Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill [HL]

My Lords, I hope that it is clear already that there is compassion on both sides in this debate. Those who think that Christians are constrained by theology to vote in one direction to the exclusion of any other consideration have been shown to be wrong both by the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, and by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans—a schism between them which the most reverend Primate, to give him his correct title, will notice with concern. The noble Lord, Lord Ashley of Stoke, put forward very hard but hypothetical cases. One has to remember that hard cases make bad law. At the moment we are engaged in something which is directed not at individual cases but at the colour of society and the way that it is moving and at how pain—moral, physical or intellectual—can be minimised and individual autonomy maintained in a society which is still ordered. That means that we have to have a clear structure of law dealing with how people are treated at the end of their lives, which is often their most vulnerable stage. The vulnerability is very real. It is not ageist to say that old people are vulnerable. Most of us fall above the line where, we are told, palliative care is most freely available, so we have a direct interest in this. The effect of the Bill, if enacted, would be to change not only the legal but also the general perception of the sanctity of human life, and it would have many unintended consequences, of which I shall mention only one in order to shave a minute off my share and get us home earlier. I was a Minister in the Department of Health and Social Security, as well is in four other departments over a period of years in government, and it is an inescapable fact that ultimately policy is driven by money. That is why the Treasury always controls policy—which makes the present juncture in politics so interesting. The stark fact is that palliative care is expensive and a lethal pill is cheap, and the generators of policy—I do not just mean people sitting in the Cabinet Office or the Secretary of State’s office but the many hundreds involved in generating policy in the Civil Service and putting the choices between them—will be steered in a critical part by that financial consideration. That is a direction that we should not follow. For other equally or more powerful reasons which have been stated, and which will be stated again, I shall be supporting the amendment today but I put one case to your Lordships: I ask noble Lords to go into that Lobby and I do so not from Christian principle but from ministerial experience.