Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill [HL]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a former president of Help the Hospices. With that background, it is not surprising that I do not like this Bill. Even accepting, as I do, the good intentions of the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, and many of his supporters, I am nevertheless firmly opposed to this legislation, and I devoutly hope and believe that it will not and should not be enacted. Like others, I have received very many letters opposing the Bill. A substantial number of those have argued for better and wider provision of palliative care; quite right too. We need more palliative care consultants, better training for medics and nurses, and more resources dedicated to this very important area of medicine. As has been acknowledged throughout the debate, hospices have led the way, and the services that they provide not only to patients but to their families are immensely valuable, but provision is patchy and as our population ages much greater and more evenly spread provision will be required. The references in this Bill to palliative care are wholly inadequate. The clear recommendations of the Select Committee have been ignored. The Bill is defective in many ways. Other recommendations of the Select Committee that examined the earlier draft of the Bill have also been ignored and safeguards have been not strengthened but, regrettably, weakened. Some of the most trenchant criticisms of the Bill have come from disabled people and their organisations. RADAR, the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation, has argued,"““before there is a right to die there must be right for disabled people to live as full and equal members of a fair society””." That view is emphatically supported by the Disability Rights Commission. I am also worried about the reactions of frail and elderly people who will see themselves as being threatened, or at least under subtle pressure to reduce the burden on relatives by seeking early death. The ““right to die”” could so easily slip into becoming a ““duty to die””. More widely, there is validity in the ““slippery slope”” argument that the tightly prescribed right to physician-assisted suicide could gradually become a more general right to euthanasia. The Netherlands experience is relevant here, and I recall—I was a Member of Parliament for a considerable time—how our abortion law gradually slipped, without change to the legislation, away from a restricted right into, effectively, abortion on demand. There are many arguments against the Bill but for me, at least, the most persuasive have been the clear and principled objections of religious leaders—Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Islamic, Hindu, Sikh—who hold all human life to be sacred and worthy of the utmost respect. As a Christian and a Catholic, I judge the Bill to be ethically and morally wrong and my opposition is both principled and total. I will vote against the Bill by voting in favour of the amendment.