Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, with regard to the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill and its impact assessment, what assessment they have made of the effectiveness of judicial approval as a safeguard in countries with assisted suicide regimes, including the proportion of applications refused in those countries and the reasons for refusal.

The purpose of the impact assessment was to appraise the assisted dying service as described in the bill at the end of committee stage. Judicial approval is not one of the steps an applicant must follow to access the assisted dying service. Therefore, no assessment was made regarding the effectiveness of judicial approval as a safeguard.

The Government remains neutral on the policy choices in the bill, and it is rightly a matter for Parliament to decide if the safeguards in the bill are sufficient.