Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill [HL]

My Lords, compassionate care of those facing death has altered the landscape, and palliative care specialists have been advocates of the patient more than any other group. They have argued for stopping futile treatment and keeping people comfortable even if that risks shortening life. It is those specialists above all who have insisted on care that is directed by the patient and at the patient’s pace and choice, and all these specialists are clear: they see this Bill as a nightmare. As we have heard, Britain is a world leader in palliative care, as one might expect from the birthplace of the hospice movement. What is needed is to enable everyone who is dying to receive the care they require and deserve. We should focus NHS resources on care that most of us will need one day, and from which thousands of people stand to benefit. We should not assist suicide. As we heard in the powerful speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean, patients are often not in the right frame of mind, and the information to patients may be wrong. Patients with motor neurone disease believe they will choke to death but, as the noble Lord, Lord MacKenzie said, the evidence is that patients do not. Even in this disease, prognosis is unpredictable. The prognosis is officially short. Fifty per cent of those diagnosed will die within 14 months, but one in 10 is alive in 10 years—10 years within which they and their families will have experienced much happiness. How can a decision to end life be sound if it is based on such uncertainty? We must not forget, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, that one in 32 deaths in Holland is through euthanasia and assisted suicide. That is what happens when society accepts assisted dying, which the Dutch did some years before they introduced their present legislation. It is not the mark of a civilised society to assist those who wish to end their life before its full course has run, or in any way to add to the fear and pressures of the terminally ill, the disabled, the elderly or the young and depressed. In doing that we surrender to a collective despair. We should kill the suffering, not the patient, and despite the good intentions of the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, we should certainly kill this Bill.