Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill [HL]

My Lords, I will deal with only two issues: the perception of the Bill outside this House and the argument that, by voting on the Bill at Second Reading, we would somehow be defying the conventions of the House—an argument that seems to me to owe rather more to desperation than to concern for the priorities of the House, as I will show. We know that every organisation of and for disabled people is opposed to the Bill. Disabled people are genuinely fearful of a change in society’s attitude towards them if the Bill becomes law. That fear is shared by the very large number of people who are represented by the heaviest postbag that I have received on any Bill in my 20 years in the House, with not one letter in support of the Bill. For reasons that I will explain, this Bill has absolutely no chance of becoming law this Session. However, those outside this House do not understand our procedures. If the Bill is unopposed at Second Reading, they will just see the headlines, ““House of Lords supports euthanasia””. Frankly, it is cruel to leave fearful people thinking that this Bill might become law, as they will so long as it remains on the parliamentary agenda. When we debated the Select Committee report, I asked the Minister whether the Government would find time for the Bill. His reply was, as I expected, skilfully coded, but the inference was clear: there was very little chance of the Government finding time for the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Joffe, will remember that he wrote to me after the debate asking how I interpreted the Minister’s answer. I replied, knowing the code well and from inquiries that I had made in this House and in another place, that there was very little chance of time being found for the Bill to become law. What I then found completely baffling was the decision of the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, to wait six months to ask for a Second Reading, thus ensuring that whatever slim chance there was of the Bill becoming law was effectively extinguished by his own choice of timetable. I cannot help wondering whether the six-month delay to Second Reading and the fact that the Bill has no chance of becoming law mean that we are unwittingly taking part in, far from a principled attempt to change the law on a highly controversial subject, a publicity campaign for the Voluntary Euthanasia Society. Something has been made of the fact that the Select Committee recommended that the Bill should go to a Committee of the Whole House. That was, I understand, particularly to allow debate on whether voluntary euthanasia should be included in the Bill; we heard the reply of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, on that point. Would the Select Committee have recommended a Committee stage if it had known that the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, would choose a timetable that makes a Committee stage pointless in terms of the Bill becoming law? If the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, really wanted a Committee stage, why did he wait six months before asking for a Second Reading? I will willingly give way to the noble Lord or any other supporter of the Bill who would like to estimate just how many Fridays would be required for Committee, Report and Third Reading.