Tuesday 30 November 2010

The vast majority of the members of Lord Falconer’s new commission on assisted dying are well-known names in the pro-legalisation lobby

Today I went by invitation to the launch of Lord Falconer’s Commission on ‘Assisted Dying’ at the London headquarters of think-tank Demos.

He confirmed that the commission has been set up with funding provided by Bernard Lewis and celebrity novelist Terry Pratchett (pictured), a Patron of Dignity in Dying and advocate of legalizing assisted suicide for people with dementia. He also confirmed that Dignity in Dying itself (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society) had made the arrangements for its formation.

He insisted however that his inquiry into assisted dying in the UK would be ‘an objective, dispassionate and authoritative analysis of the issues’.

The aims of the commission are to consider ‘what system, if any, should exist to allow people to be helped to die and whether changes in the law should be introduced’. He confirmed at the meeting, in answer to a question, that the commission would deal only with assisted suicide and not with euthanasia.

In an attempt to answer critics (including me) who have raised concerns over the commission's transparency, independence and objectivity, he said: ‘We will evaluate all the evidence we hear on a fair basis, judge us at the end by the quality of our report.’

Today we learnt the names of all twelve members of the commission. It was no surprise to learn that the majority (nine) are known already by those who work in this field to support a change in the law to allow assisted suicide. Most have actively worked towards this end in the past. None of the remaining three are known to oppose it.

I asked the Demos Director about how the members of the commission were selected and she confirmed that they had been effectively handpicked by Lord Falconer himself. She didn't go as far as saying they had been interviewed by DID CEO Sarah Wootton and Terry Pratchett himself (and I didn't ask), but that might be a good line of questioning for journalists.

Falconer has included people who are prominent in their respective professions and have impressive sounding titles that bring a degree of gravitas to the proceedings but he has kept very quiet about their personal views. This will effectively fool most casual observers and media people not that familiar with the broader cast in this whole debate.

He has, for the same reason, avoided using any of DID's official patrons, seemingly in order to create the impression that this is a group of 'independent' people not linked with DID (when in fact most of them are), or who at very least, in the main, share Falconer's own views.

So who are the twelve members of this grand jury?

All four Parliamentarians on the commission have either made their pro-assisted dying views public or voted for legalisation in the Houses of Parliament.

Lord Falconer himself, who will chair the commission, has campaigned long and hard on this issue and attempted to legalise assisted suicide via an amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill in 2009.

Baroness Elaine Murphy of Aldgate and Baroness Young of Old Scone share Falconer’s views – Young supporting Falconer’s amendment on 7 July 2009 and Murphy voting for Lord Joffe’s Assisted Dying Bill on 12 May 2006. Penny Mordaunt MP has not had an opportunity to vote on the issue but recently made her own support for legalisation very clear.

While all the major disability rights organisations in the UK (RADAR, UKDPC, NCIL, SCOPE, Not Dead Yet) oppose a change in the law Stephen Duckworth, Chief Executive of Disability Matters Limited, is one of those rare disabled people actually to back legalisation. 'Disability Matters' sounds grandiose but it is in reality just a private business - and judging by the current accessibility of its website, may not be doing that much at present. Duckworth happens to be disabled (hence his usefulness to Falconer) but he seems not to represent anyone but himself. Hardly surprising then that he is included on this panel.

Whilst 95% of Palliative Medicine Specialists are opposed to a change in the law Lord Falconer has managed again to find two who buck that trend in Professor Sam Ahmedzai, Professor of Palliative Medicine in Sheffield, and Dr Carole Dacombe, Medical Director, St Peter’s Hospice.

Earlier this year I was involved in a two hour dialogue in Oxford (over dinner) with Lord Ian Blair of Boughton, former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, and I can assure you that he too firmly supports a change in the law.

Sir Graeme Catto, former President of the General Medical Council, recently spoke in support of the new organisation seeking to promote the legalisation of ‘assisted dying’, Health Professionals for Change.

So who does that leave? Just three whose views we (or at least I) do not already know but may be able to guess: Dame Denise Platt, Member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life; Celia Grandison-Markey, Management Consultant for Health and Social Care in the public sector; and the Revd Canon Dr James Woodward, Anglican Priest and Canon of St George’s Chapel, Windsor.

Any information of any of these would incidentally be most welcome.

So is this an independent committee? I think not! In fact I am astounded that Demos, which is to act as secretariat, providing administrative and research support, has agreed to work with such an unbalanced group.

But I suspect that like most of the British Public, Demos was simply not aware of where these illustrious people’s personal convictions lay.

Lord Falconer, of course, is perfectly free to set up an ad hoc committee to take evidence and make recommendations to Parliament. It is a free country and he has every right to try and influence public policy.

But it is a trifle disingenuous of him to pretend that a group with such clearly settled prior convictions, might bring any impartiality or objectivity to bear on these important issues.

14 comments:

  1. Suction inappropriate due to advanced dementia.
    The quote in my fathers notes which gave the nurses the right not to administer the same when my father was in severe distress with breathing difficulties.
    We fought this decision succesfully wanting dignity and comfort for him as he died.He got it!
    I can see why folk support the cause for legalising assisted suicide when this is what happpens in the hospital.We have got to give a better educated more respectable service to dementia sufferers and their families.
    What was it that made dad less of a candidate for suction than any other person in the hospital....his label of dementia.50 years ago that lable was cancer and look where we are now with that.We must opppose all attempts to legalise assisted dying when our care for dementia sufferers lacks in so many ways.
    Our county discriminates against those who have dementia by not allocating funding for those with swallowing difficulties.How is this passed and who is responsible.The moves within the NHS against folk with dementia are frightening.This is from my own personal experience and I am very worried.It seems that we are assisting dying already in financial terms and by disrespectful insensitive decisions at the patients bedside.How can this be ?
    RGN RMN (working in pallitive dementia care)

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  2. Thank you, Peter, for giving us REAL information about Lord Falconer's Commission. I listened to Victoria Derbyshire's programme from the Nicklinsons' home which included Lord Falconer and lost count of the number of times she referred to it as an "independent commission". It felt as if he had briefed her always to refer to it that way. But as with 'Dignity in Dying' remaining at heart the Euthanasia Society that doesn't stop it being a very dependent commission.
    It was a moving and emotive programme. It struck me that my prospects with MND are medically quite similar to Tony Nicklinson's, but that wouldn't be a ground for exposing others to the risk of euthanasia.

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  3. Thanks Michael. I didn't listen to the Derbyshire programme on Five Live but I am concerned about DID and Lord Falconer using the Nicklinson case and this new 'independent' Commission to chip away at the Murder Act as well as the Suicide Act despite the fact that it is outside their publicly stated agenda.

    I have always suspected that they are using the weasel term 'assisted dying' (which as you know has no legal meaning) to include both assisted suicide and euthanasia.

    Of course they are entitled to pursue any agenda they wish to pursue, but in order to retain credibility they must be transparent about what their goals really are. Lord Joffe got into a lot of hot water in 2006 by suggesting that his bill was just the 'first step'.

    When they use euphemisms or refuse to define their terms precisely I get suspicious about them having a hidden agenda.

    This is in part was why I asked Lord Falconer publicly yesterday to define 'asssited dying' for me specifically with regard to a timescale for 'terminally ill' and whether it included euthanasia as well as assisted suicide.

    I had to ask him three times. He would not answer the first question but he eventually on the third occasion did categorically deny that the remit of the commission inlcuded anything beyond assisted suicide. But we all know that the Nicklinson case would involve euthanasia and not assisted suicide. So why is he so interested in that?

    I suspect we are seeing a bit of an incremental agenda here (mission creep) but we will have to wait and see I guess.

    I agree with you entirely re the risk to vulnerable others of a change in the law.

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  4. Please keep us informed about this 'independent panel' and what it does - also, tell us when, and what we can do about it.

    Louise Morse

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  5. Hi Louise - you can follow all the progress at http://commissiononassisteddying.co.uk/ which is the official website. I will post regular updates too.

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  6. Thank you for this vital, well researched piece. It appears that the web domain for Disability Matters Ltd is now available for sale. Clicking on Stephen Duckworth's name in your piece goes straight to Dignity in Dying.

    It is surely wholly disingenuous of Lord Falconer to even suggest that this panel's findings could ever be unbiased, given its skewed make-up. His request that we wait and judge the report on its quality may be little more than an attempt to divert people from assessing it on its content. People already committed to an agenda may well present a report that is qualitative in its presentation but flawed in its conclusions.

    As Charlie Falconer, the noble Lord's track record in matters such as the Iraq (dodgy) Dossier and Dr David Kelly's death would certainly cause me to have serious doubts about his ability to remain impartial and objective.

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  7. I was invited to take part in a public consultation exercise sometime ago. A large package with a 254 pg case report and several other files on disc were sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer. Though the majority of info was irrelevant,the files did contain certain bits of info related to suicide.
    1. Suicide, assisted suicide from a very Spiritual viewpoint is not what we are supposed to let happen or do.
    2. There is so much more at stake here than just the taking of one life.

    yasmin
    Birmingham. UK
    Please don't give up on this World or on yourself.

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