Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill [HL]

My Lords, like the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, I regret that this debate has been presented in some quarters as representing a difference between those who hold a religious faith and those who are devoid of faith. As he rightly pointed out, some opponents of the Bill hold no religious faith. I am sure that he would accept that the converse is equally true, as has just emerged from what we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Pearson. Those who oppose the Bill are not necessarily speaking on behalf of all believers or all faiths. We respect one another’s views, but we do not speak on this issue with one voice. Nor is this a debate between those who respect human life and those who are indifferent to it. I fully respect the sanctity of life of someone who wishes to live. That is why I support the peace movement and why I campaigned for human rights before they became fashionable. I have received, like many of your Lordships, an avalanche of letters of varying quality, influenced no doubt by the somewhat dramatic warnings that their authors seem to have been given. They tell me that I should be pressing for medical and palliative care instead. There is no ““instead””, as the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, and my noble friend Lady Hayman made clear. The proponents of the Bill strongly support the provision of medical treatment and palliative care for all who wish to avail themselves of them. I believe that everything should be done to preserve the life and the best possible quality of life of someone who wishes to live. Some of your Lordships seem very perturbed at what was called the ““slippery slope””. I do not believe that anyone who is familiar with your Lordships’ House can believe in the possibility of some unnoticed slippery slope in the future; scrutiny in this House would preclude any such possibility. Perhaps we would be wiser to debate the Bill that is before us and not some speculative nightmare that has not been proposed. I was puzzled to be told by one correspondent that he was precluded by his faith from accepting my argument that human beings have a right to choose. I do not doubt his sincerity and I defend his right to practise his faith and to abstain from any act that it precluded. My difficulty with his argument—pace the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans—is whether he should be entitled to impose his faith on those who do not share it. That is not exercising his right; it is denying the right of someone else. It is inevitable that much of this debate will be anecdotal. My mother had been a byword all her life for stoical indifference to pain. She never allowed it to interfere with what needed to be done, but in her 80th year she contracted cancer. She did not complain, but as the pain became worse she knew that she could not hide it. She was excluded from what was going on in the house because she was confined to bed. There came a time when she said to me, ““I wish I were dead””. That was not a momentary aberration; her mind was perfectly clear. But that option was not open to her. For three months, she was compelled to drag out a life that she would have wished to end. I believe that it would have been compassionate to give her that choice. It would not have been my choice for her; I would have tried to dissuade her. Indeed, if she had known that the choice would have been available to her had she felt driven to it, I believe that she might have taken a different view. However, I believe that to withhold that choice from her was indefensible. That is why I support the Bill.