Citizen’s jury in favour of assisted dying criticised over impartiality

Citizen's jury in favour of assisted dying criticised over impartiality
Citizen's jury in favour of assisted dying criticised over impartiality

A “citizen’s jury” that found in favour of assisted dying has been criticised as “flawed”.

The randomly selected group of 28 members of the public deliberated for eight weeks before voting in favour of legalising assisted dying by 20 votes to seven, with one person undecided.

But its findings have been criticised as not “impartial and balanced” by campaigners who oppose assisted dying.

The citizen’s jury was commissioned by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics (NCOB) and was said to be a “broadly representative sample” of England’s population.

The jurors were given information on assisted dying including written material, videos and presentations from experts on both sides of the debate.

A majority of the jurors voted in favour of assisted dying, with the most popular reasons being to stop pain and to give people the option to end their own life.

The NCOB said jury members believed that those wanting assisted dying should be able to do so if they had a terminal condition and the capacity to make an independent decision.

A majority also supported legalising voluntary euthanasia. Elsewhere, a number of votes were cast in favour of legalising assisted dying for under-18s, but no consensus was reached by the jury on this.

Prof Anne Kerr, the chairman of the NCOB’s assisted dying advisory board, said the “broad support for a change in the law” was a “significant finding”.

But Right to Life UK, which opposes assisted dying, criticised the methodology of the project and the fact that just 28 people voted.

Danielle Hamm, the NCOB’s director, is a former director of Compassion in Dying, a charity which aims to improve dying in the UK by relieving suffering and advancing education into end of life issues.

The jury’s advisory board also had to remove Berenice Golding, one of its members, early in the project after it emerged she had publicly supported assisted dying.

The project was funded by a grant from the A B Charitable Trust, whose accounts show it gave a £13,000 grant to the British Humanist Association in 2014 “towards work on legalising assisted dying”.

Elsewhere, none of the four individuals in a “content group” advising the project on the balance, accuracy and accessibility of information presented to the jury were completely opposed to assisted dying.

Catherine Robinson, a spokesman for Right to Life UK, said the project was “flawed from the outset”.

“It was inconceivable that a project funded by a charity that has made grants in support of legalising assisted suicide and commissioned by a charity whose director worked for a leading pro-assisted suicide charity could reach conclusions that the public could confidently trust to be impartial and balanced,” she said.

Sir Edward Leigh, Parliament’s longest-serving MP, said citizens’ juries were “unreliable indicators of public opinion”.

“The UK is a parliamentary democracy with laws made by elected representatives in Westminster,” he said. “Whenever the UK Parliament has considered legalising assisted suicide in depth and objectively examined the risks, it has decisively rejected such proposals.”

A spokesman for NCOB said its “independence and expertise” meant it was well-placed to conduct the citizen’s jury, which it defended as “a recognised and credible tool for engaging citizens on a wide range of issues”.

The spokesman added that it had taken “swift action” to remove Berenice Golding from the project and that the A B Charitable Trust “had no influence in the process, methodology, outputs, or findings” of the jury.

“The jury members were presented with a vast array of information and heard from a wide range of experts with varying views,” the spokesman said.

“This was encompassing of those both for and against the legalisation of assisted dying in England.”

A Bill, which would allow terminally ill adults with six months or fewer to live to get medical help to end their own lives, was introduced in the Lords by Lord Falconer, the former Labour justice secretary, in July.

Jake Richards, a backbench Labour MP, said earlier this month that he may bring forward a Private Members’ Bill in the Commons to legalise it.

Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, suggested last week the state of end-of-life care in Britain means the country is not ready for assisted dying.

A survey of 2,000 adults last month revealed widespread public fears about the potential legalisation of assisted dying.

More than four in 10 members of the public (43 per cent) said it could incentivise health professionals to encourage some patients to take their lives given the pressures on the NHS. Some 37 per cent believed it would not.

The public also feared, by 56 per cent, that it could lead to a culture where suicide became more normalised.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly described Compassion in Dying as campaigning to legalise assisted dying. In fact, the charity seeks to improve the experience of dying in the UK. We are happy to correct the record.