Lord Falconer’s latest Bill has received its First Reading in the House of Lords
Lord Falconer has reintroduced his ‘Assisted Dying Bill’ in the House of Lords. It received its First Reading on January 20. The date of its Second Reading is yet to be announced.
Lord Falconer is calling for a system whereby a person with an ‘inevitably progressive condition which cannot be reversed by treatment’ and who is expected to live for six months or less, would be eligible to request lethal drugs, with the intention of using them to end their life.
The person must be aged 18 or over, be deemed to have capacity to make the decision and have been resident in England and Wales for not less than one year.
Lord Falconer proposes that if two doctors decide that the applicant qualifies for assisted death under the terms of his Bill, that the application should then be referred to the High Court (Family Division) for approval.
The Bill outlines the same model for physician-assisted suicide which Lord Falconer proposed in 2015 and to which Living and Dying Well published a detailed critique (see below) in response.
The serious problems with the so-called safeguards Lord Falconer is proposing remain the same, as our paper below explains.
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