Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill [HL]

My Lords, although I still, with misgivings, oppose the Bill, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, on improving it and bringing it back to the House. I should also say that if my noble friend Lord Carlile seeks to kill the Bill at this stage, I will decline to support him. I favour the House having the chance to consider the Bill in detail in view of the widespread public interest in it. The Bill could then be voted down at Third Reading if the House so decided In earlier debates, I concentrated on two broad issues. The first, which was largely overlooked then, is the pressure that the Bill would, unintentionally though inescapably, exert on many vulnerable people to avail themselves of assisted suicide to avoid being a burden on their families or dissipating scarce resources. That is now recognised as a foremost objection to the Bill and I need not say more. My second point—odd for a lawyer, you may think—is to observe that there are some matters that are so infinitely sensitive and complex that to try to regulate them by law is self-defeating. In effect, legislation is too blunt an instrument. Perhaps my early role as a coroner’s assistant helped to inculcate that belief. I think that it is better to rely on and trust the professional integrity, practical wisdom and ethical common sense of the medical profession—nurses as well as doctors. ““But””, proponents may ask, ““hasn’t that led to abuse?””. Occasionally, of course, but no outcome can or will avoid that. Indeed, abuse is more likely if we pass the Bill because it will tend to drive out, or at least override, individual doctors’ professional and ethical judgment, replacing it by law. That will lead to doctors in cities specialising in assisted suicide law, often working in informal partnership with other doctors giving second opinions under the Bill, and with solicitors specialising in finding ways through the legislative maze. Look what happened with the abortion law. Why not avoid all that with a Bill that is more broad brush? If the law is drafted widely enough to cover the infinite variety of human predicaments, it will necessarily be vulnerable to legally strained interpretations, some of which will go well beyond the intentions of the noble Lord, Lord Joffe. Yet, if we throw out the Bill, I have to concede that a few people may be forced to suffer unbearably. That is a harsh reality, but it must be juxtaposed against my earlier harsh reality that the Bill will exert pressure on some people and encourage them to seek assisted suicide. Then there is the text of the Bill. It has many defects and I wish that there was time to debate with my noble friend Lord Goodhart the list of so-called protections he enunciated, including the definition of unbearable suffering”” in Clause 13. As drafted, that extends to,"““distress . . . which the patient finds . . . unacceptable””." Such unacceptable distress could be emotional upset, sheer frustration or a pervading sense of the pointlessness of life. That opens up vistas for the Bill that I believe to be highly dangerous. Finally, the Bill will inadvertently but inevitably change the culture of both medicine and society, which is partly why the disability fraternity is almost united against it. That change could well lead down a dark slope. I do not believe, for example, that it will be long before the definition in the Bill of ““terminal illness”” as one that is,"““likely to result in the patient’s death within six months””," will be lengthened. The need for the Bill should be proven beyond reasonable doubt. It has not been.