The Constitutional Vandals Are Not Those Scrutinising the Assisted Dying Bill

In the Telegraph, Toby argues that rushing the Assisted Dying Bill through the Lords risks cutting corners on a law that grants the state power to end lives. Careful scrutiny isn’t constitutional vandalism, he argues, but common sense. Here’s an excerpt:

The Government is passing laws to expel its political opponents from Parliament, flooded the House of Lords with its own appointees, cancelled elections it’s likely to lose and is curtailing the right to trial by jury.

Yet the “constitutional abuse” the progressive Left is up in arms about is the prospect that the Lords won’t rubber stamp the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. …

The Bill’s sponsors, Kim Leadbeater and Lord Falconer, are anxious that if the Lords spend too long scrutinising it, the current parliamentary session will come to an end before it can get to a Third Reading. They say it will be “talked out”. Various “we the undersigned” letters have been dispatched, and articles written, fulminating about this supposed “abuse” of the constitution.

The rejoinder from those who have reservations about the Bill, among whom I count myself, is that we’re not trying to wreck it, but make it safer. Yes, more than 50 peers have tabled hundreds of amendments, but then Leadbeater tabled 203 amendments and Lord Falconer 38.

If there isn’t time to debate all the amendments in the current parliamentary session, that’s because the time set aside for Private Members Bills is limited. Never has this route been used for legislation that is both this complex and this contentious.

The Commons devoted 11 days to line-by-line scrutiny and, typically, the Lords spends 50% longer, scrutinising legislation more carefully than their less conscientious colleagues. Should we really cut corners on a law that gives the state the power to end lives?

Peers are also aware that some MPs only voted for it on the understanding that its numerous flaws would be fixed in the Upper House – an assumption its supporters encouraged. Leadbetter said she would welcome their Lordships’ “experience and expertise” and Falconer assured his Labour colleagues the Bill would “benefit from the experience and expertise of the Lords”. It’s a bit rich for them now to complain that the Bill is being examined too forensically.

As someone who’s been witnessing this Punch and Judy show for weeks now, I’ve been scratching my head over the invocation of the constitution by the Bill’s backers. Would it really “jeopardise the reputation of Parliament as a whole” if the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was to fall, as various panjandrums asserted in a letter in the Times?

My understanding is that the Salisbury Convention protects what the public has voted for. The Lords must bend the knee to the elected house when the bill in question was in the governing party’s manifesto. This one wasn’t. Indeed, it’s not even a Government bill.

The Bill’s supporters often point to opinion polls showing a majority in favour of euthanasia, as if that created a constitutional obligation to waive it through. But would they apply the same principle to a Private Member’s Bill backing capital punishment? I doubt it. …

The advocates of assisted dying write to me every day, warning that a failure to pass the Bill will lead to a public outcry and the further erosion of what little power the Upper House has.

But what do Tory peers like me have left to lose? Forty-four of my hereditary colleagues have been given their marching orders and Sir Keir Starmer has already created 87 Labour peers. Is he really going to show more respect for the Lords if we vote for this Bill?

There are constitutional vandals in this Parliament. But those of us wanting to scrutinise the Assisted Dying Bill in the Upper House are not among them.

Worth reading in full.