My Lords, perhaps the Minister or the Chief Whip will correct me if I am wrong, but I understand that the position is that I should now wind up on my amendment after the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has dealt with her amendment to my amendment. I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Masham; I simply did not see her trying to intervene. I did not intend to be discourteous.
This debate has taken—it just disappeared from the screen—something like two and three-quarter hours, which is a clear indication of the importance of the issues we have been discussing in this group of amendments. I express my gratitude to noble Lords who have taken part, including of course to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, who has responded to this debate and intervened at various times in a helpful and constructive way. He suggested at one moment that I was agitated. Agitated—no; frustrated—yes. I will explain my frustration.
The noble and learned Lord, as far I can see throughout the latter half of this debate, has addressed Clause 3. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, who is a distinguished and talented lawyer, saw straight through that and made it clear that we are dealing with Clause 2. That clause is about the gateway. Clause 3 is about the certification. There is a very serious point of principle
about the standards that there should be at the gateway. I make no apology for re-emphasising that it is my view—otherwise I and others would not have tabled these amendments—that the gateway to this whole process must have medical, intellectual, empirical and objective integrity. None of those words are tautologies. It is the sum of them that we need for this gateway.
I do not know how many of your Lordships have read Dame Janet Smith’s three reports on the Shipman case. It was one of the biggest compendious inquiries that there has ever been. This issue was not really adequately addressed, in my respectful view, in this debate. In a quiet and beautiful valley in the same part of Lancashire and Yorkshire that I was dealing with earlier—in fact, in Todmorden, which is just over the border, in that county that Lancastrians rarely name—Dr Shipman probably killed a couple of hundred people. He was regarded as a kindly, gentle general practitioner to whom you gave a cup of tea and whom you could invite into your house with confidence. I want to be sure—and I know that others in this House want to be sure—that the gateway is safeguarded against people like Dr Shipman, for the reasons illustrated so well in her reports by Dame Janet Smith.
Furthermore, I reject the arguments that have been mentioned that there are real, practical difficulties with this amendment. There may be a few cases—and when we have dealt with the principle, we can look at the detail—in which people move away either from the general practitioner’s practice that has been dealing with them or from the specialist who has been treating the illness that has been determined as terminal. However, in my view those cases are going to be very few in number, far fewer than has been suggested by some of your Lordships, and that should not be an inhibition at this stage to the establishment of a clear safeguard and principle of safety.
The point was made by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, that we are talking here about safety. We should hearken very carefully to the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, in her first intervention. She happens to represent in an informal way in our House that very important constituency of disabled people. She has told your Lordships that many disabled people outside this House do not have reassurance that this Bill provides in its gateway sufficient safeguards. In itself, that seems to be a sufficient reason to determine whether we wish to have the principle in this amendment. Furthermore the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord McColl, highlighted the fact that the Royal College of Pathologists has shown in many cases that the cause of death given was just plain wrong. That shows how important it is to have robust safeguards.
We had some references to forms that I must admit I am fortunate enough never to have read, relating to benefit rules. To me, referring to those forms is a complete absurdity in the context of this debate. Those forms are about whether people are going to be paid sums of money by the state for their maintenance. That is no doubt an important issue, but it pales into insignificance on the issue of principle that relates to one person helping another person to commit suicide with a huge and lethal dose of barbiturates.
I could make many more comments, but I note that it is now 2.50 pm. In my judgment, there is a real principle and there are a lot of people waiting for your Lordships’ determination of that principle. To me it is as simple as this: do we want the gateway to be safe or are we prepared to take risks with people’s lives? With that in mind, I believe that the opinion of the House should be tested.