Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill [HL]

My Lords, I rise to support this Bill, to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, on his presentation of it and to support its proceeding to Committee. Misinformation has been spread about the Bill. Such flirting with fiction has produced fear, bordering almost on hysteria at times. Many of those fears would have been allayed if the correspondents who wrote to me had been in a position to read the Bill, which the vast majority obviously have not done. Misinformation is a dangerous weapon. It can influence even the most thoughtful and caring of people, like the doctor from Rugby who wrote to me and genuinely believed that he,"““would be expected to help a patient kill him or herself, by prescribing a lethal dose for the patient to take””." Expected to prescribe? Clause 7 makes it clear that anyone who has a conscientious objection would be under no duty to participate in any action at all. Like others, I have received correspondence about the Bill from RADAR, the disability network, for which I have a great deal of respect and with which I have worked in the past. The organisation asked me,"““to consider the consequences for disabled people””," suggesting that the Bill could run the risk of reinforcing public opinion that disabled people are somehow tragic figures to be pitied. As someone who has a disability and who in my previous life as a trade union official played a prominent part in establishing a disability rights group within my own union, Amicus, I am very conscious of societal views about those with disabilities. I would not support the Bill if I thought that it would reinforce such views. I have no doubt that there is a small but significant group of terminally ill people who strongly and with great determination wish for assistance to die. I witnessed this personally when a close friend in his eighties, after a full and fit life, became terminally ill. He asked his son and daughter not to send for the doctor for resuscitation the next time he collapsed. They respected their father’s views and he died with those he loved and as he would have wished. He knew he could not speak about assisted dying because of our laws, of the accusations which could be levelled at his relatives and the danger of their involvement. By then, he was not fit enough to travel abroad where others, as we all know, have found their escape from a life they no longer want to live. So we, as a country, banish such people at the time when they need their friends and family most of all. Those who deliver palliative care do not receive enough support, especially financial support, to expand and build upon their vital work. I would support any efforts to improve that. But not everyone wants palliative care, and, for me, the provision of palliative care and assisted dying for those who want it are not counter proposals. Both are needed and demanded. Because of that, I believe that whatever happens in the Chamber today, this Bill, or one worded quite like it, will eventually become law. Finally, I will reply to a lady with the same name as myself, Anne Gibson, who wrote to me from Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire. She said:"““Yes, Anne, I will do all I can to promote palliative care, but no, I cannot oppose moves to legalise assisted suicide because I genuinely believe that both are needed””."