Matthew Doré

Breaking: 188 Scottish Healthcare Professionals Warn of “Serious Risks” Ahead of Assisted Dying Vote Our open letter sent to all MSPs today in full. 👇 1/2

Dame Prue Leith condemns the “obvious obstruction” by Peers blocking the assisted dying Bill. An unelected minority must not be able to thwart the will of the people and their elected representatives.

New: The British Geriatrics Society has come out strongly against the McArthur Bill. “The BGS urges MSPs to vote against the legalisation of assisted dying.” They say the safeguards are inadequate, and “the lack of good palliative and end of life care” will drive AS requests.

🚨 Ministers have been forced to admit Starmer's flagship 'health' reform - doctors giving poison to patients on the NHS - can extend to many more people at the discretion of the doctor. This is the value of House of Lords scrutiny 🚨 Baroness Merron: "I am advised that a person who has multiple progressive and irreversible illnesses or diseases which taken individually, would NOT result in a life expectancy of six months or less, but when considered together result in an overall clinical trajectory towards death within six months, can be regarded as ‘terminally ill’....the assessing doctor would exercise professional judgement"

It is notable that today’s adverts focus relentlessly on “choice”. But choice is an illusion when access to high-quality palliative & social care is lacking, meaning poorer people who can’t afford such care would have no meaningful choice if assisted suicide were introduced. 5/

🚨DAVID VS GOLIATH! Today, the well-funded pressure group Dignity in Dying has spent a fortune on full front-page adverts in multiple Scottish national newspapers, lobbying for its floundering Scottish assisted suicide Bill that would put vulnerable, voiceless people at risk.🧵1/

It looks like the assisted dying bill may fall, thanks to the House of Lords doing its job. If you're interested in why this lamentable bill failed - or you want to be ready for the arguments, the next time a similar bill arrives (as it surely will) - order my book. Link below.

MPs will vote on the ‘Scrap Juries Bill’ on Tuesday 10 March. It’s a tactic to lock MPs into the principle early. Once that first vote is secured, every vote after that becomes much easier for the Whips. There is no LEGISLATIVE nor POLICY reason why Second Reading has to be next week. The Government has now said (at least privately) it does not intend to force the Bill through this session — it will be a ‘carry-over’. That removes any hard deadline and means that, at best, the Government saves only a few weeks of legislative time. The rules on carry-over require an amending stage to be left in the first House. That means: (A) They cannot take Report stage until after the King’s Speech, and the Bill is then likely to take another four to six legislative months — a good chunk of the next session — to pass. (B) So at best, the Government is saving around a month of legislative time. (C) MPs will have the ‘joy’ of voting to scrap jury trials for most people both before the local elections and immediately after. I've sketched out an aggressive timetable for the Bill - which does rather depend on the Lords being quite relaxed about scrapping jury trials. If you are a Labour MP and you believe the Lords will take far longer than the very aggressive timetable below, there are no time savings, so why are the Whips MAKING you vote next week? Is it to lock you in? SAMPLE TIMETABLE 10 March: Second Reading; vote on programme motion to limit Committee stage w/c 16 March: Rushed timetable to establish Public Bill Committee; government majority draws up a controlled list of witnesses w/c 23 March: Oral evidence RECESS: 26 March – 13 April w/c 13 April: Maximum of two weeks for line-by-line scrutiny in Committee w/c 27 April: Prorogation (could be a week earlier — there’s usually flex built in) w/c 18 May: Immediately after debate on the King’s Speech concludes, Report stage on scrapping jury trials, followed immediately by Third Reading. Bill sent to the Lords. w/c 1 June: Earliest date for Lords Second Reading w/c 22 June: Earliest date for Lords Committee stage to start (assume four days in Committee) w/c 13 July: Earliest date for Lords Report stage to start, at best two days available RECESS: 16 July – 1 September w/c 1 September: Report stage resumes (assuming that is all that is needed) w/c 7 September: Lords Third Reading RECESS: 15 September – 12 October — PARTY CONFERENCE OVERSHADOWED w/c 12 October: Ping-Pong

This is not the first time Dignity in Dying’s advertising campaign has been so distressingly inappropriate. On an Edinburgh bridge over rail tracks, where so many take their lives, I saw adverts for assisted suicide. Wildly insensitive.