Hansard Society

• Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill: Concerns about the delegated powers

• Assisted dying - The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill: Rolling news

• The Assisted Dying Bill: A guide to the Private Member's Bill process

• The Assisted Dying Bill: Making sense of the parliamentary process [Video]

Parliament

• Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill: Bill documents

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[00:00:00] Intro: You are listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk/PM.

[00:00:16] Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox,

[00:00:23] Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark Darcy, and welcome to the latest in our series of special mini pods following the detailed progress of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, the bill to allow assisted dying.

[00:00:35] Ruth Fox: And this week we've spoken to Bambos Charalambous, the Labour MP, supporter of the Bill, who's on the Public Bill Committee, performing an unusual role.

[00:00:43] We spoke to him on Zoom. And if you hear any odd background noises, that's because as we spoke to him there was a demonstration going on outside his parliamentary office.

[00:00:57] Mark D'Arcy: Well, we're delighted to welcome to the pod Bambos Charalambous, Labour MP, who's been a member of the Public Bill Committee, considering the Teminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, as it's officially known. So Bambos, first of all, the committee's now on what many think is going to be the most significant change that's going to be made during the committee process, the switch away from having High Court judges presiding over the consideration of applications for assisted dying to having a multidisciplinary expert panel instead.

[00:01:27] So those debates have been had. And as I understand it, the clauses about the judges being the people who preside over this have been taken out. But the new system hasn't yet, as it were, been plugged into the bill. Is that correct?

[00:01:40] Bambos Charalambous MP: That is correct, Mark. We've deleted Clause 12 that deals with the High Court Judge.

[00:01:45] And that's going to be replaced by a number of new clauses and new schedules. Those have been debated. We've had a very lengthy debate about the replacing of the High Court judge with a panel overseen by a commissioner. And, uh, those will be voted on at the very end of the bill after we've got through all 43 clauses and the amendments to those clauses.