Coroners and Justice Bill

The right reverend Prelate has pointed to a deep ambivalence running through the debate. That deep ambivalence is about whether the debate is fundamentally, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Warnock and Lady Jay, suggested, about a relatively narrow change in the law; one that would clarify where people stand when they attend with a beloved relative to take part in a ritual of assisted dying. It is also and has clearly been shown to be, as the right reverend Prelate says, a debate about assisted dying in a much broader sense. I will say one word about the argument that this is a relatively narrow proposal to deal with people who are trying to travel with a beloved friend or relative to a country that agrees to assisted dying. If that is correct, there should have been much deeper discussion in this debate about the major institution that has been involved. The noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, pointed in his own remarks to the disturbing record of Dignitas, which has been the major provider of assisted dying, well known outside its own country. We know that nearly a third of those who have died at the hands of Dignitas since 2002 who are British citizens did not have any form of fatal illness. We know that no psychiatric or palliative recommendation was required before the decision was taken to allow them to die. We know that Dignitas has been accused, wrongly or rightly, of being much more a private company in its ethics and incentives than a public body concerned with bringing to an end the lives of people who wish to die. In other words, it is in many ways an unsatisfactory institution to be given the kind of support that this amendment would give. If we are arguing about the wider issue, I want to make a brief point that relates to what the noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave, had to say. There is inevitably, at a time of straitened public expenditure, a battle to raise enough money for palliative care. Those members of the Committee who are distinguished proponents of palliative care would make it clear that there are some areas of the country in which such funding is desperately short and others where it is adequate. Deciding what to do in one’s own case depends a great deal on the situation. The United Kingdom has been a pioneer of palliative care. I have visited a number of hospices and one of the most prominent was in my own constituency of Crosby in Merseyside when I was a Member of Parliament. It is amazing what has been achieved—a mood of happiness and contentment reigns in many of them. One of the people who corresponded with me who for 23 years was a palliative care doctor, and, given the choice between entering a hospice or choosing to die—choices that were equally weighted because both were present and possible—many people would decide to choose a hospice. One of my correspondents who had also been a palliative care medical practitioner in the north of Scotland for 23 years used the phrase, "It is easy for the right to die to turn into a duty to die". That is what lies at the heart of many of the objections that some of us want to raise. Like many of my noble friends and many noble Lords in other parts of the House, I oppose this amendment. It has not been sufficiently thought through in terms of the present possibilities for assisted dying. As a basis for a wider principle, it should be eschewed on those grounds and on wider grounds.