Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill [HL]

My Lords, my father, who died aged 57, said to me in the mid-1950s, ““I used to be in favour of euthanasia until I listened to a debate in their Lordships’ House””. I looked up that debate from 1950 and I saw why he had had his mind changed. There was also a reference in that debate to a 1936 Bill for euthanasia, against which, I am proud to say, my grandfather voted—I see no reason why his grandson should not vote against this Bill today, despite the colour of his socks. When my father was dying, I was absolutely longing for him to die, because he was in such great pain. I almost said—in fact, I probably did say—to the doctor, ““Please can’t you give him something?”” The doctor was Irish and had been trained at Trinity College Dublin in 1923. He obviously did not do so deliberately, but he made absolutely sure that my father suffered no pain. That seems to me the way it should happen. Incidentally, he said in front of my stepmother after my father died, ““Michael, you have three Lady Onslows to look after, and a very wary path you will have to tread between them””. He was the best of old-fashioned doctors who instinctively understood palliative care. The Bill will not only permit assisted suicide, but by implication encourage it. That is why it is wrong. As the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, said, this matter is so complicated that it is too complicated for legal definition. In my view, it is somewhere where you need an element of hypocrisy, which allows you to pretend one thing and possibly do another, but you know that you have got to deal with the integrity of the doctor and of the medical profession. The main reason my father’s mind was changed was the point made by several noble Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Tombs, made it so accurately when he said that the Bill will encourage those of a mean-minded disposition who possibly have hopes of an inheritance to get their hands on that inheritance earlier. The Bill will encourage, not just permit, assisted suicide and, above all, it will make the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, subject to greater pressure. After we heard the noble Baroness’s speech, which was totally gut-wrenching, we probably should have stopped the debate, voted and slung out the Bill on the basis of her speech alone. I will, with pleasure, in memory of my father and in honour of the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, vote against the Bill.