It’s just eighteen days since the Leadbeater bill was published, and already MPs are voting on it. So here are eighteen questions which the media have not yet asked Kim Leadbeater, but to which, I think, she owes us an answer:

[1] You’ve said feeling like “a burden” could be a “legitimate” reason to ask for an assisted suicide. How common do you think it is for terminally ill people to feel like a burden?

[2] If somebody asks for assisted suicide only because they are on a long waiting list for treatment, doctors and judges will have to approve the suicide. Do you think that’s a legitimate reason too?

[3] Sir Louis Appleby, who leads the Suicide Prevention Strategy for England, says this bill undermines the fundamental basis of that strategy. And studies suggest that (non-assisted) suicide rates go up in jurisdictions which adopt assisted suicide. Do you think a rise in non-assisted suicides is a price worth paying?

[4] You say this doesn’t apply to eating disorders, but the chair and vice-chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ eating disorders faculty say the bill “fails the public safety test.” What would you say to reassure them?

[5] You have repeatedly claimed that a “High Court judge” will be involved, but the bill nowhere guarantees that. Why are you misleading the public about the level of approval needed?

[6] You say there will be a second, “independent” doctor, but the first doctor chooses them (7 (3)). Why do you call them “independent”?

[7] Dame Caroline Swift, the lead lawyer on the Harold Shipman inquiry, predicts that safeguards will become box-ticking. “Groups of doctors (‘death clinics’?) that support assisted dying will emerge … the safeguards will gradually be eroded in the same way.’ What, exactly, would prevent that happening?

[8] You say that the public have spoken. But over 60 per cent are “not very certain” of their views, and a poll found that when people are told the counter-arguments, support falls to eleven per cent. That’s not public support, is it?

[9] Judges will have to assess coercion according to civil law – i.e. on the balance of probabilities: so if the judge thinks “coercion” is 1% less likely than “no coercion”, they have to approve the application. Why not say lack of coercion has to be proved beyond reasonable doubt?

[10] Doctors are allowed to raise the subject when the patient hasn’t mentioned it (4 (2)). Do you agree vulnerable people would be safer if, as in Victoria, doctors were banned from doing so?

[11] You say patients will need to have capacity, but under the Mental Capacity Act someone could be depressed or confused and still qualify: in the words of Baroness Hale, the Act’s “threshold for capacity is not a demanding one.” Why have you set the threshold so low?

[12] According to Age UK, 375,000 over-60s experience domestic abuse. How will your bill protect them from pressure?

[13] You say doctors will pick up on coercion. 50% of coercive control cases are dropped for lack of evidence, and only 3.7% of recorded coercive control crimes result in a charge. How will you make the doctors’ and judges’ checks on coercion any better than the police’s?

[14] The former Chief Coroner, Thomas Teague, says the bill is unsafe because it removes the statutory duty to investigate suicides. Why have you got rid of this safeguard?

[15] Why does the bill say assisted-suicide providers can’t be sued for clinical negligence?

[16] According to experts quoted in the Financial Times on Wednesday, there is “no reliable way” to establish “six months to live”, and “months” diagnoses have a 32 per cent accuracy rate. How is this not a porous boundary?

[17] Why is there no obligation (9 (2)) to inform family members, who might be able to offer support and prevent mistakes?

[18] You say you would consider assisted suicide yourself “If my body ends up not working in the way that it should and I want it to.” On what basis, then, do you promise us that people with disabilities can be permanently excluded?