My Lords, I support this amendment. I declare an earlier interest in that I was the judge who tried nearly all the permanent vegetative state cases for the withdrawal of hydration and nutrition. I never had the case of M, although I very nearly did. In fact, the patient, who was on the verge of being in a permanent vegetative state, died. It is an extremely rare case where it is uncertain whether somebody is in a permanent vegetative state or has minimal consciousness. At the moment, the only decision has been against withdrawing nutrition and hydration. This situation will arise from time to time. It will be very rare. It is intensely distressing for the family and intensely difficult for the doctors and nurses who care for these people who may, or may not, have minimal consciousness. It raises an incredibly important problem as to the point at which the doctors are ordered by the court to withdraw the artificial nutrition and hydration. It is perhaps the most difficult of all decisions that might come before a court. In cases of permanent vegetative state it is nearly always the hospital that brings proceedings, but if a family brings proceedings, or wishes to be part of the proceedings brought by a hospital, it would be very difficult for the family to put forward a case of this extreme difficulty if it had no access to legal aid, particularly with the medical evidence that would be required.
Again, as I said on the previous amendment, this is not going to cost very much money because it is not going to happen very often, but it is a particularly important fallback position. These are terrible cases to try, as I know to my cost.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Proceeding contribution from
Baroness Butler-Sloss
(Crossbench)
in the House of Lords on Wednesday, 18 January 2012.
It occurred during Committee of the Whole House (HL)
and
Debate on bills on Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
734 c609
Session
2010-12
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
Subjects
Librarians' tools
Timestamp
2023-12-15 14:55:16 +0000
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