Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill [HL]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness for her speech. My mailbag experience was the same as that of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby. Overwhelmingly, it consisted of letters against the Bill. Knowledge from another place suggests that when those letters are being written off a factsheet, you can see the similarities between them. The letters that I received were personal experiences. Two views emerged. One was that the passage of the Bill would alter the value of human life. The most reverend Primate made the point that not only would it alter the lives of those who might make a decision, it would alter the lives of a lot of others who might want to resist making such a decision. Secondly, it would alter the relationship between members of the medical profession and their patients. Over and over, doctors wrote to say: ““We were trained to heal and save life, not to kill””. Because of time pressure, I shall read only one paragraph from one letter. It is from a nurse in Cheshire. She wrote:"““As a senior nurse working in Intensive Care, I care for the sickest patients often undergoing degrees of pain and suffering with a plethora of problems. Sometimes these problems seem insurmountable and I will admit I have thought that they may be better off dead. With care and support provided by skilled and caring staff they can be helped through their ordeal. I have realised how wrong I was when patients return to visit the unit, grateful to be alive””." That is not a deeply theological argument; it is an intensely practical and pertinent day-by-day argument that applies to the Bill. I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, for pointing out the illusory difference between killing and simply writing the prescription that makes the killing appropriate. He was absolutely right to do so. I hope that the House will not think the less of me if I say that I was reminded of all the safeguards that were built into the abortion legislation to facilitate its passage on to the statute book. Of course, I imply no such motivation to the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, in this case, but I am persuaded by previous experience. In his speech, the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, said that he hoped that those of us whose views were shaped by faith would not press our faith because it is a minority view in a secular society. I can tell the House that I have spent 27 years in public service and I do not believe that I could ever have been accused of using my faith as a cudgel. I seek to have my faith integrated as part of who I am. I cannot—and I will not—seek to dissociate who I am and my views from my faith. My faith and my world view are just as legitimate as the faith, whether secular or theological, and world worth view of anyone else. Finally, I believe the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, was quoted over the weekend as saying that he had received hate mail. As a former Minister, I know what that is like. I deplore it, and he has my sympathy. It was also said that he had said that much of the mail he received lacked Christian compassion. I recognise his compassion and I dissociate myself from any letters he received that lacked Christian compassion. Equally, I hope that he will recognise my compassion. This is not a battle about compassion; it is a question of judgment. I simply do not share the noble Lord’s judgment.