A PLEDGE from ministers to tighten safeguards against backdoor euthanasia helped to limit a revolt by Labour MPs on “right-to-die” laws yesterday.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the Lord Chancellor, promised to change the Mental Capacity Bill in the Lords to outlaw clearly any medical decision that was motivated to kill a patient.

The concession helped to persuade MPs to defeat an amendment from Iain Duncan Smith to stop the Bill being used for “bringing about the death” of patients unable to state their own wishes. A total of 34 Labour MPs rebelled.

There was uproar in the Commons when a letter supporting Lord Falconer’s pledge from the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cardiff and, later, Lord Falconer’s own letter to the Most Rev Peter Smith, were circulated on Labour benches minutes before MPs voted.

The release of the Archbishop’s letter seemed designed to quell a growing revolt by Labour MPs against the Government, fuelled by Catholic opposition to parts of the Bill.

In chaotic scenes, David Lammy, the minister defending the Bill, apparently received the letters, both dated December 14, only shortly before the end of a fiery debate. Mr Lammy ignored repeated pleas from MPs and the Deputy Speaker to clarify the Government’s intentions but declared just before the vote that the Bill would be changed in the Lords.

He said: “We have come to a form of wording where we will be able to bring an amendment that will say that where a determination relates to life-sustaining treatment, the decision-maker must not be motivated by the desire to bring about the person’s death regardless of what would be in the person’s best interest. I am convinced that this fully meets the concerns.”

Mr Lammy read from Lord Falconer’s letter, which said: “Neither of us want the Mental Capacity Bill to authorise any decision where the motive is to kill as opposed to relieving or ending suffering or ending treatment where the patient is in irreversible coma. Any decisions must be in the patient’s best interests. I believe this is clearly its effect but we will seek to make it explicit in the Bill.”

MPs were furious that the wording had not been put before them in an amendment they could vote on. The Archbishop wrote: “I greatly welcome this undertaking which, suitably worded on the face of the Bill, will remove the substantial objection which I and many others have had.”

In another last-minute concession, Mr Lammy suggested that the Government would tighten up living wills so that they had to be witnessed and written rather than verbal.

In the event just 34 Labour MPs rebelled by voting for Mr Duncan Smith’s amendment and about 100 more abstained.

The Bill aims to set out a legal framework for living wills, instructions to doctors to withdraw treatment should patients become incapable of communicating their wishes. It will also enable third party advocates to tell doctors when to stop treatment of incapacitated patients.

Both measures are opposed by pro-life campaigners, who fear that they could allow euthanasia by the back door and want greater safeguards for patients to change their minds.

Mr Duncan Smith, whose amendment fell by 297 votes to 203, majority 94, later called the Government’s use of the Archbishop’s letter “a wonderful trick” against its own side. He added: “I am a bit angry, frankly, with him because he is not right to intervene in the debate.”

Speaking after the debate, Ann Widdecombe (C, Maidstone and the Weald) said: “I think the Government made a desperate attempt, they knew they were going to lose otherwise, to get a seeming endorsement from the Catholic Church and the Archbishop unwittingly played into their hands. He got the Government off the hook.”

Ministers insist that the Bill will not change the law on assisted suicide but critics argue that it could open the door to “killing by omission” through the withdrawal of treatment. In a stormy debate during the Bill’s report stage, Mr Duncan Smith said that no patient should have food and fluids withdrawn on the say-so of their chosen advocate if they would otherwise survive.

As a result of the law lords’ decision on the Hillsborough victim Tony Bland, food and fluids are legally defined as “treatment”. Mr Duncan Smith’s proposal would have ruled unlawful any withdrawal of treatment designed to end a person’s life unless continuing such treatment would be “unreasonably burdensome” to the patient.

Mr Duncan Smith told the Commons: “Under this Bill it would become very easy for someone to have food and fluids withdrawn. It takes away that ability to think again.”

The Mental Capacity Bill later passed its third reading in the Commons by 354 to 118, majority 236, and now returns to the Lords.

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