UK Parliament / Open data

Health and Care Bill

Proceeding contribution from Baroness Butler-Sloss (Crossbench) in the House of Lords on Wednesday, 16 March 2022. It occurred during Debate on bills on Health and Care Bill.

My Lords, it would be perfectly possible for someone in the House of Commons to raise this issue and deal with it there. What concerns me—I pick up what the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Howarth, said—is that this seems to be a constitutional issue. I am not going to say a word about the rights and wrongs of assisted suicide or assisted dying. However, I shall just read a few words of the amendment. It asks us to agree that the

“Secretary of State must, within the period of 12 months … lay before Parliament”

not just the possibility of a Private Member’s Bill being given time, which was what was suggested earlier, but a draft Bill. That is telling the Government what legislation they have to pass. This is a matter that transcends issues of compassion or whether one is on one side of the argument or the other, because what we in the Lords are telling the Commons is that they have to support us telling the Government to put forward a Bill with which they may not agree. But they do not have any choice if this amendment is passed. That Bill has to,

“permit terminally ill, mentally competent adults legally to end their own lives”.

The amendment is not asking the Government to please give time—I could understand that. It is telling, not asking, the Government to put forward a draft Bill in support of one side of the argument. Whichever side I was on, I would feel absolutely impelled to resist this amendment.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
820 c337 
Session
2021-22
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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