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18 April 2025 / Sir Mark Hedley
Issue: 8113 / Categories: Opinion , Health , Human rights
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A panel replaces a judge

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Sir Mark Hedley on what needs to be considered as a result of this amendment to the assisted dying Bill

One sticking point that is surely evident to all who are following the assisted dying debate is that to legalise the service, we will need to believe it is possible to embed the rigorous safeguards required to ensure the choice is voluntary and free of coercion.

Indeed, recent evidence from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics shows that the public are greatly concerned about the existence and quality of safeguards, if assisted dying is to be legalised. In part, the public believed these protections should be provided by a wholly independent authority.

Those concerns were echoed in the original draft of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. Its proponents asserted its unparalleled safeguards, an important component of which was to be the role of the High Court judge, set out in clause 12. That judicial oversight has now been removed and replaced with a multidisciplinary panel comprising

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