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Doctors or care workers will never be compelled to take part in assisted dying if the service is offered in England, MPs have decided as they weigh changes to be introduced to the controversial law.
MPs, who last year narrowly voted to pass a law permitting terminally ill people in England and Wales to seek help ending their own lives, were on Friday debating amendments to the bill.
After an emotionally charged debate in the House of Commons, an amendment was backed stating that “no person is under any duty to participate in the provision of assistance in accordance with this act”.
Critics have warned that safeguards from the bill in order to protect vulnerable people being pressured into ending their lives — such as the requirement for a High Court judge to approve each case — have been watered down.
They have also said that the bill, which as a private members’ bill can only be debated on a Friday, has not received sufficient parliamentary scrutiny given the gravity of its implications.
On Friday Labour MP Naz Shah warned the Commons she would not be “complicit” in approving a “matter of life and death” law without what she believed were adequate safeguards.
“I really, really want to emphasise this to all members listening and the public at home, this process is flawed, fundamentally flawed,” she told MPs. “This is not how we make legislation.”
She also complained that the bill was being rushed through parliament, with just five hours for debate on Friday.
At times the session grew heated, with Jess Asato, another Labour MP and opponent of the bill, accusing Dame Esther Rantzen, the vocal campaigner in favour of reforming the law, of being “distasteful and disrespectful” after she accused opponents of the law change having “undeclared personal religious beliefs”.
The next round of voting on amendments to the bill will take place on June 13. MPs will then be asked to vote on passing the amended bill in its entirety, which would push it through to the next stage of legislative scrutiny in the House of Lords.
Others spoke passionately in favour of a law change on Friday. Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP behind the bill, warned that many had “lost loved ones in deeply difficult and traumatic circumstances”.
She added: “If we do not vote to change the law, we are essentially saying that the status quo is acceptable.”
Proponents of the bill, which would allow anyone with six months or less to live to seek help to end their own life, had hoped it would take just two years to become available to the public.
However, if passed, it may now take two years longer than expected to come into force because of changes made in recent weeks to the safeguards, even if signed into law this year.
The bill was previously amended to remove the requirement for a High Court judge to sign off on each case. Instead an oversight panel, including a legal figure such as a KC and a psychiatrist, will consider each case.
However, earlier this week the Royal College of Psychiatrists intervened to say it could not support the bill, saying there are “too many unanswered questions about the safeguarding of people with mental illness”.
According to government estimates, more than 4,500 people a year would seek assistance to end their lives if the law comes into force.