Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

My Lords, I support the Bill, because I do not wish to deny other people something that I might w...

My Lords, the question raised by the Bill is whether an exception should be made to the existing ...

My Lords, this Bill, as we already have heard, arouses great passions and considerable confusion....

My Lords, let me state at the outset that the official Church of England position was made very c...

My Lords, I rise to support my noble and learned friend’s Bill. I see it as a tightly focused and...

My Lords, I am conscious that I am a new Member of your Lordship’s House, but it is now 10 years ...

My Lords, I have worked with and for older people for more than 40 years and spent six as an equa...

My Lords, I support giving the Bill a Second Reading. This is clearly a most difficult issue, in ...

My Lords, no one could dispute the good intentions of the Bill, but the road to hell is paved wit...

My Lords, although I have introduced four previous Bills on assisted dying to this House, there i...

As a Buddhist, I recognise that this Bill contravenes fundamental Buddhist beliefs in the inviola...

My Lords, like many others, particularly doctors who will be expected to be involved in assisting...

My Lords, we are all indebted to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, for introducing this ...

My Lords, I am sorry that I am unable to support the Bill in the name of my noble and learned fri...

My Lords, I have long been involved in the campaign to see assisted dying legalised, but I am rel...

My Lords, I declare the interest that I was a member of the commission of the noble and learned L...

My Lords, one of the essential issues raised by the Bill is whether it is possible to amend the l...

My Lords, it is good that we are having this debate today, but I am afraid that I cannot give the...

My Lords, I put my name down to speak in the debate as the scope of the Bill, because it is so li...

My Lords, I believe that a great strength of this House whenever we look at a Bill—we have looked...

My Lords, to make it lawful for doctors to assist people to commit suicide is a profound step. Th...

In a free, secular society, my Lords, the presumption should be that adults are free to do what t...

My Lords, sometimes we perhaps overestimate our ability to bring about events. Everybody wants to...

My Lords, I congratulate my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer on introducing this Bill. Parl...

My Lords, there is clearly a general desire that this issue should be debated; I shall not, there...

My Lords, we have had some extremely moving and powerful speeches this morning; none more powerfu...

My Lords, this is a difficult and incredibly moving issue, as evidenced by the previous 28 speake...

My Lords, I have fought for autonomy the whole of my life. I have fought for that for myself and ...

My Lords, that was a most moving speech. I am sure that your Lordships will recall that there are...

My Lords, I support the Bill of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, and I will respond to ...

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton for stimul...

My Lords, I strongly support the Bill, not because I want my views to prevail but because it give...

My Lords, I do not like conflict; through this aversion, I am able to suggest win-win solutions t...

My Lords, today’s debate has already shown how complicated is the proposal for mercy killing—for ...

My Lords, if this Bill passes into law it will, I believe, herald a fundamental and irreversible ...

My Lords, in our last debate on this issue, when we considered the Bill brought forward by the no...

My Lords, I can enter a debate like this only with extreme trepidation. I should like to say firs...

My Lords, the proposers of the Bill are good people, of good conscience, and with good intentions...

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble and learned friend for introducing the Bill and the whole House ...

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord for bringing the Bill to the House. It is difficult to thi...

My Lords, we have heard that hard cases make bad law, but we have also heard that there are so ma...

My Lords, the Bill that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, is proposing is simply not fit...

There he is!

Apologies—the noble and learned Lord is not in the place where he was sitting earlier. I listened...

My Lords, I have listened carefully to the 45 contributions so far. When I have been out of the C...

My Lords, I offer three short stories to illustrate the false thinking behind this mistaken Bill....

My Lords, I want to make two points. First, speaking as a statistician, I want to refer to a numb...

My Lords, my interests are declared in the register. I am aware of my limitations. I am not a phi...

My Lords, I take a rather more optimistic view of the National Health Service than the noble Baro...

My Lords, it seems to me obvious that the law has to be changed. We are often told that it works ...

My Lords, many of us will speak today in the name of compassion, but, as is clear, we shall take ...

My Lords, I emphasise at the outset that this is a matter of conscience. It must never be a party...

My Lords, there is already a “right to die”. There is nothing in law to stop us dying if we wish ...

My Lords, I oppose the Bill as it stands, as I have opposed similar measures in the past. I am ha...

My Lords, I support this Bill. The primary reason is purely personal and I can speak only on a pe...

My Lords, this is an eloquent and emotional debate. It has to be emotional because, essentially, ...

My Lords, most of you will know that I am a Christian and an ordained Minister of the Methodist C...

My Lords, it is no secret that I oppose this Bill on the basis of both my religious faith and on ...

My Lords, after four and half hours of eloquent debate, what do I think? Do I understand the dile...

My Lords, I have been in your Lordships’ House for nine months, and this is by far the most impor...

Has it occurred to the noble Lord that self-defence is the preservation of life?

I understand that. The point I was making was that when you engage in self-defence, you are in th...

My Lords, I strongly agree with the last sentence of the noble Lord who has just spoken. I oppose...

Like many noble Lords, I have received a torrent of letters urging me to vote for the Second Read...

My Lords, I am convinced that both the supporters and the opponents of the Bill are sincere in th...

My Lords, I shall be very blunt. I tend to think anyway that the more important the subject, the ...

My Lords, I, too, echo the opinion of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss: this has...

My Lords, in a debate last December, I said that legalising assisted dying would mean licensing d...

My Lords, I do not suggest for a moment that those in favour of the Bill, as I am, have any monop...

My Lords, we have heard today the views of some doctors, but we know that their views are not una...

Speaking 70th—or perhaps 69th—I feel privileged to have listened to so many outstanding and movin...

My Lords, I rise to make a couple of points. One is a sort of technical point about Second Readin...

I, like many noble Lords, have received a lot of letters. One of them in particular struck me. It...

My Lords, there is much talk of compassion and choice in this debate but we must not lose sight o...

My Lords, not only am I opposed to the Bill but I am completely opposed to the principle of assis...

My Lords, as many noble Lords know, last year I chaired the panel reviewing the use of the Liverp...

My Lords, I am not a lawyer nor am I a medical professional. I have no strong religious faith and...

My Lords, obviously this is going to be a very long debate, but frankly we do not talk about deat...

My Lords, I am afraid that the noble Lord, Lord Gordon, will be disappointed that I am one of tho...

My Lords, we have sat through the beginning of this debate and have been privileged to do so. Thi...

My Lords, in the past when we have considered this issue in your Lordships’ House and, indeed, in...

My Lords, I am against the Bill, but I think it right that your Lordships are debating it and the...

My Lords, on a visit to Mexico some time ago I succumbed to Montezuma’s revenge, a violent type o...

My Lords, I support my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer’s Bill, as indeed I supported the B...

My Lords, on a rather different historical note, this Bill owes much of its existence to the Volu...

My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to support this Bill this afternoon, and to add my...

My Lords, the Bill is flawed on many counts. In attempting to show compassion to a few, it neglec...

My Lords, this has been a pretty amazing fortnight of public testament that the time is now right...

My Lords, they said that this would probably be the hottest day of the year and, emotionally and ...

My Lords, this is one of the most challenging moral issues of our times. On the one hand, we are ...

My Lords, we have all been much influenced and moved by the letters we have received and we surel...

My Lords, when Harold Macmillan was asked by Rab Butler in 1961 to legalise suicide, he replied: ...

My Lords, I support the Bill. I have listened with interest to a number of noble Lords who have s...

My Lords, it has been an amazing day so far. I think that we are about three-quarters of the way ...

My Lords, it is exactly 10 years this week since I joined your Lordships’ House but this is the f...

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I thank those who have brought this Bill before us. I particula...

My Lords, I am not sure about that. I find all this very difficult, and this excellent debate mak...

My Lords, I, like other noble Lords, have been deeply moved by the many personal letters that I h...

My Lords, I wonder how many noble Lords have seen a poster on the wall of Westminster Underground...

My Lords, no one who has sat through this debate could possibly imagine that there is not an imme...

My Lords, be under no illusion as to what will happen next if this Bill becomes law. Pressure wil...

My Lords, I echo the tributes that have been paid to those who have brought this legislation befo...

My Lords, it is always hard in such an important debate to find myself on the opposite side from ...

My Lords, I too would like to draw attention to the amount of correspondence that I have received...

My Lords, we have heard much in this debate today about choice and compassion, so it is perhaps n...

My Lords, like many other noble Lords, I want your Lordships to let the Bill proceed so that we c...

My Lords, the Bill proposes a major change in the criminal law. The title used for the previous B...

My Lords, I support the Bill and come from a background of active churchwardens and general pract...

My Lords, I support the Bill for many reasons, but time is passing so I want to focus on just one...

My Lords, having listened to all the speeches so far, a point occurs to me that has not yet been ...

My Lords, the law in this area is a mess. It has continued in that form for so long because of a ...

My Lords, as the youngest Peer speaking today, I suppose that I should be the least concerned abo...

My Lords, I thank all the people who have written to me. Reading all those letters has been a sli...

My Lords, like many others, I have struggled to reach a definitive view on this Bill, not least b...

My Lords, I am sure that I am not the only late speaker who has had to tear up their speech and s...

My Lords, since the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, laid the Bill before your ...

My Lords, death is not a pretty affair. Thus it was a most humbling experience and a great privil...

My Lords, on 9 October in the year 2000, my parents-in-law, Jack and Ruth Lowy, committed joint s...

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, has initiated an extraordinary debate. Comin...

My Lords, I absolutely agree with one aspect of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile: I too...

My Lords, a word that is frequently used in your Lordships’ House is “balance”. It has already be...

My Lords, I am speaking today as a doctor to express the views of some of the medical royal colle...

My Lords, it has been an honour to listen to the speeches today—well argued, passionate and persu...

My Lords, many of us have been brought up to believe in the sanctity of life. The matter of death...

Ha!

Similarly, my Lords, Desmond Tutu has openly backed the right of the terminally ill to end their ...

My Lords, I welcome all discussion that would help us to be less fearful about death and to end t...

My Lords, I asked for permission to speak in the gap because there was some mistake over whether ...

My Lords, although I speak today from the Opposition Front Bench and in favour of my noble and le...

My Lords, I congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, on bringing forward the Bill ...

My Lords, to the usual channels—the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and my noble friend Lord Bassam—...