Coroners Bill Update: Assisted Suicide and Free Speech

On Monday New Clause 42, which sought to liberalise the law in relation to assisted dying, was not reached (MPs ran out of time) and thus there was no vote and the prohibitions in relation to assisted dying remain very much in place. On Tuesday a very important debate took place in Parliament on the future of free speech in relation to the new offence of inciting hatred on the basis of sexual orientation. Clause 58 of the Coroners and Justice Bill seeks to remove the free speech clause introduced by the House of Lords last May in relation to the new incitement offence. Given that even before the new incitement legislation existed we were already seeing a worrying number of cases of people being questioned by police after expressing conventional faith based concerns about sexual practice, there was and is real concern that these kinds of incidents would/will only increase in the absence of a free speech protection. On Tuesday afternoon David Taylor, MP for North West Leicestershire moved a cross-party amendment seeking to delete clause 58 and keep the free speech protection.There then followed a very engaging debate in which David Taylor, Dominic Grieve and Ann Widdecombe in particular spoke with great distinction. Sadly, whilst they certainly won the argument, the vote was lost by 328 to 174. The Commons has thus declared its support for the removal of the free speech protection. Interestingly there was some movement in favour of free speech compared with the last Commons’ vote on this issue in January 2008 when MPs voted against a free speech protection in relation to the new incitement offence by 338 to 169.

 

More information

To read yesterday’s debate please click HERE