Baroness Berger tells the government it’s not too late to stop assisted dying bill

The great-niece of Labour giant Manny Shinwell says her inspiration comes from Pikuach Nefesh: the unshakeable principle of rabbinical law that saving life comes before all else.

“My deepest concern with this bill is its failure to provide adequate safeguards,” she says.

“As currently drafted, it risks leaving vulnerable people exposed to coercion and abuse into having an assisted death. Rather than upholding the principle of protecting life, it places those most at risk directly in harm’s way. Through my amendments and my work on this bill, my purpose is clear: to ensure it cannot be applied to those who wish to continue living for as long as they can.”

As the bill progresses through the Lords, Berger has urged the government to step in to stop the current version becoming law, as she considers it “completely the wrong mechanism” to deliver such far-reaching change.

Berger left Labour due to the antisemitism she experienced under the leadership of Corbyn before returning to the party two years ago. She says that the party has “turned a significant corner” under Starmer, who was responsible for her peerage.

Yet now she is a leading opponent of the assisted dying bill for which Starmer has given his support.

She says she concluded she had no choice but to challenge the proposed legislation.

“When I immersed myself in the detail of this bill and I reflected on my previous experience as a constituency MP, I was overwhelmingly concerned about the implications of this legislation as it was received by the House of Lords shortly after I entered.”

Along with Berger, Lord Carlile, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, is an opponent of the bill, but it is supported by another Jewish peer, her Labour colleague Lord Dubs.

Some backers of the bill point out that at present there is nothing to prevent people boarding a flight to Switzerland, where assisted dying is legal.

Berger responds: “By introducing a new choice, it can’t be the only choice, and it needs to be a choice with safeguards, and it needs to ensure that all the other choices remain and that people don’t feel compelled to make the choice to end their life prematurely.”

She is critical of some MPs in the Commons she accuses of “having a debate and discussion about the principle of the issue, rather than on the detail of the legislation in front of them.

“We even heard it from MPs, both in their spoken contributions, and we saw evidence of correspondence that they had sent to their constituents, which said, ‘Well, don’t worry, the Lords are going to sort it out.’”

The third reading of the bill passed the Commons with a slim majority of 23 votes. Berger is keen to point out that this means that the legislation “required only 12 MPs to vote in a different direction, and the bill wouldn’t have passed”.

Despite the fact that the prime minister voted in favour of the legislation, the government is officially neutral on the issue of assisted dying. Cabinet ministers such as Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood are both opposed to it.

Former shadow mental health minister Berger shares their concern over what may lie ahead if the bill is passed. “I spent years of campaigning in and around mental health, during which we fought for suicide prevention, and now we’re looking at introducing something which could help to end someone’s life,” she says.

She warns the legislation would “irrevocably alter the relationship between doctors and their patients, between the state and the population, between society and how we contend and how we preserve or how we end life”.

Urging the Government to intervene, Berger suggests doing so may protect ministers from the flaws of a bill she believes is unfit for purpose. “My worry is, at the moment, that it’s subject to so much legal challenge if it was to pass in this current guise,” she says.

Noting that the bill is yet to complete its passage through parliament, she adds: “There’s still an opportunity for it to be taken in either as a government bill or to start again.”

Berger fears the private members’ bill has not received the due scrutiny that would have been afforded government-sponsored legislation.

“We would have had a green paper, a white paper, a consultation. We would have looked properly at international experiences in other jurisdictions, and we’ve had none of that.”

The 44-year-old peer rejects the claim by some of the bill’s supporters that it would be unconstitutional for the Lords to reject a bill passed by the elected House of Commons, and refuses to let the upper house be “bounced into” making rushed decisions.

“We are there to do a job, and we’re going to do it. I take that responsibility very seriously, and I’m going to exercise that responsibility… where we need to interrogate and where we need to examine the bill and to raise the gaps or to raise the issues again, on behalf of those experts that have shared that with us, then we’re going to do.” Away from the debate over this bill, Berger’s commitment as a lifelong campaigner against antisemitism remains unwavering.

She says that the “explosion in the levels of anti-Jewish hatred in this country should be of concern to everyone”.

Despite being “involved in these discussions and issues for over 20 years, it’s the worst I’ve ever seen it, and certainly the worst that many people are experiencing it, and some people for the first time”, she says.

In a speech in the Lords last month following the Heaton Park terror attack, Berger revealed that her eight-year-old daughter had asked “if we should stop going to synagogue”.

There have already been three reviews into extremism – by Lord Walney, Dame Sara Khan, and Sir William Shawcross – which contain detailed suggestions and recommendations.

For Berger, it’s now time for meaningful action. “We’ve crossed the Rubicon now. We all feared that we might see something like what happened on Yom Kippur at the Heaton Park synagogue... and I want to see the government do everything it possibly can to ensure that we don’t see anything like that happen again.”