Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill [HL]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, opened his speech by objecting, quite rightly, to the misrepresentation of his position in The Times recently. Perhaps I could open mine by objecting to what I felt was a misrepresentation of my position when the noble Lord said that those who supported the Bill and were proponents of it were intent on extending it to euthanasia in the future. I went on to the Select Committee as someone who did not have clear views on this subject and was not committed to the Bill that had been brought forward formally. It was only following my experience on the committee and having listened to the evidence that I felt that I could, with good conscience, support a Bill that was constrained to physician-assisted suicide but would not be able to support a Bill that allowed physician-administered euthanasia. I made that position clear in your Lordships’ House and when I spoke in the Select Committee, and I certainly made it clear to my noble friend Lord Joffe. I feel that it is unfair to punish my noble friend Lord Joffe for having constrained the Bill. He listened to some, like me, who felt that it should be more limited and then brought forward a more limited Bill. So it is unfair then to argue in procedural terms that, because the Bill is more limited, we are not bound by the recommendation in the Select Committee report that this should go on to further and full discussion in your Lordships’ House. It would be a matter of enormous sadness to me if we could not deal with these issues in some detail. I wish to say something to two fellow members of the committee. First, I say to my noble friend Lord Turnberg that his register against which to assess this Bill is exactly the same as mine but he comes to a different conclusion on whether you can meet the needs of a minority without endangering a majority. We differ not on our absolutes but on our interpretation of the Bill. Secondly, I say to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, whose company I enjoyed enormously—we swapped a lot of books during our time on the Select Committee—that I, too, felt as though I was living in the world of Alice in Wonderland when I read the letters that I received recently about the Bill, because they described a Bill quite different from the one before the House today. So it is possible for us to have the same feelings but to disagree about the way forward. Finally, I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, that at the end of life we need to show people love and respect as well as giving them physical and medical care. For some people—I say this having received testimony both as part of the committee and personally from individuals—that love and respect would be given and devoted by the implementation of the Bill introduced by my noble friend Lord Joffe. The question whether we can afford that quality of love and respect for a minority without causing anxiety and detriment to many others is a matter of the gravest concern to us as legislators. It is not a question to which we can answer ““yes”” or ““no”” today; it deserves the most detailed attention and I hope that, for that reason, the House will not support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile.