part of a formal judicial process – something sold to the public as making the Bill the safest in the world. Now an informal panel will review applications. Importantly, they will not have the power to compel witnesses and do not even have to speak to the applicant or the applicant’s loved ones or family. And if comments by Lord Steel in a interview are correct, even this watered down panel could be scrapped.

Rushed, because MPs had so little time to properly scrutinise the hundreds of amendments. During the Report Stage, MPs had under 10 hours to consider over 130 amendments to the Bill, or less than five minutes per change. It is simply impossible to scrutinise each amendment in so little time.

Dangerous, because the current draft Bill fails to protect vulnerable and disabled people from coercion. This is not hyperbolae but based on what happens in the US state of Oregon, the model for this law. There, a majority of those who have ended their lives in recent years cite fear of being a burden on their families, carers or finances as a reason. While their law has been expanded and extended. Worryingly, ‘terminal’ now includes eating disorders such as anorexia and even insulin dependent diabetes. This is why hundreds of disability rights organisations including over 60 eating disorder charities have criticised these proposals.

And this is before we get to the issues that have caused alarm among doctors. Not only will this legislation require a rewrite of the NHS charter, the founding principles of health care in our country that require doctors to save life, not take them, it fails to protect hospices and care homes from being forced to take part and is silent on the role of the doctor after the poison is ingested. Again, looking at Oregon, many assisted suicides take hours and, in some cases, even days as the person who ingested the barbiturates dies of a pulmonary oedema – where their lungs fill up with fluid.

Finally, this Bill does nothing to fix palliative and end-of-life care – a system that is underfunded and understaffed. Sorting out this crisis should be the focus for parliamentarians. In short we need more care not killing.