‘Disabled people need the (AD) Bill like a hole in the head’

Today in Committee

Pro-Bill Peers continued to push for greater speed during today’s Lords Committee debate (including some self-defeating interventions which prolonged proceedings, and some increasingly ill-tempered barracking). Lord Falconer’s surely unserious target was to get through 185 amendments (12 groups) in less than five hours; the 49 amendments (in three groups) actually, properly considered surely struck a reasonable balance.

It was in many ways a constructive day: Lord Falconer agreed to meet with Baronesses Finlay and Cass, and with Lord Shinkwin and Baronesses Grey-Thompson and Hollins, and both Baroness Berridge and Lord Beith said they were willing (even hopeful) not to move amendments they have tabled subject to the outcome of those conversations.

No-one can fairly say that Peers are taking too long over these amendments, nor that Peers aren’t trying to work together to find solutions. Today also showed that opposition to the Bill does not involve an homogenous bloc, and to watch former High Court judge Baroness Butler-Sloss and KCs Lords Pannick and Carlile debate was to be reminded why many MPs felt they could and should trust experts in the Lords to truly test this bill.

The first amendments involved proposals to increase the minimum age from 18 to 25. Baroness Berger cited Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza, who told the Select Committee that “18 is not really a thing”, and recent Cambridge University research which found that in terms of mental development, adolescence ‘lasts right up to the age of 32, on average.’ Baroness Stroud pointed to Sentencing Council guidance:

‘Young adults (typically aged 18-25) are still developing neurologically and consequently may be less able to evaluate the consequences of their actions, limit impulsivity [and] limit risk taking. Young adults are likely to be susceptible to peer pressure and are more likely to take risks or behave impulsively when in company with their peers.’

(Lord Falconer said he was “very, very aware” of the evidence on mental development. “Why is he doing this if he knows it’s wrong?”, one journalist asked.)

Baroness Fox was more concerned with “slippage” in the other direction: with proposals in place to lower the UK-wide voting age from 18 to 16, she envisaged a young person asking, “if you trust us to decide the future of our country, why not trust us to decide our own fate?”

There was significant pushback against what Lord Falconer described as “drafting changes”. Conservative Lord Shinkwin said:

"As a disabled person, I… owe a debt to the Labour Party’s long-standing and noble… commitment to advancing disability rights. However, this amendment [related to adjustments for language and literacy barriers] underlines an inescapable but painful truth. The Bill makes a mockery of that fine, noble and honourable tradition. It shreds a tradition that deserves to be preserved, not sacrificed in such a profoundly cynical and misleading way as to make out, as the amendment does, that this is somehow only a drafting change.

"There is a reason why not one organisation of or for disabled people supports the Bill.

“They know that disabled people need the Bill like a hole in the head.”

In the third group – concerning residency requirements, which in part should guard against “death tourism” – Baroness Finlay highlighted the difficulties the Bill holds in store for the doctors treating residents of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands in Liverpool and Southampton. The speech is worth reading in full, but in short: a justice minister, an MOJ official and a pro-Bill ex-DPP had all indicated that a doctor arranging transport back to one of the Crown Dependencies for an assisted suicide would be acting “outside the parameters of the scheme of the Bill and would therefore be caught by the 1961 Suicide Act.”

This group of amendments really brought out the need for detailed scrutiny. The bill calls for 12-month residency in England and Wales, but:

•Baroness Finlay pointed to those working in the diplomatic or for charities overseas who might return home once ill

•Lord Harper, influenced by the Medical Defence Union, quoted a 2012 review which pointed to the “vagueness” of ordinary residency (a concept found in case law rather than statute); “difficult to interpret and apply”

•Lord Wolfson of Tredegar KC noted that the Bill requires that an applicant fulfil the residency requirement in “the opinion of the coordinating doctor” ― but an opinion without an evidential requirement is too low a bar, especially given that “satisfied” (involving a higher evidential bar) is used elsewhere in the Bill.

Today’s sitting, despite the barracking (and the disappointment of the supposedly neutral Government’s Chief Whip), showed the legislative process working as it should: Peers are tackling thorny but important issues, thoroughly but swiftly, and with a willingness to engage with the sponsor and to withdraw amendments where appropriate.

From Our Duty of Care