Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill [HL]

My Lords, I join those who congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Joffe and Lord Carlile, on the speeches which started the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has the advantage of me: it is clear that he finds the issue relatively simple, and the decision that we have to take an easy one. Listening to him I was reminded of the man who said of Lord Macaulay, ““I wish I was as sure of anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything””. I myself find it an extremely difficult decision and one not illuminated by the correspondence we have received. I have read all the letters that I have received, but the correspondence clearly reflects public concerns which do not arise naturally from the substance of the Bill as I read it. First, many people clearly have been led to believe that what is at issue here is euthanasia, and it is not. Secondly, the version of the slippery slope argument which seems most understood by the people who have been following this debate is that somehow in this Bill there exists an infernal machine or a mechanism by which the Bill may expand its scope over time and the safeguards be eliminated or reduced over time. That clearly is and could not be the case. Thirdly, many people clearly believe that if the Bill were to become law, the amount of resources available for palliative care, and the attention given to palliative care, would be reduced. That, plainly, is not the case either. I hope that those reporting this debate will take care to address those issues and discuss the scope of the Bill because two-thirds of the concern I detect in the correspondence that I have received is built on these three factors, none of which applies. All of these three concerns are misconceived. That said, I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, has his Bill right. What I am pretty sure about is that the existing situation—the law as it stands—cannot be right. It cannot be right that a compassionate act, whatever the circumstances, and in response to repeated requests, must always be a criminal one. We all know—many of us from our own family experiences—that there are many more cases of assisted dying than are prosecuted. We can make an estimate—the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, mentioned 650—of how many cases a year might arise in which people use the procedures set out in his Bill. But we cannot say whether, if the Bill became law, there would be more or less assisted dying than there is today. I suspect that there might be less because the clarification of the law through the specification of the safeguards might actually prove restrictive in its effect, though that is speculation. What seems to me to be not speculation but observable fact is that a rarely enforced law, which leaves a shadow of criminality hanging over those who commit the crime of responding compassionately to a repeated request, must be wrong. The present situation is not satisfactory. I do not know whether the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, is right, but it seems to me very difficult to accept that the question of whether there should be a permitted procedure, how it should be defined and what safeguards should be built in is not even worth discussing. That is why, having listened to the quality of this debate I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, will take the same view and will not press his amendment.