MY FUNDAMENTAL objection to the assisted-dying Bill is that it attempts to bureaucratise what has been a craft practice. Doctors have been deliberately hastening death quite legally and deliberately for decades at least — probably since that time at about the end of the 19th century when, for the first time since its invention, the profession had antisepsis and anaesthetics, and with them the tools to do more good than harm. Oliver Sacks’s mother, who was a GP, used to drown in a bucket the babies she delivered whom she judged unviable, and tell the mothers that they had been born dead. She talked about it at the family dinner table, too.

So, there were obviously problems with the old system. There is a case for independent oversight, and the courts used ultimately to provide that. Since the courts can provide oversight only after the event — hindsight, if you like — it might seem a clear advance to have them make their decisions before anyone acts. But a letter in The Times suggests the problems that this approach will bring. Sir David Bodey is a retired High Court judge in the Family Division, and thus someone who has had to make decisions of comparable complexity to those the Leadbeater Bill proposes for his successors. Someone, he says, will have to make enquiries, and prepare a report for the court to work from.

“This would involve meeting the applicant in the applicant’s home or other environment; talking with him or her and with family members, friends, carers and other persons with relevant information; and forming a view about the reality of the applicant’s stated wishes and understanding of any alternatives and as to whether the dynamics could be coercive. Without some such infrastructure set up and funded, it is not obvious how the court could meaningfully carry out its proposed inquisitorial function.”

Dr Phil Whitaker, The New Statesman’s medical editor (who is in favour of the principle of the Bill) made a similar point last month: “A doctor who knows their patient well — not just their medical case, but also their character, opinions, relationships, beliefs and circumstances — is best placed to ensure any decision to request assisted dying is well founded. In the 2000s, this kind of doctor-patient relationship was the norm — now it is the exception.”

In other words, it is not just palliative care that needs funding if the system is to work properly — it is a whole new branch of medicine. I would bet good money — and, perhaps, in due course, I will have to bet my life — that neither will be properly funded. No patient, and no good doctor, believes that doctors and patients are fungible, so that any doctor can treat any patient; but this is the assumption behind all the attempts to manage and bureaucratise the health service, and social care more generally.

Some degree of depersonalisation is necessary for any organisation to function. But, in a perfect, rulebound bureaucracy, people don’t matter at all. They have no more individuality than the electrons inside my computer. All that matters is that the programme is formally correct. With the right inputs, the right outcomes will be guaranteed.

You can see this mindset at work among some of the advocates of safeguarding reforms, who seem to think that mandatory reporting and independent safeguarding will solve all the problems of the present system. But mandatory reporting will do no one any good if the police to whom a report is made don’t act; independent safeguarding authorities may fail to understand the real lines of authority and command inside a church. We all know that believers can make terrible mistakes; it doesn’t follow that unbelievers are noticeably wiser.

WHEN Matthew Parris (whom God preserve) announces in his Times column that the Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, is admirable because she admits that her Muslim beliefs lead her to vote against the Leadbeater Bill, he does so on the grounds that “Not being a Muslim, I am therefore enabled to disregard her views. More often, religiously motivated opponents cite practical objections, often contrived, without disclosing a religious root of their concern.”

But, if you follow his argument to its conclusion, no one who disagrees with Mr Parris theologically need be taken seriously on any subject. It is enough to ask where an argument comes from to discard it without further consideration. There is quite enough of that in politics already, and the more there is, the worse our politics will get.

THE other religious story concerned a footballers’ uniform: as part of a Stonewall campaign, the captains of Premier League teams were invited to wear rainbow armbands last weekend. Marc Guéhi, of Crystal Palace, wrote “I love Jesus” on his, and is now to be “formally reminded” of the regulations by the Football Association. The Muslim captain of Ipswich, Sam Morsy, refused to wear the rainbow armband at all, which elegantly dodged the question. Religious messages are banned on football jerseys, you see, whereas advertisements for gambling are, for most teams, compulsory.