Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, I would like to focus on the small but important part of the Bill relating to the circumstances of assisting suicide. I support what has already been said, in particular by the noble Lords, Lord Goodhart and Lord Joffe, about the need further to clarify the legal position of those who might be compassionately assisting in this country the death of a terminally ill, suffering, competent adult as against those who might maliciously encourage suicide. I support an amendment fully to emphasise and reflect that crucial difference in law. My main point here is to comment on the well publicised position of those who now accompany the terminally ill to Switzerland. I do not shy away from reminding the House again of the widely accepted opinion polls that show that over 80 per cent of the population would support a change in the law on assisted dying. The stories of those taking the effort and expense to go and be accompanied to Dignitas in Switzerland are a tangible and urgent reminder to us that something needs to be done. Last week I was very much influenced listening to the excellent Radio 4 discussion programme "The Law and Death", which has been mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jay. The programme was attempting to elucidate the current state of the law and where it might be going, with a former senior Law Lord, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bingham of Cornhill, and the former DPP, Sir Kenneth Macdonald, among others. The DPP reminded us that in his tenure there were over 90 Dignitas cases where, after examining the evidence as well as assessing the public interest, there were no prosecutions. Perhaps I may quote, as the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, did, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bingham, the former Lord Chief Justice and former Master of the Rolls. He said: ""I think we are approaching a point at which the law does not match the expectations of reasonable people"." He went on to say that, ""if in nearly 100 cases the DPP is saying I do not think it is in the public interest to prosecute, it is getting awfully close to a situation where Parliament ought to be saying, well, we had better have some rules"." He said that one or two cases might be an anomaly but 100 is something that we should be seriously paying attention to. I am following the noble Baroness, Lady Emerton, whom I think of as somehow representing the Royal College of Nursing—but perhaps she no longer does. A few days ago, the Times published a very helpful article about what the Royal College of Nursing was doing to put discussion of assisted dying into some sort of framework for nurses. It is apparently consulting its membership on whether to reconsider its stance, perhaps from being officially opposed to a stance of neutrality. From having in the recent past a monolithic opinion, it is recognising, as other royal colleges realistically and helpfully have, the diversity of opinion among its membership. It is also apparently responding to requests from patients who anxiously ask nurses about the possibilities open to them. These are some aspects about which nurses are at present forbidden from discussing with them. The reality is that the public, the media and Parliament are discussing assisted dying but nurses often simply cannot do so with their patients. The recent debates in Parliament on assisted dying, partly promoted by the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, have moved the public discussion on, as has the steady work of Dignity in Dying and many of those who, however desperately ill, have courageously assented to their predicament being publicised. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, said, as this Bill is re-enacting the suicide law, this quite properly could be the opportunity to make one change in this area. As he said, it would help to identify safeguards and would end uncertainty for those accompanying friends and relatives, as against leaving it to the discretion of one person, the DPP, however wise. The noble Baroness, Lady Jay, simply called this "a lack of clarity". To the extent that Parliament fails to deal with this aspect, we are in danger of bringing ourselves into disrepute. One might ask how many more people have to take this passage to Switzerland before we stir ourselves to do something about this. This can and should be the occasion for this fairly minor change. The Minister said in opening that we should wait for a Private Member’s Bill to sort this out as part of some whole, perfect solution. How long will we have to wait for that? He said that this was too important to be slipped into a passing Bill. In my opinion it is too important to be left out of this opportunity. The benighted comfort of the status quo should not be acceptable to us. Do we want to imagine that we might have the same law, unamended, for the next five or 10 years—quite a possibility—and to guess how many more desperate people will have to make the journey to Switzerland? As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bingham, was trying to tell us, these numbers are a symptom and a sign that Parliament should act. How much further prompting do we need? I look forward to supporting an amendment at the next stage that can help the terminally ill and their relatives and friends in these tragic circumstances.