Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill [HL]

My Lords, I support the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, after 40 years’ professional and personal experience, of which I will not recount the details. In that time, medicine has changed hugely. Doctors are no longer regarded as God, and there is a much more equal balance in the doctor-patient relationship. Patients want the right to make their own decisions about life and death, and opinion polls reveal that 80 per cent of the public support that right. I shall make a few other brief points, but first I want to dispel a myth. I have had a lot of letters saying that the Bill is contrary to the Hippocratic oath and therefore, as a doctor, I must not support it. In fact, that oath is rarely used nowadays. I did not take it when I qualified as a doctor and neither did any of my colleagues. In 1994, the British Medical Journal reported on a questionnaire sent to 27 UK clinical medical schools. Thirteen schools, including Oxford and Cambridge, did not require graduates to take any oath, four used the declaration of Geneva, five used their own wording and only three still used the Hippocratic oath. That is in reply to a lot of letters I have received. Much has been said about medical opinion being against the Bill. Yet, the Select Committee heard the chairman of the BMA Medical Ethics Committee declare that many doctors consider assisted dying to be,"““an extension of the normal professional obligations of a doctor to a patient, respecting their autonomy””." The Royal College of General Practitioners and the Royal College of Physicians, after at first adopting a neutral stance like the BMA, have reverted to opposition after a consultation with their members that asked them to agree or disagree with this statement:"““We believe that with improvements in palliative care, good clinical care can be provided within existing legislation and that patients can die with dignity. A change in legislation is not therefore needed””." That is hardly an unbiased question to have to answer, and many of their members have objected to it. Medical opinion is therefore as divided as ever. Some prefer the ““trust me, I’m a doctor”” approach. Professor Clive Seale of Brunel University, who was mentioned earlier, showed the extent of this. He did a survey this year that showed that 30 per cent of all deaths are preceded by the withdrawal of treatment and 33 per cent of all deaths follow treatment with double effect—I am sure noble Lords know what that means. Around 370,000 patients died in one year, and we do not know whether they were consulted. Is that not in itself a slippery slope? Other doctors would prefer a legal framework for their activities and would support the Bill, including, of course, more palliative care. I urge noble Lords to listen to public opinion, to think very carefully on this occasion and, whether they agree or disagree with the Bill, to allow it the dignity of consideration in Committee, not the sudden death of defeat at Second Reading.