Leadbeater’s Assisted Suicide Bill Is on A Knife-Edge

UPDATE:  Assisted dying bill will not now become law.

Dr Helen Watt PhD, Senior Research Fellow, Bios Centre, UK.

• The Right to Life Australia Inc. thanks our UK correspondent Dr Helen Watt* who has written the following article for our February Newsletter 2026.
• Dr Helen Watt PhD is Senior Research Fellow at the Bios Centre, an independent medical ethics charity set up to research bioethical issues and critically examine current practices in health care, located in London, England.
• Dr Watt has published extensively internationally including in the Journal of Medical Ethics, the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, HEC Forum and Clinical Ethics.

This has been a turbulent, extraordinary year for the UK as regards assisted suicide. In England and Wales, Kim Leadbeater’s bill, blandly titled the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, is on a knife-edge at the House of Lords after passing its Third Reading in the House of Commons. 

Now fearing that the Bill will fail in the Lords, the Bill’s sponsor there, Lord Falconer, in a letter to fellow Peers has threatened deployment of the Parliament Act (rarely used and never for a Private Member’s Bill) to secure its passage to the next stage. This would, however, require the Government to give the Leadbeater Bill additional time which the Government may be unwilling to do given the Bill’s controversial nature.

The Leadbeater Bill would allow assisted suicide for those with a terminal illness with a 6-month prognosis. Doctors do not need to ask why assisted suicide is sought or check for remediable social or psychiatric factors. Patients do not need to see a palliative care doctor or speak to a mental health professional. Someone distressed by a recent diagnosis who is still processing the news, and has not made use of support options, could still be assisted to take his or her own life with reasonable dispatch. Kim Leadbeater has suggested that the patient's feeling a burden would be a legitimate reason for assisted suicide and certainly, it will be a common one, to judge from the experience of other legislatures.  

The Royal College of Psychiatrists, which opposes the Bill, observes that it is hard to square with psychiatrists’ normal role of preventing patient suicide. It also points out that a preliminary discussion may be required if the patient raises the topic, even if the patient clearly does not qualify for assisted suicide and is under psychiatrists’ care precisely to prevent suicide. Will doctors seeking to protect such a patient be expected to have, or signpost for, a how-to consultation that may be exactly what he or she does not need?

Following agreement by two doctors, a panel including a psychiatrist, a social worker and a lawyer will consider patients’ applications. No need for a legal representative to test evidence and no need to ask the doctor or applicant any questions.  Even someone who theoretically might be questioned, such as a potentially coercive person in the patient’s life, will not be legally compelled to appear.  Family members who may be all too aware of coercion by a 'significant other' and/or of mental health challenges or fluctuations in the wish to die need not be brought into the process. In all likelihood, this will be a 'cosy' application to what may in practice be – as in Australian equivalents – a highly pro-assisted-death panel.

The House of Lords has been spirited in its critique, with even ‘in principle’ supporters of assisted suicide insisting the Bill is not fit for purpose.  Noble lords have spoken not only on the principles but on their experiences in connection with their own or a loved one’s illness, or in their medical work or work with charities.  Similarly, public debate has for months included vocal protests from health care workers and medical and charitable bodies concerned about those with depression, those with anorexia, victims of domestic abuse, prisoners and the homeless, the unassertive, the economically disadvantaged, the physically or intellectually disabled.

For these groups, as for others, assisted suicide can be not merely discussed by a doctor under the terms of the Bill but proactively raised by him or her.  A doctor is clearly an authority figure whose words may influence even those who had not previously considered assisted suicide. Many patients will conclude, rightly or wrongly, that the doctor is saying their condition is 'hopeless’ and that a natural, peaceful death with high-quality palliative care is not a practicable option.

Efforts at Committee stage or during Third Reading in the House of Commons to protect  particularly vulnerable groups were successfully resisted by Kim Leadbeater and her supporters.  However, a record-breaking 1,227 amendments have since been tabled in the House of Lords.  Protests that the Lords are exceeding their proper powers have been met with the riposte that this is a Private Member’s Bill, that the Lords are expected to scrutinise legislation and that this is exactly what they are doing.

In the meantime, in Scotland, a bill more frankly named the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill is also under consideration and is now at its third stage. Again, there has been a lively debate on the topic including over the issue of conscientious objection.  Opponents have objected that MSPs will be required to sign a blank cheque in that conscientious objection is a reserved issue, meaning that it must be decided by Westminster and not the Scottish Parliament. In any case, conscientious objection provisions are unlikely to extend to institutions such as hospices, any more than they would do so south of the border under the Leadbeater Bill.  Hospices, already in dire financial straits and receiving only a third of their income from government sources, may in future be expected to allow assisted suicide to take place under their roof unopposed. 

It is worth remembering that research has found that unassisted suicide goes up, not down, when assisted suicide is legalised, seeming to show the well-known ‘Werther effect’ – the  ‘contagious’ effect of another person’s suicide. This is but one of the baleful effects on society – to say nothing of those immediately affected such as patients, families and harassed and/or oath-betraying doctors – should these bills pass into law.  

*Dr Helen Watt is a Senior Research Fellow at the Bios Centre, an independent medical ethics charity.  To subscribe for updates on publications and online seminars, visit www.bioscentre.org.  Donations are gratefully received and can be made to Bios Centre, IBAN: GB07 LOYD 3099 5015 3794 62,  SWIFT: LOYDGB21287.