Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill [HL]

My Lords, in the past three days I have received 124 letters, of which 123 have been against this Bill and one in favour. They have not been in any sense propagandistic. They have been written by the individual person concerned and have clearly expressed a deep sense on the part of that person. I want to make three points. The first is that, particularly in a society that has a National Health Service, intrinsic to the success of that service is the profound trust between a physician and his or her patients. Many of the letters I have received raise the issue of whether that trust would be maintained in a situation where it might be thought that the intrinsic and profound value of human life was in any way questioned by the physician. My second point is that there is indeed a very powerful ““slippery slope”” argument. It does not only link to Holland, where, as my noble friend Lord Carlile said, there is already discussion about the possibility of legally ending the lives of children with learning difficulties or other handicaps such as Down’s syndrome. Like noble Lords elsewhere in this House, I have close friends who have had a great deal of joy from their Down’s syndrome child and would never wish to see that child in any way sacrificed. In addition to that, I have a letter from a distinguished nurse—who points out, incidentally, that today is the international day in celebration of nursing—saying that already under the terms of the Mental Capacity Act there has been a notable slip towards bringing the lives of some patients to an end. She writes from the hospital where she has worked for many years:"““All of a sudden we nurses aren’t allowed to pass NG tubes unless the Consultant has approved it. This is just a new protocol since the Mental Capacity Act””." She goes on to say that she has been forbidden by consultants from sustaining life on the part of patients who have not asked to die. This is the slippery slope in practice, and is something we have to consider extremely seriously. My final point is about palliative care. I believe that the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury is right in suggesting that if this alternative is open to us, the pressures on the Administration to bring more palliative care to bear will be much less than they ought to be. Palliative care has been one of the huge and celebrated achievements of this country and it has been extended to the world. Dame Cicely Saunders, the distinguished founder of the palliative care movement, made the powerful point that it is not just medicine that people in the last stages of life need but also, to be put it bluntly, love and respect. They are to be found in the marvellous hospices that now exist in this country, in a way that cannot be found anywhere else.