Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill [HL]

My Lords, ever since the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, first raised this crucial subject in your Lordships’ House, I have tried to take on board the arguments pro and con. I have taken particular interest in public opinion. The question is how one gauges it. I do not do so simply through what I hear from experts, although I obviously listen to them with great care, nor what I read in the newspapers, nor—to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Carlile—simple public opinion polls. They deserve the noble Lord’s description of ““fragile””. I am thinking of high quality social research, which has often been shown to be invaluable in throwing light on what the general public, not just the experts, think and feel about complex issues and how opinions are moving. No one can doubt that this is a subject for society as a whole. Our splendid Select Committee stressed that, as have many others, most recently the British Medical Association. There have been a number of surveys. They are not all technically sound by any means, and many of them are from interested organisations and are not unbiased. The best attitude research on this subject comes from the National Survey Centre, and I say that not simply because I was a founder member of it—I am still on its board; I declare that interest—but because it is generally regarded as the best survey organisation. The centre has studied end-of-life issues for some decades, supported by the Nuffield Foundation. General support in these scientific surveys for assisted dying and related matters, only in the most serious circumstances, has steadily risen from 70 per cent in the 1970s to 82 per cent in 1990. A new survey was conducted last year. It will not be published until the autumn, but I have permission to tell your Lordships that it shows consistently strong, unchanging support for the issues raised by this legislation: in the area of 80 per cent I stress that those results are based not on simple opinion surveys, but on serious research, which means a scientific and large random sample of the population. It means a set of neutrally devised questions. Above all, it means that it is the work of a disinterested research body. I do not want to suggest for a moment that public opinion should be the determinant of decisions or of our thinking. Equally, it seems clear to me that, on this subject above all, which affects every one of us, this authoritative and impartial picture of what the public currently feel deserves serious weight. In listening to the debate, I have been struck on both sides of the argument by the number of detailed issues that deserve further discussion. With that in mind, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, might think again about pressing his amendment. We can always vote for or against the Bill on Third Reading, but the House is so splendidly good at Committee stage that I hope we are not deprived of it.