I should like clarification from the noble and learned Lord. I think he said that Clause 2 required two practitioners, but on my reading it requires only one. If there is one practitioner and a person is diagnosed with a terminal illness, the terminal illness is, if you like, the gate into everything else in the Bill. That I have a terminal illness allows everything else to follow. If one doctor diagnoses a terminal illness, there is the possibility that that doctor may do so at the behest of relatives. The motives of those relatives may be benign or malign. If the person gets a diagnosis of that kind from a medical specialist, that may change their whole perspective on life. The mere fact that someone has said to them, “You are terminally ill. You are going to die in six months”, when that has not been said before, may lead them to think, “Perhaps I should seek assisted suicide”.
That may be quite an unintended consequence of limiting this, but at least if we have two doctors, in some form or another, as suggested by the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, surely there would be some protection. As I read the Bill as it stands, there is very little protection for the vulnerable person who is lying in bed and seeking some way to find a way through this. Terminal illness and serious pain have a number of effects. One is to cloud judgment and another is to sap the zest for life. That zest, as the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and others have said, may well be restored by palliative care, which relieves the pain, as the noble Lord, Lord McColl, has said. This is such an unsatisfactory provision that I should like the noble and learned Lord to confirm whether I am right.