Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill [HL]

My Lords, I have thought long and hard since our previous debates on the Bill, but I am sorry to have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, for whom I have enormous respect and whose motives I admire enormously, that I cannot support the Bill. I say that not because I am against the principle that we should do all we can as a society in general, and as doctors in particular, to relieve a patient’s suffering, especially the type of heart-rending cases that we have heard about today. Where they are terminally ill, I am not against easing their passage from this life as best we can by palliative care; how could I, as an ex-practising physician, not support that principle? All my feelings and emotions are in favour of those who speak for the Bill. I am not against the Bill because of the religious convictions that I may have, because I do not wish to inflict those convictions on others who do not hold them. I am against the Bill for entirely practical reasons—the unintended consequences of acceding to one patient’s desire for assisted suicide when the risks entailed for others seem, to my mind, too great. The probability of a risk to the aged, the disabled and the depressed, who will feel a burden to others despite the safeguards in the Bill, seem to me too high. The finality of that risk, the termination of a person’s life, is too severe. When mistakes are made they will be fatal, and mistakes seem inevitable. Some mistakes, such as a wrong diagnosis or a misdiagnosis of depression, will go undetected. I have tried hard to see whether it would be possible to amend the Bill to the extent that my anxieties could be allayed. Perhaps we could better define terminal illness, or change ““unbearable”” suffering to ““unrelievable”” or ““intractable”” suffering. Perhaps we could relieve doctors of this responsibility, as the majority of doctors seem to wish to be relieved, and give it to some other professionals to pursue. But I am afraid that none of those types of amendment would get around my concerns, and for those reasons I cannot support the Bill. Having said that, I would be sorry if the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, were to press his amendment. Such a controversial Bill, which raises such high feelings, does deserve to be debated in Committee.