📺MUST WATCH: Baroness Grey-Thompson (@Tanni_GT) warns that eligibility criteria for assisted suicide would expand if the Bill passes & expresses no confidence that such supposed safeguards would protect disabled people. Every Peer should listen to her warnings!

⚠The President of the Association for Palliative Medicine explains how legalising assisted suicide may create fear in hospices & care homes, increasing the perception you go to hospices to die. Is this really a path we want to go down as a society?

@ddhitchens This line of questioning about the ‘status quo’ has come up repeatedly (maybe 10x) over the course of this committee, usually from the same two peers…

Second pro-bill peer, like the first, argues the status quo is bad so let’s pass the bill. Prof Monckton-Smith responds: “[If] I thought ‘Well, loads and loads of people might die who actually we could have improved their lives’...I’d be very concerned about voting yes to that.”

🚨Every single person involved in the assisted suicide process, from receptionists to cleaners, would have to have training on learning disabilities, otherwise vulnerable people will be put at risk, according to @kenross2011 from @NDSPolicyGroup.

Chief Exec of @MindCharity: “It’s really clear that the safeguards that are described in the current bill are not adequate… We would need quite a lot more to be able to support it.”

😢TRAGIC - Prof Jane Monckton-Smith tells Peers that 34 people every week take their lives because of domestic abuse. Legalising assisted suicide would benefit abusers and put some of the most vulnerable people at risk.

Baroness @Tanni_GT points out the bill includes disabled people and says: “It’s absolutely possible that suggestions will be made to disabled people: ‘Think of the family, think of your carer...’ It will be suggested that this is a good route for disabled people to think about.”

“Access” is only relevant if assisting suicide is defined as treatment in law. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Medical ethics is being dismantled in front of our eyes. Thank you @lucianaberger for challenging this Orwellian argument.

In 2023, @DeborahAnnetts emphasised the ramifications of the EBacc to the Lords 11-16 Education Committee For 10+ years, Deborah has been an industry leader on the consistent damage to music education, voicing this to parliamentary committees at every opportunity ⬇️

.@Tanni_GT tears up explaining she knows parents "terrified" about how their 40-year-old child living with Down’s syndrome will be treated if they outlive them, and they are no longer around to help advocate for him. Especially if assisted suicide becomes an option.💔

“There is no organisation of or for disabled people that supports this legislation!” Baroness @Tanni_GT outlines her deep concerns about legalising assisted suicide for disabled people. Despite contrary claims, this is the overwhelming view of groups representing disabled people.

“You’ll actually be assisting, potentially, the perpetrator.” Prof Jane Monckton Smith OBE, leading expert on domestic abuse, responds to the argument—increasingly the only argument offered by bill supporters—that a state suicide service would be safer than the “status quo”.

“The prospect of a state-funded assisted dying service sitting alongside a cash-strapped hospice sector is deeply disquieting” And yet, this is precisely what it seems we will shortly have. https://t.co/EM2QmjSXLj

Nearly all of the heads of agencies and organizations that will be dealing with the fallout of legalised #assistedsuicide do not support the bill. I wonder why? Could the bill be not good enough?

10. Lord Falconer, the bill’s sponsor in the Lords, gave evidence riddled with misleading statements, at one point inventing a safeguard which is nowhere in the bill. https://t.co/oL7nvPTQUx

9. Care England said the bill’s sponsors have effectively ignored the care sector, which has not been “consulted or involved in any conversations about how this bill may impact on them.” https://t.co/gTDatJIS8t

8. The president of the Association for Palliative Medicine (who oppose the bill) said the legislation was in “a big muddle” on how it would be implemented within the NHS; the head of Hospice UK said they could not properly prepare because “there is no detail”.

7. MIND, Britain’s most prominent mental health charity, said it’s “really clear” that the bill’s safeguards are “not adequate”.

6. The former Chief Coroner, and the former head of the Royal College of Pathologists, said the bill’s approach to post-mortem inquiry makes no sense.