My Lords, a doctor very explicitly suggesting to somebody that they end their life is one thing. But for me a much greater concern, which has been debated quite a lot already, is about the gentle suggestion that people should consider ending their lives—the arm around the shoulder. I am sitting in your Lordships’ Chamber only because many hundreds of thousands of pounds of NHS money have been
spent on putting me back together. I have had some amazing doctors with a dreadful bedside manner, and I have had some doctors with a great bedside manner who have performed procedures that I did not ask for. It was recently reported that a young man, Mik Scarlet, turned down a certain procedure several times. When he was on the operating table, the surgeon completely ignored his wishes and carried out the procedure anyway, and it had to be reversed. He is in a better position now than he was previously. It is a very long and complicated story, which is detailed on the Huffington Post.
For me, this is about the constant drip-drip of “You’re not worth it”. I am a very resilient person. If I got upset every time somebody said to me, “I wouldn’t want to be like you”, I would be depressed. Somebody said to me recently, “Well, I wouldn’t want to be incontinent. That’s my worst thing in life”. I am technically incontinent. If it was not for self-catheterisation, I would probably be dead, because I would have pressure sores; I would not exist. I was having a debate in Central Lobby with somebody who strongly supported my view on where we should go with the Bill. He looked at me and sort of waved at the wheelchair and said, “Well, you must have considered killing yourself hundreds of times”. No, I have not, actually, and I think that it was a bit of a surprise to him. It is that sort of tone, where “You’re brave. You’re marvellous”. People do not realise that they are being demeaning. I think that they genuinely think that they are being empathetic, sympathetic and kind, but, actually, you are constantly being knocked down and told that you have no value and no worth. That is what is of much greater concern to me.
The noble Lord, Lord McColl, mentioned Oregon. In 1994, the Oregon medical assistance program cut funding to 167 out of 700 health services. Four years later, assisted suicide started being referred to as a “treatment”. On the back of that, funding was cut to 150 services for disabled people. They started limiting funded doses of powerful pain medication and put barriers in the way of funding for antidepressants. Thank goodness we do not have an insurance system like the one they have in the United States. I would be dead because my parents could not afford to keep me alive. For me, the big issue is not the doctor saying that your life is not worth living; it is the arm around the shoulder. It is that constantly being told, “You’d be better off dead”. That is what disabled people face every single day. Disability hate crime figures are the worst they have ever been in 10 years of reporting. It is constant. There is not a group of disabled people and a group of terminally ill people; there is a huge crossover.
I am sure that many people have noticed that my noble friend Lady Campbell of Surbiton is not here today. She has a chest infection. She is watching at home on her ventilator. We all know what a chest infection does for her prognosis. It immediately switches her from being okay to fitting in with the category of having less than six months to live. That is not a situation that I am very comfortable with.