Has the Royal College of Psychiatrists Killed the Assisted Suicide Bill?

Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill has been described by various MPs as a “farce”, an “embarrassment”, “irredeemably flawed” and “beyond a joke”. But last night’s damning statement from the Royal College of Psychiatrists may be the fatal blow, says Dan Hitchens in the Spectator. Here’s an excerpt.

How do you make assisted suicide safe? In recent months, a large part of Kim Leadbeater’s answer has been to point to the involvement of psychiatrists. Having a psychiatrist sign off each death, Leadbeater said, would “add expertise”. They would be part of a much-touted “multidisciplinary” approach. In particular, they would be able to check that applicants met the threshold of the Mental Capacity Act.

There’s just one problem. The psychiatrists themselves appear to think Leadbeater’s bill is a dangerous mess.

I’m paraphrasing, of course. But last night’s statement from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, in which they identified nine major problems with the legislation and said they “cannot support” it, is a major blow to the bill’s credibility.

For one thing, it is a reminder of the amateurishness which has been such a mark of this whole saga. Originally, Leadbeater’s bill required a High Court judge to sign off every case. She dropped that requirement under pressure from the Ministry of Justice, who told her it was unworkable.

The replacement system, an “expert panel”, has no judges, and none of the powers of a court; instead it has a lawyer, a psychiatrist and a social worker. It was meant to reassure MPs that this was still a rigorous process, despite the High Court judge being axed. (Leadbeater briefly tried to popularise the term ‘Judge Plus’ – having subtracted the judge – to make the panel sound more impressive.)

But, remarkably, Leadbeater seems not to have consulted the Royal College of Psychiatrists before announcing that their members would be assessing thousands of assisted suicide applications every year. And now it seems she is dragging them into a process they regard as fundamentally flawed.

The heart of the matter is this. A psychiatrist’s role is to care for the psychologically troubled. That includes, under normal circumstances, terminally ill people who say they want to end their lives. This bill asks something very different: it wants psychiatrists to rubber-stamp such people’s access to lethal drugs. The tension between these two roles is obvious. …

The Leadbeater Bill has been described by various MPs as a “farce”, an “embarrassment”, “irredeemably flawed” and “beyond a joke”. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has not said anything as rude as that. But its careful questioning of the legislation may prove to be the most devastating critique of all.

Worth reading in full.