Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am the third Methodist minister to speak in a short period, and the one who has chosen to stand a little above the Bishops. I will limit myself to one or two more forensic, rather than ideological or theological, points. I was impressed among the welter of material that came my way to read a submission from the Motor Neurone Disease Association, which declares that it is neutral on this question, but argues that if autonomy and freedom to choose are really what we seek, there would be no genuine choice for those in its client group until the very best palliative care was available to all who needed it. In other words, it is not available now; the question of choice is, therefore, inappropriate and perhaps the timing of this initiative is wrong. I was educated by the last debate, which encouraged me to read—as a new boy in the House and I had not at that stage been part of the whole process—the Select Committee’s report and the evidence that supported it. The All-Party Group on Dying Well makes the point that the Bill takes little or no account of the safeguards that were asked for in the Select Committee report, and it instances in detail the ways in which the Bill falls short of what of what was recommended in that report. In a process that has clearly taken a number of years and has had several set-piece debates, with lengthy consideration from a large number of sources, how can the all-party parliamentary group conclude does it come about that, with the safeguards asked for not met, the all-party parliamentary group can conclude that the plain fact is that the Bill is not safe to be passed into law? If there is any truth in that conclusion, how can we assume that moving into Committee will give us greater guarantees that, by amendment, we will achieve those objectives? I find that very difficult. Finally, the report states that,"““the number of people who might be regarded as serious about ending their lives, who are not psychiatrically ill and who are unlikely to be deflected from their purpose is very small indeed and comprises to a large extent terminally ill people who have strong personalities and a history of being in control of their lives and whose suffering derives more from the fact of their terminal illness and from the loss of control which this involves than from the symptoms of their disease””." I find that very compelling. Incidentally, in his opening remarks the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, quoted from that section without going quite as far as I did. To legislate for such a small number of people seems to me to do more than cross a Rubicon; it imposes the views of a tiny minority on the population at large when we have been arguing constantly throughout this debate that theologically motivated people have no right to impose their views on anyone else. For those reasons—although I would love to have a jousting match with the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, on the theological points that he introduced—I find myself not only against the Bill but against taking it any further at this stage.