House of Commons
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Prayers
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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09:35 - The House divided: - Ayes: 1 / Noes: 239 - Question accordingly negatived.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
I beg to move, That the House sit in private.
Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 163).
Assisted Dying (No. 2) Bill
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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14:07 - The House having divided: - Ayes: 118 / Noes: 330 - Question accordingly negatived.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
I wish to make a short statement. More than 85 Members have indicated that they wish to catch my eye in this debate, which is unprecedented. I would like to help as many Members as possible to put something on the record, and therefore ask Members who are speaking to be generous with interventions but for intervening Members to make only one or two interventions: please, though, keep these to a minimum for the mover of the Bill. It is not customary to impose a speech limit on private Members’ Bills, but I hope speakers will restrict themselves to five minutes, and that includes taking interventions. I should make it clear that the Chair retains the right to impose a formal speech limit. I do not wish to do so, but I will review that as the debate progresses.
Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I thank all Members for giving up their constituency Friday to take part in this debate. I also thank Lord Falconer, who was the original author of the Bill, and Dignity in Dying—I have never been a member, but it has given me assistance on the Bill. I would also like Members to pass on my thanks to their staff, who have been dealing with quite a large volume of correspondence in many constituencies. Now we have got that vote out of the way, I hope that today will see Parliament at its best, with an open debate and a free vote on a matter of conscience.
I will take interventions, but, as you have requested, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will take very few because so many hon. Members wish to speak. So that hon. Members have some idea of where I am going and when I may address particular issues of interest to them, let me say that my speech is in three parts. I will start with the context of the debate, move on briefly to the content of the Bill and then seek to address the concerns that many people have raised with me.
The context is that the current law does not meet the needs of the terminally ill, does not meet the needs of their loved ones and, in some ways, does not meet the needs of the medical profession. We have amateur suicides and what is technically illegal assistance going on, and those who have the means to do so are going off to Dignitas in Switzerland. In the Tony Nicklinson case, the Supreme Court recognised that there is a problem that needs to be addressed by Parliament.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
If I am correct, in the Nicklinson case only two of the judges recognised that there was an issue. Seven of the judges—the majority—indicated that the law on this is in accordance with the margin of appreciation under the European convention on human rights, and that has recently been confirmed by the Strasbourg Court.
Rob Marris
My understanding is that five judges expressed grave concerns about a possible breach of article 8 of the convention.
The Supreme Court has indicated that Parliament should address this issue. We have a situation in which Directors of Public Prosecutions—principally, the previous DPP, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), who hopes to speak today—have felt it necessary to issue pages and pages of guidelines on when it would be in the public interest not to prosecute in possible cases of assisted death. It is time for Parliament to grasp the issue.
Social attitudes have changed in the past 50 years. As politicians, we all know not to rely too much on opinion polls. However, opinion polling of 10,000 people by Dignity in Dying, carried out independently by Populus, has suggested that there is extremely strong support for the kind of measure I am proposing.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
Can my hon. Friend tell the House why he thinks that so many disability organisations and the British Medical Association are opposed to the Bill?
Rob Marris
Many disability organisations appear to think that this Bill has particular relevance to those with disabilities, but it does not. Disability is not an illness—it is rather old-fashioned to suggest that it is—and disability is certainly not a terminal illness. Despite repeated requests from its members, the British Medical Association has refused to debate this issue since 2012, and it has refused to poll its members. That is regrettable. In that context, The British Medical Journal editorial supports the Bill.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Rob Marris
No, I will not for the moment. I must make some progress.
I respect the views held by people who are strongly opposed to my Bill. I share their motives for wanting a better society and to ensure that we have a law that protects people. On the tube this morning, I stood next to a man in a hoodie on which it said, “Understand difference”, which I thought was quite appropriate. This debate is not about opinion poll numbers; it is about a matter of conscience, ethics and the kind of society in which we live. We need such a debate, and Parliament should not only debate this issue today when 85 hon. Members wish to speak but scrutinise the Bill in Committee in detail, and it should come back to the House for further scrutiny.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
Will the hon. Gentleman clarify something that has been bothering me? He has called this Bill the Assisted Dying Bill but there is not a person in this room who would not assist the dying. In the interest of clarity, why did he not call it the assisted suicide Bill?
Rob Marris
It is quite simple: it was called the Assisted Dying Bill in the House of Lords. I refer hon. Members to the Bill’s long title, which is often overlooked:
“A Bill to enable competent adults who are terminally ill to choose to be provided with medically supervised assistance to end their own life.”
I think that is pretty clear.
Rob Marris
I am sorry but I must make some progress. The Assisted Dying Bill has a clear process with multiple safeguards. I will briefly go through that because there has sometimes been confusion about what I am and am not proposing. The Bill covers a patient who is terminally ill, which involves a prognosis of less than six months.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
The Bill is founded on the belief that it is possible to predict the time of death accurately up to six months. In fact, most doctors would say that that is impossible. It is certainly impossible to predict death beyond a week or two. Is that not the case?
Rob Marris
My hon. Friend, like me, is a solicitor, and she will know that professionals commonly give advice on a balance of probabilities. That is the same for medical professionals. On the gross statistics, when errors in prognosis occur for the terminally ill, it is usually an overestimate of life expectancy.
The second point is that the patient must be aged 18 or over and ordinarily resident in England or Wales. The patient must be of sound mind, and must voluntarily sign a declaration that they wish to embark on this process. Then the attending doctor, as defined in the Bill, countersigns the declaration—
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?
Rob Marris
I will not. The patient’s attending doctor countersigns the declaration—
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Rob Marris
No. I will make some progress. The doctor countersigns the declaration that the patient is terminally ill and of sound mind, is acting voluntarily, and has been informed of palliative and other care available. A second independent specialist doctor with expertise in that area countersigns that declaration. If a medical person has a conscientious objection to any of that, she or he—quite properly—does not have to participate in any way. Having had the signature of two doctors, the declaration has to go to a High Court judge. If the High Court judge agrees and makes an order, there is a 14-day cooling off period.
Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)
On the High Court judge’s agreement, what independent inquiries does the Bill provide for that judge to make?
Rob Marris
Like many Bills it does not fetter the discretion of the High Court judge. It is up to the High Court judge what inquiries they feel it appropriate to make. After the 14-day cooling off period, if the patient still wishes to proceed a medical person takes the lethal medicine to the patient and waits. At that point the patient could decide not to proceed. The medical person stays there until that decision is made. If the patient decides to take the lethal medication, the medical person waits there. If the patient decides not to take the medication, the medical person takes the medication away. There is no question of it being left on the premises.
Ms Stuart
I held two public meetings, including one at the Birmingham Medical Institute. This part of the Bill worried the medics most and they were deeply opposed to it. They said, “If I am the attendant medic, what do I do if the person starts choking? Do I intervene?” They felt that it put them in an absolutely impossible situation. What is the answer to that?
Rob Marris
That has not been the experience in other jurisdictions.
The operation of the Bill will be monitored by the chief medical officers of Scotland and Wales who will lay an annual report before Parliament. For further reassurance, there is a sunset clause of 10 years. Those are the contents of the Bill.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman introduced the idea of comparison with foreign jurisdictions. The Netherlands has a different law from ours, introduced originally on the same basis. When it was introduced over 10 years ago, on euthanasia, there were 1,600 deaths a year; now there are 4,100. On a UK scale, that would be 15,000 so-called voluntary medically assisted suicides a year. Are those the sorts of numbers the hon. Gentleman recognises, or is he saying we will not be like that?
Rob Marris
The Bill is not about euthanasia; it is about the self-administration of lethal medication at the end of life. [Interruption.] I hear an hon. Gentleman chuntering about Dignity in Dying. If he recalls, I said I have never been a member of that organisation. It may have other agendas. This Bill is not about euthanasia.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend accept, however, that there are people who will be voting with him today for whom this is the start of the process? I went into the Lady Members room on Monday night to see a Minister and one of my own Back Benchers, who is here today, talking about how this is a start. They are coming here to vote today because they want something much more permissive in the future.
Rob Marris
My hon. Friend knows the constitution of our country. If someone wants to change the law in another way, they will have to have the guts to introduce another Bill to this House.
Rob Marris
I will not; I must make some progress. I am conscious of the time.
I appreciate that in England and Wales the medical profession is divided on the Bill, and that, probably, the majority are against. However, as far as one can tell, there is a significant minority who are in favour of the Bill, some of them, one suspects—this is what polling indicates—because they would themselves like to have the proposed option were they terminally ill. There is no contradiction between what is proposed in the Bill and having widespread high-quality palliative care. It is not a contradiction; it is not a question of one or the other. A minority of patients’ needs cannot be met through palliative care. Despite the best efforts of palliative care from professionals, those patients keep suffering.
Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)
The Assisted Dying Bill can be debated only when we have universal, high-quality palliative care. In my constituency I have Shooting Star Chase, which is internationally top level. That is essential to giving people real choice if they were ever to consider assisted dying.
Rob Marris
I want good quality, widely available palliative care and I want people to have the choice, but I do not think the House should be holding terminally ill people hostage until we get good palliative care. The availability and funding of palliative care are not in my hands.
Rob Marris
No, I must make some progress. I am sorry.
The European Association of Palliative Care says there is no correlation between the quantity and quality of palliative care in any jurisdiction and whether or not that jurisdiction has legislation like or similar to the Bill. The legislation I am proposing today, as many Members will know, is broadly based on the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, which came into effect in 1997. It has been in operation for 18 years. My Bill has the additional safeguard of judicial oversight.
When the Act was passed in 1994, the Oregon Hospice Association was strongly opposed to it. It has reversed its position, and it now recognises—in my view correctly, although I am not an expert—that assisted dying is one of the choices that ought to be available to dying people. In Oregon, 90% of people who have an assisted death—0.25% of those who die each year—are enrolled in hospice care, and Oregon is ranked among the best states in the United States of America for palliative care provision.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Would the hon. Gentleman care to comment on the Wagner case? Mrs Wagner was encouraged to take assisted suicide, rather than chemotherapy, on the grounds of cost. It worries many of us that market forces and family pressures will promote ever more assisted suicides.
Rob Marris
I will take a detour for the hon. Gentleman, because there are urban myths. Barbara Wagner was a 65-year-old lifelong smoker with lung cancer, who was insured—this is America—under the state plan. Her doctor prescribed medication that cost $4,000 a month which had an 8% chance of extending her life by four to six months. Her insurance health plan did not cover treatment where there was less than a 5% chance that the patient would be alive after five years. When she told her health plan provider that she would not be paying for the treatment, it informed her that one of the other options was the Oregon Act. It should not have done that, and it has since revised its notification process.
I am told that depression is often present among those who have a terminal illness. That is not surprising; if I had a terminal illness, I think I would get depressed. It is up to the two doctors to determine whether depression has driven someone to make this choice, or whether it is a free choice, and if those doctors have doubts, they can refer the patient, as part of the process, for an independent psychiatric evaluation.
Another concern is that patients will feel that they are a burden on their loved ones or the health service and so wish to exercise this option. I hope that patients do not feel that, but I cannot guarantee it. It is patronising and wrong to say that someone should be denied the choice because one factor in their decision making is that they would feel that they are a burden. They should have the choice.
Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)
To say that we hope that they will not feel a burden is not a reassurance, because hope is not enough. There is evidence that under the Death with Dignity Act in Washington state, 59% of people who went down this route felt that they were a burden on their family and friends. In Oregon, which my hon. Friend refers to as the model for the Bill, that figure is 40%. This is unacceptable.
Rob Marris
If my right hon. Friend looks at the figures again, she will find that for those people she mentions burden was not the major factor, but it was a factor, and people should be allowed to make a decision.
Rob Marris
No, I must make some progress now. I can take no further interventions, I am afraid.
The coercion of the vulnerable is the most difficult issue, for me and many people in the House and outside. That is where the context in which the Bill is being put before the House should be borne in mind. This Bill provides protection for the living. What we have at the moment is protection for the dead when it is too late. It is only after people die in questionable circumstances that the police and the prosecuting authorities investigate, and then a decision is made on whether a prosecution would be in the public interest. I make no criticism whatever of the prosecuting authorities or the police, who are doing the job and fulfilling the role that we in Parliament have asked them to do, but they are doing it after the fact—and the fact is that in many cases there are only two witnesses to what happened when the person died, and one of those witnesses is dead. There are safeguards in the Bill for the living: the two doctors and the judge.
In Oregon, there is not one documented case of abuse or misuse. There are many rumours and urban myths—the Barbara Wagner case is one of them. No one there has ever been charged with a crime. The Oregon health authority collects the data quite properly each year, as would be the case for chief medical officers under this Bill, and there are no documented reported cases of abuse in Washington state, Montana or Vermont.
The fact that other jurisdictions have this sort of legislation is not per se a reason for England and Wales to have it, but it does provide a significant body of evidence for us to look at. That evidence is felt so significant that in California it is likely that later today the upper chamber will sign off an assisted dying Bill and it will be sent to Governor Jerry Brown for signature. The indications are that he is very likely to sign it.
Rob Marris
No, I said I could not take any more interventions.
Let me quote from a report by Barbara Coombs Lee, published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, entitled “Oregon’s experience with aid in dying: findings from the death with dignity laboratory”. Barbara Coombs Lee declared no conflict of interest when she submitted that paper, although I have to tell Members that she is involved with Compassion & Choices in Denver Colorado. The paper was published in July 2014. I hope, Madam Deputy Speaker, in light of the need for evidence, that you will show me some latitude in quoting not at considerable length, but at a little more length than is usual. She says:
“The data set from a variety of sources confirms that those who complete an aid-in-dying request are equally divided between genders and mostly white, well educated, insured”—
this is the United States—
“and receiving hospice services. Several commentators who articulated concerns about the DWDA—
the Dying with Dignity Act or the Oregon Act—
“have publicly stated that their fears about abuse of the vulnerable have not materialized. One commented, ‘I was worried about people being pressured to do this. But these data confirm that the policy in Oregon is working. There is no evidence of abuse or coercion or misuse of the policy.”
Ten years after that Act had been in operation in Oregon, the University of Utah examined its operation and the data arising from it. I quote from it prudently again. The university
“found no evidence of heightened risk for the elderly, women, the uninsured, people with little education, the poor, the physically disabled or chronically ill, minors, people with psychiatric illnesses or racial or ethnic minorities. The only group disproportionately represented among aid-in-dying patients was people with AIDS.”
It continued:
“The executive director of the disability advocacy group, Disability Rights Oregon testified before the American Public Health Association in 2007 that he had no knowledge of any cases in Oregon to contradict the findings of that report.”
[Interruption.] One of my hon. Friends says from a sedentary position, “So it is about disabled people.” No, it is not about people with disabilities. However, I understand, and so did the author of this report, that there are concerns and that is why that evidence has been looked at, and I seek, as did the author of that report, to allay those concerns.
Lord George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has said:
“There is nothing sacred about suffering, nothing holy about agony, and individuals should not be obliged to endure it.”
I agree with him.
When we talk about choice, some hon. Members need reminding of section 1(4) of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, for which many Members present today, including me, voted. That subsection states:
“A person is not to be treated as unable to make a decision merely because he makes an unwise decision.”
We need to bear in mind that different people faced with the same set of circumstances on occasions make different choices, and at the moment the law in England and Wales has not got the balance right between protection and choice. My Bill would provide more protection, particularly for the living, and more choice. Most of those who would fulfil the criteria in the Bill will, for faith or other reasons, never choose an assisted death. I do not know whether I would, if I had a terminal illness and a prognosis of less than six months, but I and many others would find it comforting to know that the choice was available—to have the option of choosing a dignified and peaceful end at a time and place and in a manner of my own choosing at my own hand.
There has been a trend in our society, which I support, that if the exercise of a choice does not harm others, in a free society we should allow that choice.
Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)
I respect the sincerely held views of the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris). The whole nation will be looking at our debate on this issue today and it is right that we show respect for the strongly held views on all sides, but I beg to differ with him.
Historically, our society has abhorred suicide and based that view on the principle of the sanctity of life, but that argument is becoming harder to make in an increasingly secular society. The view that life is a gift from God with all that it entails, including pain and suffering, and that it is not for us to bring it to an end, is perceived to be at odds with the prevailing view of our rights, including a perceived right to end our own life.
Naturally, none of us likes the idea that our death will be painful and difficult. We need to do more to reassure people that it does not have to be. Our hospices offer outstanding help and support to the dying and their families. The recently opened Marie Curie hospice in Solihull is a brilliant example of this. It is possible, with sheer humanity, to make dying better. Still, 50% of us will die in hospital when we do not wish to, and a recent report on end-of-life care in hospitals shows gaps in medical training to provide the care that is needed. There is a significant risk that passing this Bill would reduce the available resources. The deputy chair of Hospice UK has suggested that such a change could threaten funding for hospices.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
If the Bill goes through, it will create an enormous dilemma for our hospice movement. My own hospice, Rennie Grove Hospice Care, has written to me to say that it
“will not be involved in the provision of assisted dying to people under its care.”
That could lead to people who need care in such a hospice not wanting to go to it, which would effectively remove a choice from dying people of the palliative care that they require.
Mrs Spelman
My right hon. Friend demonstrates one of the dilemmas that the Bill presents.
The National Council for Palliative Care has said:
“We believe the current Assisted Dying Bill puts vulnerable people at risk, without improving access to care”.
The heart of the issue of assisted dying goes deeper still, however—to society’s attitudes to ageing, to death and to dying. Why do so many people say, “I don’t want to be a burden”? In societies that revere the elderly, there is less fear among old people that they impose a strain on everyone else. One of my constituents put it like this:
“We are born into dependency, we rely on the goodwill of others even when we are in our prime, and dependency is a necessary feature of our senior years.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury has said that this Bill would lead Britain to cross
“a fundamental legal and ethical Rubicon”.
Respect for life underpins our criminal and human rights laws, as well as the Hippocratic oath, taken by all our doctors, to promote life. The Bill challenges that respect for life. It would result in a major shift in these principles, fundamentally changing the relationship between a doctor and their patient. It would not just legitimise suicide, but promote the participation of others in it. Even if we consider assisted dying to be acceptable in some circumstances, the law should not be changed.
Mr George Howarth
The right hon. Lady talked about people feeling that they did not want to be a burden, as though that was not a rational choice to make. In some circumstances, however, it can be perfectly rational for someone to say, “I do not want to be a burden on my family or on the health service, and this is probably the end of my life.”
Mrs Spelman
Let me put a rational question back to the right hon. Gentleman. How is it that senior members of our society have reached a point at which they feel they might be a burden? The increasing secularisation of society has contributed to this, because the Christian principle of honouring our fathers and mothers must have become weakened if our parents and grandparents are starting to feel that they are a burden to us.
Mrs Spelman
I should like to make a bit more progress before I give way.
Assisted dying should be the absolute exception, not the rule. In practice, the law as it stands has seldom been used to convict anyone for assisting someone else to die. Strong laws protect vulnerable people. The existing law protects the elderly, the disabled and those who might otherwise feel pressured to die. It is difficult to prove definitively that someone has not been coerced. It would be almost impossible to pass a law that could definitively prove one way or another whether an elderly person had been coerced.
Yasmin Qureshi
I thank the right hon. Lady for giving way. I agree with what she is saying, and I should like to give the House a small example of why that is the case. My mother is 83 years of age and has a number of health issues. Last year, she was in and out of hospital, and in April this year she was told by the consultant that she did not have much time to live. In May, she was given about three days. My mother has now recovered and is very healthy again. Before I left home at 5 o’clock this morning, I had tea and biscuits with her, and she was walking about. She has recovered, but when she was suffering, she was saying, “I feel I am a real burden on my family. I can’t do this.” She was very emotionally distressed, and she still sometimes gets distressed, but she has survived and she is now healthy.
Mrs Spelman
I suspect that in the course of this debate we will hear a lot of personal examples such as that given by the hon. Lady, which speak volumes about the predicament the Bill presents.
Research by Age UK has shown that about 500,000 elderly people are abused each year in the UK and there is a very real danger that if this Bill were to pass, many of these people could be put at further risk. As the Care Not Killing campaign has said:
“The right to die can so easily become the duty to die.”
An opinion survey commissioned by the charity Scope last year showed that the majority of disabled people also fear change to the assisted dying law. For them, the current situation provides protection for the living. There are surely reasons why most doctors are against this Bill. Only one in seven doctors would agree to assist a suicide, so the chances are that the doctor involved would not be known to the patient or the family, which is undesirable.
This is also a Bill without any detailed, up-front safeguards. It outlines a process, but does not give enough detail about how it would work. The so-called “safeguards” are left to codes of practice; set out in clause 8, which states that they “may” be issued by the Secretary of State—but “may” is not strong enough. The first so-called “safeguard” is that the Bill applies only in the case of a terminally ill adult with less than six months to live, but, as has been pointed out, it is difficult to ascertain whether someone does have just six months to live. In addition, clause 1 suggests that the process must be entirely voluntary and initiated by a patient, but if assisted dying becomes regarded as a medical treatment, it is likely that a doctor would be under some positive obligation to suggest it to patients.
The disposition of this House towards this difficult subject will reveal these strong views. I have lost both my parents, one of whom suffered in death. I have sat with good friends who were slipping away in a hospice. I have wept over friends prematurely departing this life. Grief is made worse by missing the parting. As the letter from all the faith leaders put it,
“for very many people... the natural processes of dying, allied with good palliative care, enable them and their families to experience precious moments of love, care, reconciliation and even hope; processes that ought not to be truncated.”
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
Order. Before I call the next speaker, may I say that that contribution was 10 minutes long, which, even by my maths, is double the voluntary limit of five minutes? Unless we stick to five minutes and be generous by making only brief interventions, we will not get as many Members as I would like on to the record. With that in mind, I call Jim Fitzpatrick.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) on introducing the Bill. He does this House a great service, as did Lord Charlie Falconer in the other place, because this debate just has to happen. The courts have said that Parliament needs to review the law as it stands now after the decision of the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, to amend guidance on this matter. I pay tribute to the former DPP also for the meticulous way he and the Crown Prosecution Service felt their way forward after so many high-profile cases demonstrated that something had to change. He is now, of course, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras, and he brings great authority to this place.
There are three key issues here: first, for those with terminal illness who are facing pain, suffering and indignity, it is about having the right to choose; secondly, it is about the need to protect the vulnerable against undue pressure and to legislate for safeguards; and, thirdly, it is about treating every citizen with the same degree of respect and dignity, and affording them the opportunity to access the best advice and professional help available.
On the right to choose, this—I should declare an interest—is personal. As many colleagues know, before being elected to this place I served in the London fire brigade for 23 years, during which time I worked with asbestos, as did the Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice, who is sitting on the Government Front Bench. Its heat-resistant properties meant that the fire service used it for all manner of things. For example, we used to wear asbestos helmets and gloves. I do not know how many people here have seen the terminal stages of asbestosis or mesothelioma. Not only is it not pretty, but it is damned ugly, and if that is what lies in store for me, I want to control my own exit.
Secondly, we need to protect the vulnerable. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West said, there are 15 safeguards in this Bill compared with two existing safeguards. I would go through them, but he has covered them and time is against us. However, in The Times this week, Lord Finkelstein, not somebody whom I would normally quote, wrote:
“At the moment, you can press your relative to commit suicide, as long as you don’t get caught doing it. The investigation into the pressure that has been placed on the deceased doesn’t take place until after you are gone. By which point it is a little late. Far from increasing the chance of people dying because they have been press-ganged into it, a new law would protect them from this. Doctors would be involved, a judge too. And you would still be there to give evidence for yourself. This is all much safer, not less safe, than the current position.”
My final point is about fairness. I am a huge admirer and supporter of the hospice movement. Locally, Richard House hospice and St Joseph’s hospice care for residents in east London provide a magnificent service. Not everyone will want to be assisted to die. For those who do not, they should have the right to choose their own fate. Many will be so sedated that they may not be aware of their passing at the end.
Until the Crown Prosecution Service amended its advice, families or friends had been open to prosecution. But there still remains the huge obstacle of the lack of professional medical assistance. In his previous position, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras wrote:
“I have become increasingly concerned about two inherent limitations in the guidelines. The first is that although those who have reached a voluntary, clear, settled and informed decision to end their lives can now be confident of the compassionate assistance of loved ones without automatically exposing them to the criminal law. The only assistance they can be provided with is the amateur help of those nearest and dearest. They cannot be provided with professional medical assistance unless they traipse off to Dignitas in Switzerland.”
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman referred to the guidelines of the former Director of Public Prosecutions. Some would say that, having overseen those guidelines, the view that the former DPP now takes on assisted dying may be tainted by bias and that, like the United States, we should have an independent commission on bioethics so that an independent view can be reached.
Jim Fitzpatrick
I have great regard for the hon. Gentleman, but I think that he is impugning the integrity of the former DPP in reaching that decision and in his ability to speak for himself later on today.
Switzerland would be fine for people such as us or others in similar well-paid jobs or on decent pensions, but it is not an option that is available to many of our fellow citizens. Who wants to travel to Switzerland? Why should we have to? Why cannot we die at home, which is where most people want to die? The law needs to change; the law will change. Society is making decisions without this House’s agreement, but, ultimately, it is up to us to make much better legal provision.
This Bill should be sent to Committee and examined properly, because that will not happen today. The case is compelling. I wish to thank all those involved in the campaign organisation—the staff, supporters and patrons of Dignity in Dying—for assisting my hon. Friend and for giving us this opportunity today. Legislative opportunities on this stuff come around once every 20 years. Today we should make progress.
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) on promoting this Bill and my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) on her speech. It is the first time that I have heard the arguments put forward around the sanctity of life. Those arguments were notably absent from the letter addressed to us all by the two archbishops. I congratulate her on making those arguments. Although some may believe that suffering is a grace-filled opportunity to participate in the passion of Jesus Christ, which is selfishly stolen away by euthanasia, I say please count me out.
Crispin Blunt
I ask my hon. Friend to forgive me. We are very tight for time, and he will get the chance to make his own arguments.
To die well is a simple concept and one that would not have shocked Socrates or Seneca. However, an aversion or allergy to a proper, weighty consideration of what a good death is and should look like is a shibboleth of a society that has been shaped by Christian concepts of the sanctity of life.
I came to this House in 1997 as a convinced supporter of the principles behind the Bill and, like many of its supporters, I came to that decision through my own personal experience. I watched my two parents and, in particular, my father-in-law die of cancer. He had conversations with his children, saying that if he ever found himself in that situation he wanted them to take care to trip over the cables so that if he was on a life-support machine it would be switched off. He died without even having the possibility of controlling the time of his own death and I found it truly appalling that his personal autonomy was limited in that way.
The Bill contains all the necessary safeguards to protect people.
Crispin Blunt
I would take interventions, but I am conscious that many people want to speak.
The arguments about a slippery slope or the vulnerability of people in the letter to us from the two archbishops and the religious leaders simply ignore the fact that this applies only to terminally ill people. Two doctors have to sign off on the fact that the person will be dead within six months and the process is overseen by a High Court judge. On the subject of freedom, I ask my right hon. and hon. Friends to consider who will be the beneficiaries of this legislation. It is not us in here, who, if we were faced with these circumstances would be capable of taking the decision for ourselves, but it is the people who cannot exercise that ability and need someone else to help them make that decision in the last six months of their life; when they want to exercise the option of ending their life with dignity, at a time of their choosing, having had the opportunity to talk to their family and have all the conversations to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden referred. They will then know when the end of their life will come. The Bill gives people in those circumstances a little bit of control at the end. Perhaps most importantly, it gives everyone the potential to have that little bit of control at the end. In Oregon, hardly anyone—0.3% of people dying—exercises the right. The whole Oregon experience entirely supports that this is a practical, sensible, humane and decent measure. I went there to see it in operation, as I am so interested in this issue.
For nearly everyone, the Bill will provide the comfort of having a degree of control over the end of their life. We must and ought to have a right to choose, despite the concerns about what a valid choice looks like. Those issues are addressed in the Bill. I say in particular to my right hon. and hon. Friends that this is an issue of freedom. The logo of our party for a long time was the torch of freedom, and that is why I am surprised that there is so much opposition to the Bill on the Conservative Benches. I understand the Catholic and faith lobby will have in-principle objections, but I am slightly appalled that they should seek to sustain legislation that limits my personal autonomy when 80% of the population, presented with this proposition, would support it.
In the 21st century, mutual tolerance should have taken us beyond that. We are the party of freedom and choice and surely there could be no greater demonstration of our commitment to those principles than the principle in this Bill. Hiding behind the slippery slope argument will not do. If two doctors and a High Court judge are not enough, what is? My hon. Friends should seek to insert in Committee the safeguards they feel are required, but they should not abandon the guiding principle of our party and oppose the freedom that the Bill enshrines today.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I am afraid that I cannot support this Bill. My concern is that we will fundamentally change the way that our society thinks about and deals with the terminally ill, severely disabled people and the vulnerable, troubled and elderly.
My mum died suddenly and unexpectedly, riddled by cancer, but I know that my mum, faced with a terminal prognosis in a world where there was the possibility of state-assisted suicide, acceptable and accepted by society, would have tormented herself during her last months with the question of when she should ask for that button to be pressed. She would have worried about the stresses that my sister and I would have endured, she would have worried about the weight of her care being shouldered by the nurses and the doctors, and she would have been anxious that folk would think that she was consuming too many resources, selfishly staying alive, costing money, when she could and should just die.
My mum was not vulnerable. She was not alone or a depressive. She was dearly loved; and yet I know that the mere existence of legal and assisted suicide would have placed an enormous burden on her. But what of those without a loving family? What of those elderly people—let us face it, they do exist—with families more interested in the cost of care, and its impact on their dwindling inheritance, than the priceless gift of life? Would not some of my more vulnerable constituents think that they ought to take a course of action because it is available and despite the safeguards in the Bill, which I acknowledge have been carefully crafted? Can we be absolutely sure that they would not be pressured into it?
It is naive to believe that we can prevent an elderly, expensive or asset-rich relative being encouraged, coerced or emotionally blackmailed into taking their own life. And if just one person makes that decision to end their life as a result of such pressure, that would be a tragedy.
The Bill seeks to provide the right to assistance in dying only to those who are terminally ill. I believe supporters of the Bill have real integrity and do not intend its scope to be extended further. But if the Bill is passed, I believe that its scope will be extended, partly by case law, to apply to more people. Holland introduced assisted dying for the terminally ill in 2002. Initially, hardly any patients with psychiatric illnesses or dementia sought suicide. Now, just 13 years later, assisted suicide is sought and granted to elderly, lonely or bereaved people. Pressure for doctors to accede to requests comes from patients and relatives, as I believe it will here.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
The hon. Lady is talking about the consequences of giving the Bill a Second Reading. Will she address for a second, though, the consequences of not giving the Bill a Second Reading? Assisted suicide will be available; it will simply be available to those who have the means and the determination to go elsewhere. What does she think should happen for these people, and for those who are currently protected from prosecution by the DPP’s guidelines?
Lyn Brown
I am against this Bill because I worry that the mere existence of the process of assisted dying will make the vulnerable more vulnerable. It will change fundamentally the relationship between a patient and a doctor, and I oppose it most strenuously, because I think it will fundamentally, slowly but inexorably, change our society’s attitude to death and the dying, with a creeping invidious expectation that our elderly, infirm or disabled should take themselves out of the igloo of old, and die a dignified death, leaving the young, fit and able unencumbered by their burdensome, difficult, messy, expensive, pain-filled and challenging lives.
Life is precious. But the virtues in a society that set it apart as wholesome, decent and ethical are those which nurture and value that life. They are the qualities of tolerance, understanding, forbearance and, dare I say it, love, which are such precious commodities. They engender and sustain compassion and ensure a growing humanity, a more civilised society for the living, that shields and truly values life.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
The hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) says that there has been a lot of misunderstanding about the Bill. There is no misunderstanding at all: the Bill would authorise doctors to provide a lethal substance for people to kill themselves with. That substance is not a “medicine”, as the Bill disingenuously describes it, but a poison. No wonder doctors oppose it, and we in this House should do so too.
The hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West says that the Bill sets out a clear procedure with multiple safeguards. What clear procedure? What safeguards? Let us look at the Bill. It states that doctors must be satisfied that a patient has a settled and voluntary intent to end his or her life. How should doctors be satisfied that the intent is settled? The Bill does not say. Would they need to see the patient once or twice, or over what period of time? The Bill is silent. What steps should doctors take to be satisfied that the intent is voluntary, and that there is no coercion behind the patient’s request? The Bill is silent. Given that Action on Elder Abuse reports that there are over half a million reported incidents of physical and emotional elder abuse in the UK each year, the Bill should be clear on that critical issue, but it is not.
Simon Hoare
It is actually worse than my hon. Friend suggests. Given the very low number of GPs who have indicated that they would seek a licence, it is more than likely that both doctors seeking to make the certification would not know the patient and therefore would not be able to tell whether they were more or less depressed or to assess their rate of degeneration. That is the fundamental weakness of the Bill.
Fiona Bruce
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Those doctors could not be sure, and they would not be able to assess the even more subtle internal pressure that an individual might feel to express a wish to end their life because they feel a burden. What special procedure is there in the Bill for the particularly vulnerable in our society, such as those with mental health or learning difficulties? There is none. No wonder Mencap and Scope oppose it.
The hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West speaks of multiple safeguards. Where are they in the Bill? I do not see them. Does he mean the provision that the decision should be referred to a High Court judge? If this was not so serious, it would be laughable. The judge would not have to meet the patient; they would only have to confirm the doctors’ decision, and in a time frame of 14 days, making independent scrutiny all but impossible. Absent will be the detailed, rigorous examination that the family court gives to life and death issues, such as turning off a life-support system. Gone will be the investigative powers of the Director of Public Prosecutions under the current legislation rigorously to investigate cases of assisted suicide referred to him. Removed will be the strong deterrent against malicious behaviour that the current law provides.
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
The Bill would require the dying person to make a declaration, and that declaration would have to be witnessed. Quite rightly, the witness cannot be a member of the dying person’s family, but they can be a beneficiary of their will. Is my hon. Friend as concerned about that as I am?
Fiona Bruce
I am extremely concerned about that “conflict of interest”, as we in this place might call it.
Vulnerable patients would be left in a weaker position than they are now. The inclusion of a judge effectively to countersign a form confirming the doctors’ decision adds no protective value whatsoever. But wait; here in clause 8 is a provision that would allow the Secretary of State to issue at some future date—not before we have passed the Bill—a code of practice. A code of practice would relate to such critical matters as assessing a patient’s capacity or what counselling should be given, or recognising that depression might impair a patient’s judgment.
In other words, the Bill says to us, “Parliament, decide now and sign this blank cheque, and at some future date as yet unknown some safeguards may be considered.” That is wholly unsatisfactory. That will be too late. The deed will have been done. We will have changed the law. We will have crossed the Rubicon, from killing people being illegal to killing people being legal. That is not doing justice. We are here to protect the most vulnerable in our society, not to legislate to kill them. This Bill is not merely flawed; legally and ethically it is totally unacceptable and we must reject it.
Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
May I lay out for the House the history of the guidelines that I issued and my experience in operating them? I am well aware of the deeply held views on all sides, and very respectful of them, as I have been throughout the past seven years. I will therefore attempt this exercise as a factual chronology objectively stated so that people can see the conclusions that I have reached.
I was six weeks into my post as Director of Public Prosecutions when I had to decide whether to prosecute the mother and father of Dan James, a young and very gifted rugby player who was paralysed after an accident on the rugby pitch in Nuneaton and wished to end his life. He did not want to die alone and persuaded his parents to go with him to Dignitas. When they came back, they were arrested and interviewed, and I had to decide whether they would be prosecuted. I decided that they should not be prosecuted.
Keir Starmer
I would prefer it if the House allowed me just to lay out the history so that everybody can understand it. I will of course try to take on board all the points that are being made.
I took it to be the compassionate act of a loved one, and using the exercise that the DPP had, decided not to prosecute.
A courageous woman with multiple sclerosis, Debbie Purdy, was in the process of bringing a case against the DPP in our courts. It started as a case against my predecessor, but became a case against me, and it was reaching the final stages. She noticed the reasons that I had given, and she argued before the House of Lords judicial committee that the DPP should be required to set out in guidance the approach that was being taken, and would be taken, to assisted suicide.
Keir Starmer
For the reasons I have given, I genuinely think it may be more helpful for the House if I just completed the exercise. I am deliberately trying not to put my views into this chronology so that people can simply see it for what it is, whatever view they take.
Debbie Purdy persuaded the committee that I should be required to produce guidelines. In the last judgment of the House of Lords judicial committee before it became the Supreme Court on the other side of Parliament Square, it ordered that I should do so. I was, of course, at that stage deeply aware of the views that were held on all sides, and I decided that a very wide public consultation was necessary so that the guidelines would be as fully informed as they possibly could be. I decided also to issue interim guidelines so that people could see the words on the page of the guidelines before the consultation exercise started, and so that it would be a meaningful consultation rather than one where views would be expressed in the abstract but without a real, detailed eye on what I was proposing.
The interim guidelines were underpinned by two principles. The first was that the criminal law should rarely, if ever, be used against those who compassionately assist loved ones to die at their request, so long as that person had reached a voluntary, clear, settled and informed decision to end their life. The second was that very strong safeguards are needed to protect those who might be pressurised in any number of subtle ways. Those who encourage the death of the vulnerable should feel the full force of the law.
The response to that consultation exercise was huge. Most criminal justice consultation exercises have responses numbered in the low hundreds; the response to my consultation exercise was nearly 5,000, and that is treating all the heads of faiths as one respondee when, in truth, they were responding on behalf of very many within their communities. It was probably the widest consultation on this particular area of our law ever conducted. It included, as one would expect, members of the public, doctors, other healthcare professionals, representatives of all faith groups, judges, public servants, Members of this House and Members of the House of Lords. In the course of that exercise, I personally met many who were most concerned about the guidelines.
There was overwhelming support for the interim guidelines that I had published and the two principles that underpinned them: compassionate assistance to those who are clear they want to end their lives, yes; pressurising the vulnerable, no. Accordingly, when I issued the final guidance that is still in force, I adopted the same two underpinning principles. They have now been used for five years. I personally oversaw about 80 cases, looking at the details in each of the files, and made decisions in 79 of those cases that no prosecution should be brought, and there was no clamour to change the guidelines.
Throughout the process, I thought long and hard about the position of doctors and health professionals, and whether their acts of assistance should come within the guidelines, in favour of prosecution or against. I took the view then, and I still hold the view now, that if the DPP indicated that doctors or medical professionals were unlikely to be prosecuted for assisting, that would undermine the intention of Parliament when it passed the Suicide Act 1961. I took the view that Parliament was not prepared to go that far when it passed that Act, and that the DPP should not, by the back door, as it were, indicate in the guidance that doctors and health professionals would be unlikely to be prosecuted if they assisted. Therefore, in the guidelines, when they were first drafted and as they are now, a factor making it more likely that someone will be prosecuted is that they are a doctor or a health professional assisting someone.
That particular issue came to a head in the Tony Nicklinson case, which went to the Supreme Court recently. Tony Nicklinson, as many people in this House will know, suffered a series of strokes and became completely paralysed save that he could move his head and eyes. Because of his paralysed state, he could not carry out his wish to end his life without assistance. He applied to the High Court for an order—a declaration—that he be permitted a doctor to assist him in his death. When he lost his case in the High Court at the first stage, Mr Nicklinson embarked on the difficult and painful course of self-starvation, refusing nutrition, fluids and medical treatment. His case proceeded to the Supreme Court, as everybody here knows, and in June 2012 the majority held that there was an incompatibility between our current position and fundamental human rights, but because of the margin of appreciation they should not themselves make a declaration to that effect but leave it to Parliament to further consider the issue, and today is that opportunity.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. The hon. and learned Gentleman is not giving way.
Keir Starmer
I hope that I have been faithful to my obligation to try to put this in a neutral, objective way, setting out the position.
As Director of Public Prosecutions I never expressed a view on the law; I faithfully applied the law. I have come to the position I now hold on the basis of my experience of the guidelines. It was not a pre-conceived view that I held back then, in answer to a comment that was made earlier; it is a view that I have arrived at on the basis of my experience.
My experience is that there are two inherent limitations in the guidelines that I issued. For the reasons I have explained, my understanding of the constitutional role of the DPP was that doctors and medical practitioners are more likely to be prosecuted. The first limitation is that, as a result, those who have reached a voluntary, clear, settled and informed decision to end their lives can now be confident of the compassionate assistance of loved ones without exposing them to the law, but they cannot have the assistance of professionals. They can have amateur assistance from nearest and dearest, but they cannot have professional help in fulfilling their desire unless they have the means and the physical ability to get to Dignitas. One of the points that Debbie Purdy made to the judicial committee was that she wanted to live her life for as long as possible, although she wanted to end it at her own choosing, and that if she was forced to go to Dignitas she would have to end her life earlier because she would lose the physical means of getting there.
I understand those who say that we should revert to a position where nobody should be given any assistance at all, but we have arrived at a position where compassionate, amateur assistance from nearest and dearest is accepted but professional medical assistance is not, unless someone has the means and physical assistance to get to Dignitas. That to my mind is an injustice that we have trapped within our current arrangement.
On the second limitation in my guidelines, the only safeguard I could put into them was a requirement for an after-the-event investigation by the police into what had happened. Let me quote what the president of the Supreme Court said when he analysed that. This is what our most senior judge—not me—said:
“A system whereby a judge or other independent assessor is satisfied in advance that someone has a voluntary, clear, settled and informed wish to die and for his or her suicide then to be organised in an open and professional way would…provide greater and more satisfactory protection for the vulnerable, than a system which involves a lawyer from the DPP’s office inquiring, after the event, whether the person who had killed himself or herself had such a wish”.
I have heard the comments about the safeguards in the Bill and I know how hard it was to come up with the right safeguards in my guidelines. It took me time to arrive at safeguards that I think could be generally accepted.
Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. At the beginning of this sitting, we were told that 85 Members had put in to speak and we were given guidance on how long our speeches should be. I fully appreciate that the current speaker is making a valuable contribution, but please could you remind the House yet again of the time limit you think people should adhere to without a compulsory time limit having to be set? [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. I am grateful for the advice of my hon. Friend. I would not have taken advice from any other Member of this House, as I am quite capable of judging how long a Member is taking. My hon. Friend is in the unique position of being able to offer me advice and I am taking it. The hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), who currently has the floor—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. and learned Gentleman is in a unique position of being able to give information to this House on this extremely difficult issue. I have therefore allowed considerable leeway for him and I am sure the House will agree with that. At the same time, I am also sure that he will soon conclude his remarks.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. That is not a point of order. We are not wasting time this morning on points of order. There are many people who wish to speak.
Keir Starmer
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will finish as quickly as I can. I understand the frustration of Members who are waiting to speak.
It took me a great deal of time and thought to arrive at appropriate safeguards in the guidelines. In my view the same amount of time and appropriate thought is necessary for the guidelines in the Bill. They have been discussed by others, so I will not repeat them, but what I will say is that I will be open to debate with anyone whether the safeguards are strong and robust enough, and I will work at Committee stage with anyone in this House to make sure not only that they are as strong and robust as possible, but that they have the best consensus possible among the different views held in this House.
Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)
It is a privilege to follow the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer). I would have liked to have intervened on his speech, because cases such as those of Nicklinson and Purdy, which he highlighted, are not covered by this Bill. Locked-in syndrome, in which the person is paralysed except for movement of the head and the eyes, has no six-month limit. This Bill applies to people who are terminally ill and will die anyway within a six-month period. Neither of the cases that the hon. and learned Gentleman highlighted falls into that category.
I met a neurologist earlier this week who told me of a skiing accident he had had. He said, “Of course, the one thing all we neurologists fear is locked-in syndrome,” and that was what he feared from his head injury. I told him, “But this Bill wouldn’t apply to you.” I asked him for how long people with locked-in syndrome can live. He replied, “30 or 40 years—that’s why we fear it.” What doctor can tell someone with locked-in syndrome, “You have six months”? They cannot.
One of the issues with the Bill that has really bothered me is the conflation of those illnesses, conditions and diseases it can cover and those it cannot. I have heard locked-in syndrome mentioned many times. Motor neurone disease is another illness on which a six-month time limit cannot be put. We always quote Stephen Hawking, who is an ambassador and is still alive many years later. Who would have put six months on his life at any time? People keep mentioning illnesses such as motor neurone disease and locked-in syndrome, but this Bill does not apply to them. We must not conflate them and what the Bill covers.
Nadine Dorries
I am not going to take any interventions, because so many people are waiting to speak.
In the 1980s, as a nurse, I had the privilege or the honour—I do not know the right word to use—to hold the hand of a young gay man when he was given a diagnosis of AIDS. It was not HIV, but AIDS—he was in a very bad way. He was given not six months, but 12 weeks. He is still alive today, as are so many of the other young men and women who were diagnosed at that time with HIV and AIDS and given fewer than six months to live.
Medical research ran ahead and found treatments for them to hold on to their lives for longer while even better treatments were developed. That race is still in progress: treatments are still being developed. We have now reached the point where somebody diagnosed with AIDS is far more likely to die of something else, but we would never have thought that in the 1980s. Many people present are probably thinking, “But this isn’t the 1980s,” but we did not know that AIDS was going to arrive in the 1980s and we do not know what is down the road, what new viral disease will land—it will probably be a virus, given the information we have—and what the AIDS of tomorrow will be. Six-month prognoses worry me, because no doctor can predict a life expectancy of six months.
I will use a personal case. Last August one of my closest friends visited her consultant after a series of tests had been ordered by her GP. At that meeting with the consultant, she was given 14 days to live. That was an accurate prognosis—it was accurate because it was 14 days. She went home, we got into bed and I spent 14 days on her bed. Her death was painless and peaceful; it was not for everybody around her, but it was for her, and those last 14 days were wonderful, until the very end when she was fast asleep and unaware. That is the beauty of palliative care today: no one needs to die a painful death. The combination of drugs that are administered to people in their final days ensures that they do not suffer pain.
The poison administered when someone makes the choice to take their own life, however, is not pleasant. They do not swallow a concoction of drugs and fall asleep. It is not a nice end. It is certainly not peaceful. They choke. It is not a good death. To people who argue that it is a good death, I say that it is not: it is painful and barbaric to die in that way.
I listened to the head of the hospice movement on Radio 4 this morning and I know of the fears and have read all the emails from people representing the hospice movement in my constituency. The hospice movement has very rightly highlighted that the pressure on people in hospices will shift over a period of time.
I want to make a final point. There are people all over the country who do not have a family member or relative as their next of kin. They do not have loved ones. For them, the next of kin is the state. It sends a shiver of fear down my spine to think that such a Bill might be legislated for and approved when so many people who are protected by the law may not have such protection in future because their next of kin is the state. When they feel that they are a burden or they feel under pressure, who will coerce them and who will feel the budgetary constraints involved in looking after them? I will end with that concern.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is an honour to speak in this important debate. This debate affects each and every one of us, and will set a precedent for many future aspects of society across the whole United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The most important aspect is to remain compassionate, as we are built with the desire to live.
I am proud to say as a Christian that my fundamental belief is in the intrinsic value of every human life, and I just cannot see any tangible evidence to support assisted suicide. I still find myself very much in line with the majority of Christians in so thinking. That is my personal belief, but it is only one of the reasons why I do not and cannot support the Bill on Second Reading. However, I understand and respect the fact that not everyone will share this belief because of their own faith.
One of my greatest issues is with the slippery slope that the proposed legislation will undoubtedly create. I have been contacted by many doctors in my constituency who share the fear that people will feel pressurised into ending their life early so as not to be a financial or care burden on their loved ones. Indeed, one local doctor informed me that, during his time practising, he often encountered this problem, particularly with older patients or those requiring specific treatments and care. There should never be a reason for ending a life, and that is precisely why many of the doctors and nurses who contacted me are against such a practice.
Charles Moore, a former editor of the The Daily Telegraph, has noted that assisted suicide does not just affect the person who dies, but creates problems “for the wider society” and
“undermines the motive that sustains all medicine.”
He does not think that it will do anything to safeguard the most vulnerable people in society, especially the elderly and the disabled.
What would assisted dying do to the NHS? All of us in the Chamber are responsible for the running of the NHS—whether or not it is a devolved matter in Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales—and that is something we must consider. What type of pressure would assisted dying put on our NHS doctors and nurses, given that one person’s need always has to be weighed against that of another in apportioning expenditure? I am extremely concerned that assisted dying might be suggested to families and patients to ensure a smooth and efficient running of the service. The NHS is already under enormous pressure, and patients with a poor prognosis are in great need of NHS facilities and assistance for a long period, if not for the rest of their lives. That is another example of when assisted dying is not right and not fair. I believe that we must safeguard such people.
On a further medical point, I want to quote the columnist Melanie Phillips. [Interruption.] I am glad that hon. Members are appreciating this. She has warned:
“If assisted suicide is permitted for the terminally ill, it will inevitably be argued, why not for those with chronic or progressive conditions? And if for them, why not for disabled people? This slide is already on display in Britain… The slide into the moral quicksands is inevitable once you cross it”.
We have to be careful about what this legislation might lead to in future.
My concern is that a society that allows voluntary euthanasia will gradually change its attitude toward allowing non-voluntary and then involuntary euthanasia. If we ask doctors to abandon their obligation to preserve human life, the very basis on which medicine is practised, we could damage the doctor-patient relationship. The British Medical Association has noted that
“the principal purpose of medicine is to improve patients’ quality of life, not to foreshorten it.”
Patients need to know that doctors have their best interests at heart, and that everything that it is physically possible to do will be done for them in their time of need.
Sir Peter Bottomley
I pay tribute to the hospice movement in Northern Ireland. A study in the Journal of Medical Ethics has shown that 25% of patients in one of the few hospices in the Netherlands wanted euthanasia, but less than 2% actually went through with it. Most people can be looked after very well with palliative care.
Jim Shannon
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his very wise comments.
A poll conducted by Christian Action Research and Education in Scotland showed that when people are presented with both sides of the argument, support for assisted dying falls dramatically from 73% to 45%. Ending a life is not something that we would ever want our children or anybody else to consider.
Moreover, medical predictions are not always accurate. I want to cite just one example. Everyone in the Chamber knows many such examples, and we could cite large numbers of them. I have a friend who has just lost the battle with cancer after 13 years. When she was diagnosed, she was told that she had six to nine months to live, but she defied all the odds. At the time, her son was 11 years old, but she saw him pass exams, learn to drive, graduate and settle down. She saw him grow from a small boy into a bright young man, and she loved life right until the very end. I wanted to tell that story because it is not unheard of, given the pioneering research that is continually being carried out, that cures to many illnesses and diseases will be found, as I have no doubt they will.
That brings me to another concern, which is the suffering that families will go through when a cure is discovered after their father, mother, son or daughter has chosen to end their life. Advances in medication and health care are taking place. For example, 50% of those with cancer will survive. We are making vast strides towards curing diseases that were once thought to be incurable.
The vast majority of UK doctors are opposed to legalising assisted suicide or assisted dying, as are the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Association for Palliative Medicine, the British Geriatrics Society, Disability Rights UK, Scope, the United Kingdom Disabled People’s Council and Not Dead Yet UK.
Let us not ignore the advances in palliative and mental healthcare. Let us not support this Bill; let us vote against this Bill today. I believe we have to do so for our people.
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
I completely understand the motives of those who have introduced the Bill. Anyone who has watched a loved one die in terrible suffering will entirely understand why they have introduced their proposals, and no one should impugn their motives. I have to say, however, that it is all too easy to open a Pandora’s box, with utterly unintended consequences that may be very different from the primary intentions of those promoting the Bill.
I want to make a few comments based on my experience as a doctor. Doctors can come under enormous pressure from relatives and from their own emotions to hasten the death of a patient whom they believe to be suffering too much. I worked in Glasgow Royal Infirmary during the early days of the marrow transplant programme. We had to give patients huge doses of sometimes very crude treatments, and when I was sitting with a young patient, there was very often a strong temptation to end their suffering. Some of them went on to survive, which is a lesson to doctors not to make judgments too hastily. I believe that anything that increases such pressures on doctors opens up an ethical trap that we do not want.
We already have laws relating to the concept of double effect. If a patient is suffering, we can give them medication whose primary aim is to alleviate their suffering, even though its effect will be to shorten their life. That is very different ethically and morally from giving a patient something that is primarily designed to kill them.
We need to understand that assisted dying can have an effect on the medical profession. Studies from the Netherlands and the United States on doctors who have performed or assisted at assisted suicides have shown that the medical professionals concerned had
“high levels of emotional discomfort, distress and feelings of overwhelming burden”.
There is also a fundamental change in the doctors’ relationship with patients. The No. 1 rule is “Do no harm”. If a patient arrives unconscious or in a coma, their family needs to know—as the patient themselves would want to know—that the doctor will do them no harm and will not come under any pressure to do so for one reason or another. I fully understand that the Bill does not cover that, but it does fundamentally change the relationship between doctors and patients, and that change cannot be undone once it has been made. We are talking about overturning 2,000 years of the Hippocratic oath.
The hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) made an absolutely wonderful and emotionally charged speech. It set out very clearly the risks for another group of patients that doctors deal with—the vulnerable. In his moving article at the weekend, the Archbishop of Canterbury spoke about the Age UK research and stated:
“It is impossible to ensure that they and other vulnerable people would not be placed under pressure to end their lives prematurely in ways that proposed safeguards cannot hope to detect.”
It was noted earlier that people feeling that they are a burden when making a decision to end their lives prematurely is only one factor, but that is one reason too many. The answer is not to make it easier to kill people; we need societal change to prevent people from feeling a burden in their elderly years.
Finally—I am aware of the time—there has been an argument about whether the Bill would make it easier for euthanasia to be introduced in this country. Doctors in the Netherlands who have experience of assisted suicide recognise that failures will occur from time to time. Those failures make up around 7% to 16% of cases, and include failure to induce coma, or patients who come out of coma before the process is finished. The Royal Dutch Medical Association recommends that a doctor be present when assisted suicide is performed in the manner proposed in this Bill, precisely so that euthanasia can be performed, if necessary, if the process fails. In practice it is impossible to distinguish between assisted dying and euthanasia. If we have one, because of the failures of process we will inevitably get the other. I do not believe that that is an improvement to our society. However well-meaning the proponents of this Bill may be, they will open a Pandora’s box that will fundamentally change who we are, how we are as a society, and how we relate to the medical profession. I believe that none of that will be to the benefit of future generations.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
I know death. I understand death because before coming here I used to run a hospice, and I firmly believe that everybody deserves a good death. That is possible, and the bigger debate that we need to have and bring back to this Chamber is about ensuring that everybody in this country has access to 24/7 palliative care and more hospices that are better funded. In reality, most people do not have a good death.
I am very supportive of this Bill, and I am also mindful that it will apply only to a very small percentage of the population. That is not just because of how specific the safeguards are, but it is from looking at 18 years of experience and data from Oregon. In Oregon, 0.3% of deaths per year are under the assisted dying legislation. The most recent data are from 2013 when 22 per 10,000 deaths were under that legislation—0.22%. In 18 years in Oregon, 1,173 prescriptions were written, and only 752 were actually enacted. This Bill will enable people to have peace of mind. We do not know—we do it only once—what our death will be like, but I would like to give people the peace of mind that if the situation becomes intolerable, they can make an informed choice about their own life.
There seem to be five main counter-arguments to the Bill. The first is about someone being given a six-month terminal diagnosis when perhaps they will live for nine or 12 months. Perhaps they will recover—that is fantastic; I want to celebrate that—but some people die after two days. The Bill is not about marching someone to a darkened room the second the paperwork is signed; it gives them the choice so that if during the deterioration of their condition towards death they choose to end their life earlier, that is their choice and they have that right.
Another argument is about disabled people. I find that quite insulting because disabled people are living full, wonderful, happy lives. Why do people want to include them in the Bill as though their lives are not fulfilled? Of course, once someone reaches a terminal position, if they want to enact the legislation that is their choice, as it is for everybody else.
On coercion, I do not doubt that perhaps there are evil relatives out there who will seek to coerce their elderly mother. However, that elderly mother will then have to persuade two doctors and a judge that this is her choice. I do not think that someone who is vulnerable enough to be coerced by their evil relatives could persuade a judge that they are taking such action from their own choice.
We then come to the argument about the thin end of the wedge. I am sorry, but we legislate for a living here. We know that if anything was to happen, the issue would have to come back to the Chamber and we would have to agree it. I do not accept at all the argument that this is the thin end of the wedge.
There is the argument that it is God’s will that we should suffer, if necessary, and that it is God’s choice how we end our lives. I have 100% respect for that view. If that is someone’s position and choice, this Bill is not for them and I do not expect them to seek to make use of its provisions. I feel, however, that I should be able to make a different choice and that others should not be able to stop me.
I feel strongly that this Chamber does not have moral superiority over those who we serve and have elected us. Eighty per cent. of the population are in favour of this Bill.
Sarah Champion
I will not. I find it patronising that we think that our opinion should carry more weight than that of the general population we serve.
Finally, I say to hon. Members: let us make this personal; let us make this about you. If you are suffering, if you have a terminal diagnosis and cannot cope with the pain or situation any longer, would you want this legislation to be in place? I certainly would.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
In my five years in this House I have found that a great deal of what we do here tests our nerves as well as our politics and faith. Some days test them far more than that, and today is one of those days. Legislating in this place is, of course, about the principle and the big picture, and that is what Second Reading is all about. We must also ask ourselves whether the practicalities of the Bill match the principle.
I mentioned faith, and it is no secret that I am a Christian. That is not something that is said often in this House, and I was not elected as a Christian Conservative in May. That is part of who I am and it guides me in what I am saying today, but it is not the whole story. Indeed, at least in part, I surprise myself with how I intend to vote today, which is against Second Reading. I say that because I am hugely sympathetic to many of the arguments that have been put forward, not least by the Bill’s promoter who I thought spoke with dignity. I have received a huge mailbag on this issue, as have many Members, and it has been a pleasure to receive genuine letters and emails from constituents, instead of click-send robotic emails.
I understand that there is not insignificant support in the medical community for this Bill, and that there is nothing compassionate about someone having to travel far from their loved ones at great cost in order to die, if that is the awful conclusion they have reached. I am aware of the published opinion polls among the public, but I use the word “published” deliberately because as Winston Churchill said:
“There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.”
There was just one opinion poll, and as we know from this year, opinion polls are not entirely always accurate.
Steve Brine
I will not because it is only fair that I crack on and give everyone a chance to speak.
Ahead of today, I read widely and I have thought about this issue deeply for a long time. I have met constituents who urged me to vote in support of the Bill, and those on the other side of the argument. Those supporting the Bill include members of Dignity in Dying in my constituency whom I met before the recess, and I could feel their sense of optimism and hope that many years of campaigning were finally coming to an end and that this is the moment that they had hoped and campaigned for—it certainly would not be the last moment during this Parliament.
If I was going to vote in support of the Bill, I would have to be 100% sure that it replaced the law we have with something better, and I genuinely do not think that that is the case. I spoke in the Back-Bench debate in March 2012 to express support for the then DPP’s guidance on applying the Suicide Act 1961, and I still think—I listened to every word from the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer)—that that strikes the right balance. The public interest factors that he set out tending in favour and against prosecution were widely consulted on, as he said, and it was a successful consultation that received strong support from this House on that day. In my opinion—and having the opportunity to express it is why we are elected as Members of Parliament—those public interest factors remain fit for purpose.
The question for me is this: should we allow a small number of high-profile cases, no matter how tragic—of course, any human being with any element of faith and compassion understands that they are tragic—to pressurise us into changing a law that I believe is working as intended?
Given that that is my view, how can we improve the current law? Does the Bill and its 13 clauses show a better way? I do not believe it does. There has been much talk of Oregon today and there will be much more. We are told by the campaign group, Dignity in Dying, that medical opinion is divided. It says to me that some 57% of doctors feel that assisted dying legislation, with up-front safeguards, would be the best way to protect terminally ill patients who want to die. But that presumably means 43% do not, if we take those figures at face value.
If a terminally ill person decides to make a declaration for an assisted death using a schedule to the Bill, they would reasonably expect to ask their doctor to be one of the two signatories they require. If the said doctor is one of the 43%, what then? Clause 5 rightly contains provision for conscientious objection, so will we see in this country what we see in other jurisdictions, which is known as “doctor shopping”?
We then have the new safeguard in the Bill, namely the High Court judge confirmation. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) about this issue being so serious. How would it work in practice? The Bill sets out a timescale for court decisions that would make robust scrutiny almost impossible. What would the judicial signatory require? Would there be a hearing with evidence presented, or would it just act as a rubber stamp? On those two points, the practicalities of the Bill do not convince me.
Let me return, in closing, to the principle of changing the law to legalise assisted suicide. Many of those who have written to me ahead of today’s debate warn that the Bill will create a slippery slope. I do not necessarily buy that argument. As the Bill’s promoter said, any amendments to the Bill would have to come back to the House and undergo parliamentary scrutiny, but come back they surely would. I note in Oregon earlier this year that there was a move to change the six months to a year. The Bill proposes six months, but I can see that being moved. Of course, all this runs up against the evidence I have heard from palliative care consultants in my constituency that, as many other Members have outlined, six months is a long, long time to determine a death.
It seems to me that we live in a world today obsessed by choice and consumerism. We want to have a career and the perfect family life. We want to shop every hour of the week. I find myself agreeing with the Bishop of Bristol, who said last month how the supporters of the Bill present it, in part, as a simple matter of individual choice with
“choice being the great God of a consumerised society.”
I think he hits the nail on the head. I believe that choice creates the burden; it does not set you free. We must significantly up our game in respect of how we provide end-of-life care, rather than handing out the right in law to take a life away.
Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)
I thank the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) for giving us the opportunity to debate this most profound of issues, one that concerns so many people across our country, whichever side of the debate they may be on. I also thank the right hon. Members for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) and for North Somerset (Dr Fox) for expressing the importance of us demonstrating mutual respect in this debate, and for acknowledging the profound importance of this for people on both sides. We should be able to debate it in a decent way that fully respects that.
I have changed my mind on this issue. I used to oppose change, but I am now very clear in my mind that reform is necessary. We are all shaped by the conversations we have and by our own personal experiences, sometimes within our own families. Talking to people who are terminally ill has forced me to think about the principles at stake and led me to change my mind. I came to this view through one man in particular, Douglas Harding, who, for six years, has lived with terminal cancer, and is now very close to the end. When I hear him argue the case to me about his right to decide when to end his life as he faces the closing stages of a terminal illness, I find it impossible to reject that right. When I ask myself what I would want in those circumstances—whether I would want that right—I am very clear in my mind that I would. I do not know whether I would exercise it, but I would absolutely want it for myself. How can I then deny it to others?
I speak as a former Care Minister and I was driven in that job by an absolute determination to improve end-of-life care and to ensure people are treated with absolute dignity in the final stages of their life. One of the issues I had to deal with was the Liverpool Care Pathway and the abuses that sometimes took place under that name. I had many conversations with the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and we found ourselves on the same side of the argument. We both had deep concerns about some of the things that had happened under the Liverpool Care Pathway and, as a result of the review that I called, the Liverpool Care Pathway is no longer used. The approach taken is that it is the individual’s own priorities that are paramount. Are we really saying that that principle, which applies to issues such as resuscitation where one wants to die, suddenly does not apply when we get to the most profound of questions? At that point, the individual has no right and is left at the mercy of the state’s decision. As the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) said, this is a matter of personal freedom. For me, that is very clear.
Norman Lamb
I would prefer to make my case, because I want to ensure that others can make their case, too.
Questions have been raised about whether implementing this proposed legislation would have a negative impact on palliative care. For goodness’ sake, it is up to this House and the Governments we elect to ensure that there is decent palliative care in our country. It is up to us to make that decision. It is a dishonest argument to suggest that it would undermine palliative care. In the United States, Oregon is one of the best States for access to specialist palliative care. It is totally consistent with the principle I expressed earlier that in those last stages of life it is the individual’s priorities and wishes that should be paramount.
I just want to say a word about the current law, which puts families in the most invidious position. I applaud the former Director of Public Prosecutions for the guidelines that advanced the position very considerably. However, if someone acts out of absolute compassion, they are still left with their home being declared a crime scene and with a police investigation. As the guidelines point out, the person is referred to as a “suspect”. Someone who has acted out of compassion for a loved one is treated as a suspect, waiting perhaps months to know their fate—whether they will be prosecuted—while they are experiencing bereavement. That is surely an intolerable position. We then have the grotesque situation where those people who have money are able to go to Dignitas, an alien clinic in another country. Someone who is dying is expected to travel to another country to exercise their right. Those who do not have money are left with the invidious choice of struggling on regardless, perhaps in the face of impossible pain, or committing suicide in very difficult circumstances. I find that absolutely intolerable.
J.S. Mill said:
“The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”
We should respect that sovereignty and pass the Bill.
Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)
In 1933, just hours before the death of King George V, Lord Dawson, the king’s doctor, issued his famous bulletin from Buckingham Palace. He said that the king’s life was drawing peacefully to a close. Dawson had good cause to know that, because he had just administered a lethal dose of morphine and cocaine to the king, in an action that remains controversial to this day. He undoubtedly brought the king’s life to a speedier close, yet, despite that act, just a short time afterwards, Dawson spoke against a Bill introduced to enable euthanasia, drawing the clear distinction between efforts that doctors may make right at the end of somebody’s life to ensure they have what has been described by some hon. Members as a good death and to ease suffering, and actions intended to bring someone’s life to an end, even though at their behest, that amount not to assisted dying, as someone has said, but to assisted suicide. That is surely an important distinction.
Some hon. Members, including the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), have couched their defence of the Bill in the right to choose. My hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) also talked about the right to choose. Others have talked about the right to die. The language of rights is one we should be careful about using in this space. If there is a right to die, why is it constrained by a six-month time period? If there is a right to die, why is it constrained simply by the fact of having a terminal illness? We accept in this country that people have the right to commit suicide, in the sense that it is no longer a criminal offence, but the law has always been clear that should somebody assist that, particularly a medical professional, a line has been crossed.
We have focused a lot on the unintended consequences of the Bill, which are indeed highly problematic. Hon. Members on all sides are concerned about the possibility of coercion. We already know there is concern about how elderly people can be treated, and there is a clear danger that vulnerable people might be drawn into having the Bill applied to them. That concerns everybody. However, I want to raise the question about the intended consequences of the Bill. Is it the wish of the House that there be more assisted suicides or fewer? Do we think that assisted suicide, or suicide itself, is ever a good thing? Several distressing cases have been adduced. It is undoubtedly true that people might suffer and that, as the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) said, some people might therefore be forced to go to another clinic—a very few people, as a matter of fact. It cannot be a sufficient justification for changing the law, however, simply to say that people are suffering. The House cannot expect to legislate away all suffering. We have to be absolutely sure that no more harm will be created by the legislation we pass. If we enable more people to take their own lives—something that society and the law has judged should be a bad thing—will we have done a good thing? Is that a good outcome for the Bill? In seeking to alleviate suffering—a noble ambition—we will potentially enable more lives to be taken, and that surely cannot be a good thing.
I have the gravest concerns about the Bill. I am concerned not just that people might be coerced into taking their own lives, with someone else’s assistance, but that any more lives will be lost at all. The law has always regarded it as wrong to assist in someone’s suicide because, in the end, we think that suicide is wrong, even if we think that it should not be a criminal offence. That is why we should take the very greatest care before taking this fundamentally different step.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
“I will make sure your loved one does not suffer.” I think that many of us have had that assurance from doctors, and what they usually mean is that they are going to operate the principle of double effect commended by two Government Members. It means they will give the patient a lethal dose, usually of morphine, that will kill them, but they play a mind game of self-deception, pretending that the lethal dose is to relieve pain. It is not; it is to kill the patient. It was practised on a king some time ago, and it is widely practised and defended throughout the world, including in many Catholic countries. I would suggest that that is far more dangerous than the Bill. People are being killed without their permission and without rules or regulation.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
I sat next to my husband as he was dying of cancer and in extreme pain. Yes, he was given a large dose of morphine—because it was impossible to control his pain without it. I absolutely object to the hon. Gentleman’s assertion that every time a doctor helps a patient with extreme pain, they are in fact just shuffling them off a bit quicker. I think he needs to moderate his remarks.
Paul Flynn
I will do nothing of the sort. I think it is an act of deception by doctors and the Church. They are allowing one doctor to make the decision and administer the lethal dose without any of the protections in the Bill. I have been to Oregon and discussed their law with them, and I believe we should follow their experience carefully. All the fears expressed in the House were expressed in Oregon in 1994. They had a referendum. We could follow their example and ask the public by attaching another question to the EU referendum question. In Oregon, the result was 51% to 49% in favour, but after experience of the Act—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. The hon. Gentleman is entitled to be heard.
Paul Flynn
After experience of the Act, it went from that narrow majority to an overwhelming majority, and so it has remained since 1997.
We need to listen to our constituents. I want to read a letter sent to me by a constituent who asked me to read it to the House. I am going to find it difficult to read, but it is an example of the result of our lack of boldness in bringing in a Bill such as the one in Oregon. This gentleman writes:
“I have had to watch my dear wife, very old, very much in pain, very weak and desperately wanting peace, but she continued to suffer because I couldn’t do the one thing she really wanted. I was helpless to assist her to die. Her words were, ‘I don’t want to leave you my love, but I’m very tired and I want to go now. I know you understand. Please help me to die.’ Every day of her life she said prayers for other people, but when she pleaded, ‘Please God, take me now’; for once in that long life, she prayed for herself, but there was no one to answer.
Such a simple humanitarian act is just not permitted, so I watched my dear wife starve herself to death for three weeks—the only way she could help herself to die. I watched a lovely lady struggle without food until she grew so weak that she was unable to lift her arms, to even squeeze my fingers. She had strangers to change her, but she grew to the state where the shame and the humiliation were no longer an embarrassment. But she remembered the humiliation of those last weeks.
I held her close in the days when I could no longer understand her mumbled words. I could only reply, hoping she would hear when I said, ‘I love you darling. I understand.’ I hope she knew that I was there with her. I held her when her eyes no longer opened, when she could no longer see. I knew she could hear my words when a tear dropped from the corner of her eye. I held her until she had no touch, no sight, possibly no hearing, but I still said, ‘I know darling, I love you. I understand.’ I watched her beautiful face become a skeleton. I held her when this poor love finally died. I hope she knew that I was there, but I doubt it. And now for the rest of my life, I will remember the poor wracked body and the once so beautiful face, which became a hollow mask.”
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
The hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) has read us a very moving letter, and I think the whole tone of the debate does the House credit. This is an extraordinarily difficult issue, and we are all going to face this awful journey—I use “awful” in the old-fashioned sense of the word. We are frightened of dying, although perhaps for religious people it is not so much of death but of dying, and we have to respect each other’s opinions.
When my good friend Father Philip Bailey of Holy Rood Catholic church was dying—he had kidney failure—he was sent to Scunthorpe hospital, which offered him very painful and very intrusive treatment to try to enable him to live a few weeks or days longer. He, a Catholic priest, chose not to take it. I was with my best friend Piers Merchant, a former Member, when he was dying of cancer. His body was filled with morphine, which probably killed him in the end. It was not designed to kill him, however, but to relieve his suffering. My friend Father Philip Bailey took that choice as well.
My view is that we do not need an assisted suicide or an assisted dying Bill; we need a movement for natural dying. We have to come to terms with death as a society and recognise that it is a journey we are all going to take. We have to promote the hospice movement and palliative care, put much more resources into them and be honest with people that increasingly intrusive, difficult, painful operations and medications may not be the way. In that sense, I think we can resolve this issue and emerge with credit from what I regard as a moral maze.
I have one important issue to mention. I suppose people would expect me to do so, but it really has to be underlined. As we embark on the Bill and reflect on what it will mean if it becomes an Act, many of us feel that history will repeat itself. For all the controls that we are told will be there—I am not sure that the High Court’s consideration on paper for a couple of weeks or a couple of doctors in a dying clinic signing for it are much of a control, particularly when most doctors are opposed to it—more and more people will take this route, and as they become ill this general question will increasingly be put to them, “Do you want to end your life now? It is the law; you have the right to do it.” That contrasts with what happens now, where the whole emphasis is on trying to let people die naturally.
What sort of society do we want to create? Do we want to create one in which we solve our problems by killing? I admit that my religious belief informs my view, and people could ask what right I have to impose my religious beliefs—seen in opposition to abortion or capital punishment or to war or to assisted dying or death—on them. I would at least ask them this question: “What sort of society do we want to create when we feel that we can solve problems by hastening death rather than promoting life?” What sort of society are we creating if we say that we value people who are healthy, fit, beautiful and young more than we value people who are poor, old, crippled, ill and dying? We feel that in those people there is an eternal soul waiting there—a beautiful soul that needs to be nurtured. Even if people do not share this religious belief, surely they can come to the conclusion—even as humanists with a humane point of view—that we must promote a society that respects the old, the ill and the dying and gives them every chance of life.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
You have asked us to be brief, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I shall try to do so out of courtesy to my colleagues.
I oppose this Bill on two grounds. The first is that it asks us to cross a line in our attitude to life, which I believe as a decent society we should not cross. At the moment, our law strives to protect life. We regard murder as one of the worst crimes; we seek to deter people from suicide; we do not execute criminals. But if we cross the line, deciding that some lives are less valuable than others, we shall be opening ourselves up to a process that I think we would deeply regret.
Those who have said that this would require more legislation are, I believe, quite wrong. Our law works on case law and precedent, and it would undoubtedly be the case that people would go to court for equal treatment, to put their own cases—and gradually and insidiously the law would be extended. People need to look at what has happened in other jurisdictions—not just in Oregon, but in the Netherlands where assisted suicides have gone up by 60% over five years and where the law has been extended to include in the definition of “unbearable suffering” not only physical but mental suffering. It covers dementia and psychiatric conditions. In Belgium, the law covers children who cannot give consent. That is my first reason for opposing the Bill.
My second reason is that I think the Bill is badly drafted. My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) asks us to allow those with six months or less left to live the option of assisted suicide. As has been made clear by many doctors, however, it is impossible to predict the length of time that someone will live. He says that lawyers decide this on the balance of probabilities. In criminal cases, though, the decision has to be beyond all reasonable doubt. What he offers in this Bill is a lower standard of proof for those who require assisted suicide than we allow to those charged with a criminal offence.
The Bill provides that people must have a settled intention. I ask how long does it have to be “settled” for? People with serious illnesses often go through periods of depression. Palliative care specialists know that people often request to die, but when their fears are addressed and their process towards death is discussed with them, it often changes their minds. It also has to be voluntary, but there is no safeguard against the insidious pressures that can be put on people to want to end their lives—fear of being a burden on their friends and family, for example. No two doctors can know what goes on beyond closed doors. We no longer have the family GPs who knew people and their families from birth. Doctors will simply not be able to tell. And the High Court having just 14 days is not sufficient to investigate the case properly.
Robert Flello
My hon. Friend will be aware that in Oregon, which is the example most cited, almost a quarter of all cases are seen by just three doctors—and they do not know anything about them.
Helen Jones
My hon. Friend is exactly right. Most of the lethal prescriptions in Oregon are written by a very small minority of participating doctors—something that we would want to investigate very closely if the same applied to prescribing in this country.
This Bill is not just about individual autonomy; it is asking us to take a decision that will have a profound effect on society.
Helen Jones
If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I want to wind up.
This Bill is not simply about those who have a terminal illness and are expected to die within six months, because it will inevitably be extended. It is a Bill that will in future lead to consequences for this society that in my view no civilised society should contemplate. For that reason I will vote against it.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
So many of us bring deeply personal perspectives to this debate. We also bring the voices of our constituents, and I thank everyone who has written in telling of their experiences both for and against.
I would like to add a clinical perspective. There are two conflicting principles here. There is the fundamental principle that doctors should do no harm—and this House must think very carefully before we remove that cornerstone of ethical medical practice—but that comes up against another very important principle: the principle of self-determination about which so many Members have spoken very powerfully. If we are to apply that principle, however, I ask where it will take us. If we are to argue that Diane Pretty, for example, had the right at a time of her choosing to end her life because of intolerable suffering—a quick death, without pain, at home, surrounded by her family—why should we deny that to somebody with mental capacity with locked-in syndrome such as Tony Nicklinson, or indeed a young man who has a high spinal injury?
Also, if we are to apply that principle further, what is intolerable suffering? Intolerable suffering is what is intolerable to us. We have seen that definition extend in Switzerland. Indeed, a British citizen—a retired nurse— took her life in Switzerland last year because she was afraid of getting old. We have seen the definition applied to people with depression, and in other countries to children. That starts to bleed into questions about capacity.
As a clinician, I have had the privilege to sit with many people at the end of their lives, and often people contemplate taking their life. People have asked me to help them do so. They do that because of fear or a deep depression, or sometimes a profound sense that they are a burden on their families. With time, I have seen many people come through that to find real meaning in their lives. We need to think very carefully before we take that away. Of course people say to me, “Who are you to say whether or not they should take that journey?”—or even whether they would come through that period, because some of course do not—but I say to the House that we have to consider the harms as well as the benefits.
We have to consider the impact on wider society, too. I believe it is inevitable that we would slide towards the Swiss position, and we must consider what message it would send to people if we say that it is all right in society to end one’s life from fear of growing old. In Switzerland there is a high preponderance of people who live alone, who have been divorced, and who are women, and we have to think about why they have come to that position. What does it say if we have an attitudinal shift in our society, as I believe is inevitable, which changes the way we feel about the value of life? We have to consider not just the rights of the individual to self-determination, but the inevitable wider effects on society, and the pressure people will inevitably feel at the end of their life.
I hope that Members will look at the report on end-of-life care by the Health Committee, which I was privileged to Chair, and think again about how we can refocus on what the duties of a doctor should be. A doctor’s duties should be to improve the quality at the end of life, not shorten it.
Let us look at how the House can work together to improve access to high-quality specialist palliative care, and how we can address variations in that access, and put the funding of our hospices on a long-term sustainable footing. I would like us to provide free social care at the end of life, so that more people can be at home surrounded by their loved ones in a place of their choosing if that is what they want.
I would also like us to bring forward discussions about dying, because there are many ways in which people can express their preferences at the end of life. Let us bring forward better care planning, bring forward those conversations, and bring forward access to specialist care, but please let us also consider the wider consequences and vote against this Bill.
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
I do not think anyone doubts the views that have made all of us give up a Friday to be here; everyone is here because they are concerned about the suffering of others and we want to alleviate it. We just do not agree about how we should go about it.
I believe that this is not just a tidying up of a small legal anomaly. It is, rather, a crossing of a Rubicon, as was mentioned earlier. It is changing and legalising the killing of one person by another, regardless of the reasons why we would want to carry that out.
The Bill’s weaknesses have been mentioned, such as the problem of finding general practitioners who would write a report. In actual fact, quite a lot would be willing to do that, but not so many would be willing to be involved in the act of assisted suicide. Where would the independent expert be found? Some 96% of palliative care specialists are utterly against this Bill. They object to the name of it; they consider what they do is assisted dying, and what this is is assisted suicide.
I do not want to talk about the small print, however. That will be explored over the day. My objection is basically in principle. Many Members will be aware of my interest; as a breast cancer surgeon for 30 years, I have been involved in the journey to death of many patients, but as a doctor I have never considered that death was a good treatment for anything, no matter what was wrong with anyone.
People would choose such an option for lots of reasons: the fear of being a burden, the fear of dying, and most of all the fear of suffering. The responsibility to deal with that lies with us. Who is making them feel that they are a burden—is it their family or their friends, or is it society? Who is letting them down in their palliative care? It is us. As the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) mentioned, the services are patchy in some areas. Not everyone has access to palliative care, but I started out in 1982 when women did not know when they went into theatre that they had breast cancer because we did not have the ability to diagnose it. I worked for an eminent professor in Glasgow, and we lived in the ward in those days, and I watched patients come back from theatre having had the lump removed. If it was cancer their breast was removed, and that was it—no choice. They found out they had cancer by groping themselves on the trolley, because if they had a lot of bandages and a drip, that meant they had lost their breast and they had cancer.
Watching people die of cancer was awful at that time. They were cachectic, they were in pain, and we had very limited hospice and very little palliative care support in the hospital. But 30 years later that has changed. Whereas 40% of patients would live 10 years then, now 80% do so. Our patients know exactly what operation they are going in for. They have hours of discussion with us, and until a few years ago I would have been involved in their journey if that cancer came back, in their palliation and in their terminal care.
That journey can lead to a beautiful death. The event that had the biggest impact on me as a junior doctor was the death of a lady whom I had looked after for many months. When I came on to the ward that night, the nurses said, “I think Lizzie’s going.” She was curled up in her bed, obviously quite upset, and when I asked her what was wrong, she said she was frightened and she did not know what she had to do. I said, “You don’t have to do anything. You just have to relax. You just have to let go.” We had the family in. West of Scotland male is not good on emotion or openness, so I took her son in and I spoke to her again about what was happening to the point where he could tell her that he loved her and how much he was going to miss her. I went for my tea, and when I came back she was sitting up holding court with the whole lot of them. I thought, “Oh no, we’ve called it wrong”, but she was gone in an hour, and it was beautiful. That made me commit to working with cancer patients. If I had not made it as a surgeon—which, as a woman at that time, I was told flatly that I would not—I would have gone into palliative care.
I have seen change in the journey for patients. We heard the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) describe the last two weeks of the life of her friend, and that is something that we see repeatedly—that the patient is ahead of the family. We are always utterly open with patients. We no longer have a situation in which a family member says, “Don’t tell my mum. Tell me, but don’t tell her.” The patient will always know, because the fear is that when they see their death coming, they will know that everyone has lied to them and they will be on their own.
My job was not just to look after the patient; it was to look after the whole family. All these illnesses are diseases of the whole family, and we want the family to be left with the knowledge that they did everything they could and were able to express their love at the end of their loved one’s life. Things have changed for cancer patients. I have not had a cancer patient ask me for a quick way out, an escape, for decades. We need to ensure that palliative care is offered to people with degenerative illnesses, of which we are all afraid.
When the public support this measure, they are not actually thinking about the last six months of a terminal illness; they are thinking about Alzheimer’s, about motor neurone disease and about Parkinson’s, none of which the Bill would address. It is therefore inevitable that this would migrate. As the hon. Member for Totnes said, we should support palliative care and we must ensure that it is available to people who are dying, regardless of their illness. We need to change our tone towards the people who live in our society, so that old and vulnerable people no longer feel that they should get out of the way.
All our horizons will narrow as we get older. Someone who was hill walking when they were 20 might not manage to do so when they are 80. I have seen patients who are grateful to be at home being wheeled out on to the patio in the sun and having a good blether with their son who has come home from London. They consider that a good day. We might consider it horrific, looking at it in advance, but when we get there we will have changed. We should support letting people live every day of their life until the end, and make sure that, as legislators, we provide the means for them to live and die with dignity and comfort. We should not say, “When you can’t thole it, take the black capsule.” We should vote for life and dignity, not for death.
Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)
I should like to inform the House that I am the president of the Lincolnshire branch of the Motor Neurone Disease Association. I commend the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) for her moving speech, and all those who have spoken this morning. I also commend the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) for choosing an emotive issue for his private Member’s Bill. It is no small achievement to have populated the House so well on a Friday, but my praise for him stops there.
Many of us fear that the Bill will induce uncertainty and suspicion and have the potential to fracture the doctor-patient relationship at the most critical time, when patients with the most severe illnesses are at their most vulnerable and in desperate need of sympathetic encouragement. Further, assisted dying would devalue any extra development or funding for advances in palliative care, reducing the quality of care that those wishing to receive it could and should receive at the end of their life.
Rev. Ian Silk of St George’s church in Swallowbeck in my constituency is a good friend of the Bishop of Carlisle, who is leading on this issue in the other House. The bishop believes that a change in the law would come at the cost of placing many thousands of vulnerable people at risk, and he has stated:
“Terminally ill people deserve to be surrounded with love, compassion and care, not called to make a choice between dying prematurely and being a burden. The only effective safeguard against this pressure is to keep the law as it is.”
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I have one comment to make to my hon. Friend. If there is just one mistake, and one person dies who should not have done, this House will have failed in its duty.
Karl MᶜCartney
I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for that intervention.
Many hon. Members consider the Bill to be misguided and dangerous. Baroness Campbell has observed that for the Bill
“to pass into law would be a triumph of despair over hope. It says, don’t try to make things better—that’s just too difficult and, anyway, would be futile. It is far better to die now. It will be better for you, your family and society. You are defined by your diagnosis, which is also your death warrant. Society doesn’t want you around any more.”
Like the good baroness, I do not want to live in that kind of society, and I hope that the majority of Members do not want to do so either.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
I have not put my name down to speak, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I did not stand up to catch your eye. I have been listening to the debate carefully, however.
Madam Deputy Speaker
If the hon. Gentleman would care to wait, that is all right with the Chair.
John Woodcock
I am delighted to be called. This is the first time in my parliamentary career that I have been genuinely undecided when coming into the Chamber and I therefore wanted to listen to the entire debate. I have listened to every contribution so far, and I am still undecided.
I have been affected by the views of my constituents on both sides of the argument, and by the people who have spoken today. I have been particularly privileged to spend time with Clare Coulston, who is listening to the debate today. Her husband Paul died of motor neurone disease just two weeks ago, and she herself is in remission from a serious cancer and has two young children. She believes passionately that this Bill should pass, and has stated her views with wonderful eloquence, given the grief that she is suffering now. It would be easy for me to say that I of course agree with her, because she is my friend, but I am still utterly torn and still struggling. Thank you for calling me to speak, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I will let others who have prepared a speech take the Floor now.
Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)
I come to this debate as a nurse with more than 20 years’ experience in the NHS, most of which time was spent working in cancer care. I have looked after many patients with metastatic disease and many who needed end-of-life care. As a result, it has been my humble privilege to share the last few days, hours and minutes of many people’s lives and, on numerous occasions, I have held the hand of someone as they have breathed their last.
Having experienced dying at first hand, I can say that death can be one of the most rewarding parts of life. It does not have to be as painful or distressing as the supporters of the Bill have described. The reason behind my positive experience of death is the availability of good palliative care, which tackles symptoms such as pain and enables people to have a good quality of life right up to the end. In the field of cancer care, we are fortunate to have access to some of the best palliative care in the world. However, many patients living with other illnesses are not so fortunate. Patients with cardiac failure, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s—to name but a few—often have little or no access to palliative medicine, but instead of tackling the lack of palliative care, the Bill promotes assisted dying as a solution. Death today has become medicalised, and it is seen as a failure or as something to be feared instead of as a normal part of life. The reality is that a natural death can be a moving and peaceful experience for all involved.
Therefore, not only do I disagree with the rationale behind this Bill, but I have severe concerns about the lack of safeguards it contains. The first relates to its requirement to give someone a diagnosis of less than six months to live. It is almost impossible accurately to predict a person’s prognosis in months. In my experience, that is not something a consultant would readily do, as someone’s prognosis can vary greatly according to their disease, general health and response to treatment. This part of the Bill gives the false impression that having a terminal illness means life is over—nothing could be further from the truth.
If assisted dying becomes law, it will remove the incentive for science and medicine to find treatments for illnesses. Metastatic prostate cancer was a terminal illness 10 years ago but is now a chronic disease, whereby men, although not curable, are treatable and often die of other causes long before their prostate cancer ever becomes a problem. The same is true of metastatic breast cancer, with many women now able to live long and healthy lives even though they cannot be cured. HIV used to be a death sentence, but thanks to advances in medicine it is now a chronic illness that people live with, rather than die of. Would these treatments have been discovered if assisted dying had been legalised 10 or 20 years ago?
My third concern is that with so many doctors against legalising assisted dying—the Royal College of Surgeons, the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Physicians and the Association for Palliative Medicine are almost unanimous in their opposition—who will be left to assess the patients who wish to discuss assisted dying? The Bill requires both the attending doctor and the independent doctor to advise a patient on diagnosis, prognosis and treatment alternatives to assisted dying before giving consent. Most general doctors, however, would struggle to provide such specialist information. Are we certain that if we change the law, this will be carried out properly?
My final concern relates to the experience of places where assisted dying is already law. If the death rate in Oregon, where assisted dying is legal, were transposed to this country, 1,500 deaths a year would occur here from assisted dying. In Oregon, patients with lung cancer and prostate cancer are already being denied treatment on their state health insurance plan and are instead being offered assisted dying, as we have heard today. Is that what we want for patients in this country? Do we want them to be denied cancer treatment but offered assisted dying as an alternative?
Before we change the law to legalise assisted dying, we need to see serious evidence to prove, first, that the current law is not fit for purpose and, secondly, that what is being proposed would be better. On neither account has any convincing evidence been presented. Our current law is not perfect, but it does what it is designed to do: it holds penalties in reserve to deter malicious assistance, while allowing discretion not to prosecute, where appropriate. What is needed is not a change in the law, but better access to palliative care for all.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
I am unpersuaded by the promoter of the Bill. I agonise over this issue, because death and the manner of our death should trouble us all. I do not entirely trust my own instincts on this, so I took the trouble of going to my local hospice, Queenscourt hospice, to hear from staff there what their advice was on this Bill. After all, they see death on a regular basis—daily, hourly, weekly. They oppose this Bill strongly, emphatically and definitely, and endorse the stance I shall be taking.
The thing we must recognise is that we all have a terminal disease called life. None of us get out of here alive, and some of us are nearer the door than others. It is hard to imagine how we would feel if the exact timing or manner of our death became more clear. We must admit that there are, perhaps rarely, bad deaths and troubling deaths, although, as anyone in medical practice will tell us, they are decreasing and are far less in evidence than they used to be. But the weakness of the Bill is that it provides no real solutions to the issues that concern most people and it creates a raft of other problems we do not currently have.
It is a misnomer to refer to the Bill as proposing assisted dying. Dying is legally assisted in a range of ways every day—physically, emotionally and spiritually, and specifically by the hospice movement. The Bill is about assisted suicide. My intervention on the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) was not trivial, because the language is crucial here. If we are to understand the moral facts and look reality in the face, we have to call things by their proper name. I am reminded of the Americans in Vietnam referring to dead civilians as “collateral damage”. We are talking about assisted suicide, and there is no essential right for people to demand of the state that it assists them with their suicide. In fact, it is the policy of Governments to reduce the number of suicides, and normally it is our moral duty to discourage suicide.
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that anyone who has any knowledge of suicide sees it as a desperate and tragic act, committed by somebody in extreme emotional distress? It is usually committed alone, leaving families and loved ones devastated. The desire of a dying person for a peaceful death is so different from what I have just described, and anyone who has any knowledge of suicide would share that view. I believe the hon. Gentleman’s argument to be null and void on that point about suicide.
John Pugh
The default position is to discourage people from committing suicide, because suicide is most frequently the action of desperate people who are not getting the help they require. I believe that is acknowledged by the sponsors of the Bill, because they are suggesting that assisted suicide should take place only in special, carefully defined circumstances. Their Bill would put in place a series of provisions, which we have all read, to explain how we can be sure that these conditions actually apply. They are talking about this being a relatively limited exception and it is seemingly tightly drawn.
Let me make some huge, bold assumptions that I would not naturally make. Let me assume that these provisions, although not so far fully defined, would work perfectly, without abuse or uncertainty, and that this Bill is all that its sponsors want or are contriving. Therefore, this will not be like what happens in Switzerland, Belgium or Holland, and people will still have to go to Switzerland if they feel that their life is intolerable, unless they are likely to die anyway within six months. People may also still die undignified and unfortunate deaths, regardless of their prior wishes, if they cannot display current mental capacity. Those would be the consequences of the Bill. Paradoxically, the more likely it is that someone’s end would be undignified, the less likely it is that they will be judged to have the capacity to comply with the legislation. In reality, what this Bill permits is for a strictly limited number of people to have their suicides assisted, regardless of whether their anticipated end is painless or pain-free, dignified or not. That is what the proposals actually amount to.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman also recognise that except for in its exclusion, the Bill does not contain any recognition of the patient’s family? Therefore, this Bill would do exactly what we are seeking not to do: it would force the individual to be on their own and the family to be excluded.
John Pugh
It is fair to say that regardless of what people may expect of this Bill—we saw some mistakes in the contribution made by the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer)—what it will do is not what most of the supporters of the Bill expect it to do. What it will do is generate certain very obvious risks, which have been well highlighted by other Members and so I will not go over them again. The risks are simply that the elderly and infirm will be pressured, doctors’ motives will be questioned or confused, palliative care will be progressed less and suicide will be seen as a solution more, and life will be treated more casually—more as a disposable commodity. The social consequences are, to say the least, incalculable; we cannot be certain about them. But even if there is just one poor old soul—and, strangely enough, it is usually the old who die—who, under pressure, seeks a quick dispatch, it does matter. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West could not rule out that possibility, and clearly recognised that that could be a consequence.
In conclusion, this week started for most of us with the haunting picture of a single child drowned on a beach. It was just one life and it affected the whole country. The consequence that can be drawn is that, as a civilisation, we cannot be casual about life without becoming a different sort of civilisation.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. Before I call the next speaker, let me say that it will be obvious to the House that there are well over 50 Members who still wish to speak. We have had some heavyweight speeches. I am sure that the whole House appreciates that sometimes it takes some time to make a complicated and difficult argument, but I challenge Members of the House this afternoon to try to test their powers of rhetoric and see whether they can make their arguments in two or three minutes. I can assure individual Members that anyone who manages to make their arguments in two or three minutes rather than five minutes will be considered a much better orator for it. I know that we will have an excellent example from the next person to speak. I call Sir David Amess.
Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
It has been a privilege to listen to so many fine speeches this afternoon. Undoubtedly, this is the House at its best. As far as we are concerned, deciding whether to legalise someone assisting another person to take their life is the most profound issue that we could debate.
I congratulate the Bill’s promoter, the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris), on his good fortune. In 2000, I had a similar success and the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Bill is now an Act of Parliament. I empathise with him on the difficult course that he is following. None the less, I must say that as a long serving Member, I have heard all these arguments before, because we have debated the issue very many times. Indeed, in 1950, the Lord Chancellor in the other place made the two-minute speech that I am about to make now.
At the heart of all this is the concept of a good death. Colleagues who have been present when someone has died have told us how they feel about a good death. For my part, I say that a good death is dying peacefully.
The proposer of the Bill is making three points. The first one is about choice. We all have the choice over whether to commit suicide. Sadly, in the time that I have been here, a handful of colleagues have committed suicide. I wish that we could have done something to dissuade them from that action. I am against legalising another person in assisting someone to take their own life.
The second point is about compassion. I so agreed with the comments on compassion and palliative care made by my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) and the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford). All Members have been pressurised by hospices in their own area, and I believe that the House should concentrate on the delivery of good quality palliative care.
The final point concerns safeguards. I am not persuaded by the arguments of the experiences in Switzerland and in the state of Oregon. I remember only too well when, in 2000, the House heard about Harold Shipman who had murdered 15 of his patients, never mind how many more. I am not at all persuaded by this Bill when I think about the bureaucracy that will be involved.
We applaud the medical profession whose very work is to help people to live. We all came into politics to help improve people’s lives. I, along with all colleagues, want to assist people to live, so I urge the House to reject this Bill.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
Madam Deputy Speaker, I have dispatched three quarters of my speech, and will try to keep to your time requirements. First, let me pick up on something that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) said. He did not allow interventions, which was a shame because we could have teased this matter out. The cases he cited would not be covered by this Bill. The people would therefore still be going to Dignitas, and would still come across the desk of the DPP for decisions on whether to prosecute. Secondly, in the Oregon example, the drugs are issued to the people wishing to take them, but it is amateurs who are around when they are administered. I would love to have had a proper debate with him about this, but, sadly, time is against us.
Before I get into the detail of the arguments, it is important to highlight exactly what we are talking about with assisted suicide. Members can call it assisted death if they wish, but we should be specific. Not surprisingly, more than half the people polled think that assisted suicide involves no pain or discomfort. Well, assisted suicide can take two forms. The first, which this Bill says it advocates, is as follows. The person is given a powerful medication to stop them from being sick. That is because the barbiturates that are used to kill them are a powerful emetic. The urge to throw up is strong and can be distressing and uncomfortable. The barbiturates are then dissolved in a tumbler full of water and have to be drunk. It takes between one minute and 38 minutes until the person falls into a coma. In around 7% of cases, the person suffers from vomiting or spasms. In one in every 10 cases there can be problems with administering the barbiturates. In Oregon, it takes, on average, 25 minutes for the person to die. But the longest period before someone died was four days. In addition, in about 1% of cases, the person has woken up.
In the Netherlands, where an injection is administered to end life, it normally takes the form of thiopental or similar to put the patient to sleep followed by pancuronium, which is used to kill the person. Most terrifyingly of all, the person at this point is completely paralysed so cannot communicate if they are still awake or in distress. They then suffocate to death. How can either of those be described as a dignified death? That is not putting someone to sleep or easing their passing. It is wrong to say that it involves no pain or discomfort and it is not necessarily quick—it is up to an hour on average before the person dies.
I know that the people who are promoting this Bill are motivated by the desire to alleviate suffering and by compassion, and we have heard some very powerful speeches on both sides of the argument today. Of course we are all moved and saddened by what we hear and want to act with compassion, but that compassion is misguided if we think that by prematurely ending someone’s life, we are alleviating suffering. There are ways to alleviate physical, mental and emotional suffering and they are done extremely well in this country. We hear those in favour of helping someone to commit suicide say that they do not want themselves or their loved ones to die in pain, but that fear should galvanise us to ensure that there is good quality palliative care not just from hospices but from across the whole health and social care system. That does not exist at the moment, and the report in 2011 highlighted that.
What does the law say about suicide? The 1961 Suicide Act as amended said that it was no longer a crime to commit suicide, and that was for a very good reason. It is not because society now thinks that everyone should have the right to commit suicide, but because society rightly thinks that someone who has tried to commit suicide needs help and support, not criminal punishment. But the Act quickly goes on to make the point that if someone helps another to take their life, then that is tantamount to murder, punishable by sentence of up to 14 years. There is a very important caveat. As the law wants to ensure that people are kept safe, it imposes that threat of severe punishment, but at the same time it wants to be merciful, which is why the DPP will decide whether a case goes to court. That is an important point.
Let me conclude with a letter from Jane, one of my constituents. Her husband, Richard, was diagnosed with cancer in 2012. On 11 September 2013—two years ago today—he passed away. She said:
“I was able to care for him and the last few weeks we had together helped us to come to terms a little with the inevitable…At one stage because I was caring for him seven days a week, Richard began to feel he was a burden to everyone to which I assured him he was not a burden. I can understand totally where he was coming from. I think changing the law would place pressure on vulnerable people. Those who are elderly, disabled, sick or depressed could feel an obligation to agree to end their lives for fear of being a burden on others. From the bottom of my heart, Mr Flello, I would ask that you could be there…to oppose this piece of legislation.”
That is one constituent of mine. I know that others have written to me, asking me to support the Bill, but for Jane’s case, we cannot let it go through.
Ben Howlett (Bath) (Con)
I must admit, Madam Deputy Speaker, that this will be a test of my oratory skills, as I have changed my speech three or four times based on some of the speeches that have been made and it is now unrecognisable. I admit that I came into the House thinking that I would support the Bill, but listening to the speeches made by other Members, particularly the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) and my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), has completely changed my mind. I must say to those constituents who have got in touch with me on this issue over the past few weeks that listening to the arguments in this place has lain heavily on my shoulders.
It is clear that this is an enormously emotive issue. I watched my grandmother pass away after eight years of having dementia and strokes. I understand that the Bill would not have applied to her, but I could not look into the eyes of someone in her shoes and expect them to go through the pain and suffering that has been discussed, based on the evidence we have been shown.
My brother is a palliative care registrar. He wrote to me recently from New Zealand, saying that every time he is asked whether there is a way of speeding up the dying process the question normally comes from patients who have never seen a palliative care specialist. He normally says that he will help to improve the symptoms and the question of assisted suicide ends up dissipating.
I have a number of serious concerns about the Bill after what I have heard today. I have two key concerns that I hope will be considered before the suggestion is put before the House again. First, if an individual is reasonably expected to die within six months, I hope that the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) will clarify whether a voluntary, clear, settled and informed wish as well as a two-week wait for the High Court judgment and a two-week wait for the administration of the medicine will be enough to enable the individual to have a dignified end of life. I hope that he will realise that that is an awful lot to squeeze into a very short period of time.
My second concern relates to the code of practice and the individual’s mental health. If someone has just been given a terminal diagnosis and only six months to live, are we suggesting that they will have neither depression nor any other psychological disorders that might impair their decision making?
After listening to the arguments made today by many people who are much more experienced in this field than I am, I have to say that I will oppose the Bill.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
It is the convention in this House on a Friday morning to congratulate the promoter of the Bill on coming top in the ballot. Although I disagree with the Bill being proposed by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris), we owe him a debt of gratitude for this debate. I want the debate to continue.
It is interesting to hear the different views that have been expressed today and in the lead-up to the debate from leading legal and medical experts, and I pay tribute to them. Today, those views have been echoed in this Chamber by people with huge amounts of experience, whether in the legal field, like my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), or the medical, like the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford). This House is at its best when it debates like this and when we others—I include myself in this category as I am not an expert—have the opportunity to add our weight to the debate on behalf of our constituents.
None of us has the right to say that we are more compassionate than others, whether we are for or against the Bill. We all want to see dignity in end-of-life care. That is important, and that argument has been echoed in this Chamber today. We need to turn the debate into a positive. Those of us who will never support assisted dying, assisted suicide or euthanasia and have a strong and principled view on that need to be joined by those who want to alleviate suffering, whether or not they have a different opinion on the Bill. We must channel that energy into improving palliative care. We must talk about the national health service as being from cradle to grave. In doing that, we have to be brave and we have to say that palliative care is patchy in this country and that young people and older people do not get the care or dignity they deserve. We must channel money and resources into training people to help in end-of-life care in the future. Our health service must merge prevention and care; social care and health must come together to help young people and those who have terminal illnesses. We must do that in a positive way.
Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)
We have rightly heard today of the concerns of medical professionals about how the Bill would fundamentally change their relationship with those in their care. Does my hon. Friend agree that those concerns are reciprocated by many patients? We trust and rely on doctors and nurses to improve the quality of life, not to bring it to a premature end.
Albert Owen
Absolutely, and that has been eloquently spoken of by many people, including those with huge experience in the medical profession.
I believe that if the Bill is passed today, it will be a slippery slope. People would come back, not solely because we have the legislation in this House but, as has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones), who is no longer in her place, because the case law would be altered to reflect the wishes of society. We are here as representatives to reflect both sides of the argument. I do not accept that a snapshot poll showing 82% support reflects the will of the British people, and I do not think we will get an accurate poll. We have to make up our own minds and base our decision on the evidence and on compassion. Let us together improve the national health system from cradle to grave to help those in an impossible situation alleviate pain and improve long-term care. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West for giving us the opportunity to have this debate. Let us move forward in a positive way.
Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)
It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), and I agree with everything he has just said. I believe in dignity in death, but I also believe in the sanctity of life. We have heard powerful speeches from both sides today and we have all received many emails from constituents arguing both sides. We cannot agree with both sides. I remember that the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) said that he was torn, but we must finally take a decision.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Ben Howlett), I found the speeches of the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) and my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who both spoke with experience and authority, incredibly powerful. It is rare for people to be swayed in this Chamber—they come in with their minds made up—but my goodness me, what powerful speeches. I am sure that they have had an effect today.
When my father was diagnosed with cancer in 1978, the family watched him die a painful death. It was a bad death, and when he died, I said, “Thank God he has died.” As the hon. Member for Ynys Môn has just said, we should be putting far more resources into palliative care. We should admit that it is patchy and that some people have bad deaths, though that is not acceptable. I know that we put many resources into finding a cure for all sorts of diseases and conditions, but at times we have to recognise that a cure might be some time off and sufficient resources ought to be put in to ensuring absolutely the right amount of palliative care so that when people come to the end of their lives they are not in unnecessary pain. We must remember the relatives around them and the pain they feel in seeing someone who has looked after them for all their lives—their father, a strapping person—wasting away over a period of months and then dying. I went to get his last shot of morphine and I am absolutely certain that that was what pushed him over the edge, but at least he did it without unnecessary pain at that final juncture.
We say that people should not be put under undue pressure or feel they are burdens on their family. They should not feel, “Well, I have the choice, perhaps I should exercise that choice.” It is almost impossible to say that people with terminal conditions will not be pushed into an earlier death simply because they have that choice. At the moment, they do not. It is impossible to calculate how many people will say towards the end of their lives, “I think I am going to take that poisonous cocktail because I do not want to be a burden on my family and because it is costing them to keep me in a nursing home, with all that that entails.”
I pay tribute to Macmillan nurses, Marie Curie nurses and the hospice care in this country. I do not believe that Dignitas brings dignity to death; I think it brings a speedier death, and I ask the best minds that we have in the world: is that the best that we can offer?
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
I do not support the Bill. We should maintain the clear principle that this Government, the justice system and the medical profession have upheld for many years—that we do not encourage or help people to commit suicide, and that we should work to prevent all forms of suicide. The Assisted Dying (No. 2) Bill would be a departure from that principle, and I believe that we would start to see people in very difficult circumstances becoming even more vulnerable if the Bill were passed.
Clearly at present—we have heard a former DPP, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), lay out the current situation—committing suicide is not illegal but encouraging someone to commit suicide is illegal, and I firmly believe that that protects us all, and that that basic principle against suicide should be upheld. Wednesday was world suicide prevention day. Many moving messages appeared on social media about the importance of preventing suicide, so it is ironic that we should today be debating a Bill that drives our society in the opposite direction.
I have significant concerns about the detail of the Bill, and whether any regulatory regime surrounding the introduction of assisted suicide would be fit for purpose. I would argue, as others have done in this debate, that making assisted suicide legal creates a pressure on people to take their own lives rather than giving them greater choice, because it creates a fundamental shift in people’s perception—that our society accepts suicide. One of the major risks in the Bill has been eloquently outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), and it is that people will feel under pressure to take their own life if they feel they are becoming a burden to their family or society. That would grow from an illness-related reason to encompass financial ones and even mental health reasons. People in my constituency have written to me about their concerns, saying:
“If this Bill is passed it will put greater pressure on vulnerable people, the elderly and the sick, who will increasingly see themselves as a burden to society. I don’t want to see that.”
Barbara Keeley
If we are to live in a society that values and cares for each individual regardless of the state of their health and disability, it is difficult to see why we should be relaxing our stance on suicide. The Not Dead Yet UK network of disabled and terminally ill people tells us that not one organisation of disabled people supports assisted suicide, and Richard Hawkes, the former CEO of Scope, has said:
“Why is it that when people who are not disabled want to commit suicide, we try to talk them out of it, but when a disabled person wants to commit suicide we focus on how we can make that possible?”
The campaign to legalise assisted suicide reinforces deep-seated beliefs that the lives of disabled people are not worth as much as other people’s.
We must also consider the question of the involvement, through the Bill, of the doctors who would have to assess the person and administer the drugs to assist their suicide. The British Medical Association has a clear policy against physician-assisted suicide and the Bill before us, as do the college of GPs and the college of physicians. The BMA says that it opposes all forms of assisted dying, supports the current legal framework, which allows compassionate and ethical care for the dying, and supports the establishment of a comprehensive, high-quality palliative care service. Many of us here today have spoken very strongly about our support for palliative care, and the hon. Members for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) and for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) have given us their reasons, as a former GP and former surgeon.
I want to end on that point about social care, because much of my work here has been focused on social care and carers. I believe I agree with the hon. Member for Totnes: improving palliative care is a real alternative to the Bill. We should bring in free social care at the end of life, because the denial of care should not be driving people to take their own lives.
I want to make a final point about the last implications of changing this law. At the moment, it is clear that we want to prevent people from committing suicide and that society should help and support those reaching the end of their life. Passing the Bill would change that and set a dangerous precedent.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
It is a great honour to speak in a debate, as brief as it is, on a matter of life or death. It is one of the hardest things for this Parliament to deal with, because the passions of the speakers and the strength of the arguments on both sides are compelling.
I have been lobbied about assisted dying since my very first month in this Parliament, and consistently. I have listened to all the speeches today on both sides of the argument, but I will vote against the Bill because I am very concerned about coercion. Any Member of this House who does not consider that coercion could happen, forcing vulnerable people to take their own lives, has perhaps an over-optimistic view of the human nature of a small but significant section of our society.
I spoke to an A&E consultant in my constituency who raised concerns about his Hippocratic oath and the change in the doctor-patient relationship that the Bill could engender. He had a shocking experience when he was resuscitating an elderly lady in A&E while her relatives were sharing out her assets at the foot of the bed. When the old lady was resuscitated, he saw the look in the relatives’ eyes, and he would certainly not be in favour of assisted dying legislation whereby vulnerable old people could be coerced into taking their own lives by unscrupulous or heartless relatives or beneficiaries.
The safeguards in the Bill are inadequate, and as a responsible parliamentarian I cannot bring myself to support a change in the law with such gaping holes in it. It is a blank cheque, as has been mentioned.
Andrew Bridgen
I will not, if my hon. Friend does not mind.
Supporters of the Bill have said that 80% of the public favour medically assisted suicide. I am not sure how much understanding those respondents had at that time, but when participants are exposed to the counter-arguments to legalisation, support wavers, in one poll dropping from 73% to only 43%, and among palliative care doctors 90% oppose the Bill.
I am a trustee of a local hospice charity, Hospice Hope, in Ashby de la Zouch. I am a great supporter of and believer in the hospice movement and palliative care sector. I would like to quote Dr Robert Twycross, a retired palliative care specialist, who recently stated that
“despite upsetting ‘horror stories’…palliative care does not…leave patients to suffer unbearably. In extreme situations, increasing the dose of symptom relief and sedative drugs is already permissible as a ‘last resort option’. The most appropriate response to horror stories is to increase the availability of specialist palliative care”—
not to kill people.
As has been said, many people are desperate when first diagnosed with a terminal illness. It is completely understandable, and it is easy to make a rash decision. Many feel a burden on their family and wish to die to alleviate that burden, when actually that family love them, want to care for them and do not want them to die. The way to alleviate distress in dying people and their families is to care for them properly with good palliative care, not to murder them.
I am aware of time pressures. I would ask hon. Members to bear it in mind that we fund, to a huge extent, the national health service. It is not the national death service. In a recent survey in May of 1,000 GPs, only one in seven was willing to get involved with this Bill. I feel that for vulnerable people the right to die will quickly become the obligation to die. The only thing that deserves a quick death is this Bill and I shall vote against it.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
I shall make a few brief points in the light of the many conversations I had over the summer with disability organisations and disabled people. They are well aware that I support the Bill and will vote for it this afternoon, but I want them to know that I have listened very carefully to some of the concerns that they have expressed.
Of course, not all disabled people are terminally ill—we should not equate the two—but it is true that when we become terminally ill, we will almost all by definition fall within the terms of the Equality Act’s description of disability. It is also true that the social context in which disabled people live their lives today means that they suffer inequalities and injustice, and that accompanying the Bill must be a whole-hearted commitment by the House to address that structural inequality and to make the right to an assisted life equal to that of assisted death.
I was a little horrified to hear the Second Church Estates Commissioner, the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman), for whom I have enormous respect, imply, I think, that she would prefer such deaths as already take place to do so outwith the law, rather than to shed the light of regulation on a situation that we live with today. I would prefer to see this difficult situation governed by legislation—legislation for which we as legislators take responsibility.
To the disabled people who have raised issues with me, I would say that I am very open to hearing suggestions for further safeguards to be placed in the Bill. Having listened to the debate this morning, I am sceptical about the role of the High Court in this matter and we may have to look at this again. I invite the proposers of the Bill to amplify what sort of audit process and regulatory framework they think can properly protect people, and I echo the calls all around the House for proper investment in both palliative care and mental health care to address the very important point that at the end of their lives many people will suffer also from severe depression.
Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
I had written a 40-minute speech for today’s debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, but you will be pleased to know that I have no intention of having you stop me five minutes into that. [Hon. Members: “Two minutes.”] Indeed, two minutes.
I am very opposed to the Bill. I shall make two general points and then give one or two more reasons why I oppose it. First, it is important for us to realise that this is not a competition in compassion. Both sides of the debate are driven by compassion and what we are looking for is the best solution for those who are approaching the end of life. End-of-life care is not satisfactory and we need to find ways of improving it.
The second issue relates to the Bill itself. When it came top of the ballot of private Members’ Bills, I was disappointed that we would be debating the topic again. I have changed my mind about that, because it is hugely important that we as a nation take palliative care much more seriously. The Bill has probably helped to achieve that. I am still opposed to it, but the interest in the wider public and among MPs will lead to a greater awareness of what we need to do in that field.
The three main reasons that I oppose the Bill are, first, the normalisation of suicide. Society disapproves of suicide, and if it becomes normalised it becomes an issue of debate for everyone who reaches the end of life. The speech from the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) made a great impact on me when she talked about her own experiences. It is true that there may be issues of coercion and malevolence, but the real concern is the self-imposed pressure—people asking themselves, “Is my life over? Should I remove myself from society?” That is my biggest worry.
The second worry that I have about the Bill is that it puts different values on the lives of some members of society—the people approaching the end of life, the terminally ill, the mentally disabled, the severely mentally disabled and the severely disabled. We have never put different values on the lives of different people; I think the Bill does that. The third reason that I oppose it is that it inevitably changes the relationship between doctors and their patients. A doctor’s job has always been to do no harm. People go to the doctor because they want the doctor to help them and make them well. If assisted dying will always be part of their discussions, it will interfere with their relationship for ever. For those three reasons I oppose the Bill.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
I cannot support the Bill and I intend to vote against it. In doing so, let me first recognise the good intent and the compassion of those who support the Bill and who have brought it here today. Their motivations are honourable and I appreciate that considerable numbers of people in this country want these issues to be discussed. Many constituents on both sides of the argument, as I am sure is the case for all Members of the House, have shared incredibly personal stories with me—stories of great courage and of great pain—and I am extremely grateful for that, but I do not believe that the change in the law that is proposed in the Bill is either desirable or necessary.
There is a right to die under UK law. Any of us has the right to refuse further medical treatment in such a way as to bring our lives to a natural end. Furthermore, a person making that decision can usually obtain pain relief to ease their suffering. However, the Bill proposes a fundamental change, for the first time allowing medical practitioners to prescribe drugs that would enable the person actively to end their life. I believe that once we crossed that Rubicon, we would have radically changed our conception of life and of the rights and responsibilities of individuals and of society at large. We would have fundamentally changed the role of the medical profession and we could never truly ensure that there were sufficient safeguards to prevent abuse.
I am sure the House will appreciate that the prospect of doctors legally prescribing fatal doses of drugs causes considerable distress in my constituency, where the majority of the families of the victims of Harold Shipman reside. This proposal would for ever change the nature of the medical profession in the UK, and I note that the British Medical Association is fundamentally opposed to it.
Many people who are in favour of the Bill have made the case to me that in situations where the Bill would apply, the quality of life of the people affected by it is so poor that it justifies such a change. I understand that point. The levels of funding for social care in this country are a disgrace. The wages, conditions and zero-hours contracts of some of the people who are asked to care for our loved ones near the end are a disgrace, but to move towards a system of assisted suicide justified on the basis of that poor care and provision would also be a disgrace. We can offer people dignity and comfort at the end if we are willing to devote sufficient political and financial capital to that end.
Any legislation of this kind changes the way we as a society see the elderly and makes the limitations that come with age and illness something avoidable. It will become selfish to be old or ill, to be asking things of people or to be in need, whereas this time should be a time of great importance, of healing relationships and of saying thank you for everything that has been given to us in the lives we have led.
Another argument cited in favour of the Bill is that it merely codifies the existing guidelines of the Director of Public Prosecutions, but there is no way in which we can ever sufficiently codify the circumstances that these guidelines cover. There are situations where there is no public interest in prosecuting a person for breaking the law, but that does not mean that we as parliamentarians should change the law to legalise that behaviour in future. Hard cases make for bad law.
Finally, all the evidence I have seen from Holland and elsewhere suggests that this is one of those occasions where the slippery slope argument holds true. Just as in the UK, in Holland everyone was promised that there would be a specific and narrow application of the law, but now that is not the case and it is often used for very narrow reasons. None of the safeguards promised in the Bill could ever be sufficient. We will keep on revisiting them and weakening them, and practice will constantly push at them too. So let us oppose the Bill today. Let us reaffirm our determination to find better solutions to the problems that we have discussed today, but let us keep the fundamental respect for and sanctity of human life and the protection of the vulnerable that are rightly at the heart of the current legal position.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
Debating issues such as this is one of the most challenging things we have to do as MPs. We are expected to exercise the judgment of Solomon on behalf of our constituents. Indeed, many speakers on both sides have made speeches worthy of Solomon today.
I will come to the point quickly. I oppose the Bill because I have fears about the safeguards against the pressures from family members or friends with their own agendas and different priorities. There are difficulties over the definition of mental competency. Are we placing too great a responsibility on our doctors to play God? That would change the whole dynamic of that doctor-patient relationship. My prime concern, and why I will vote against the Bill, is that we risk engendering guilt among elderly people and those with serious disabilities about being a burden on their families, their carers or society. Bringing a Dignitas-style solution to their doorstep implies that that is what is expected of them and the most unselfish course of action to take. As our population lives longer, that pressure will become greater.
Rather than re-rehearsing the arguments, I want to close on a very personal story. My mother was diagnosed with cancer at the end of 2013. At the beginning of January 2014 she reacted badly to her chemotherapy and became very poorly. She was taken to hospital and after a few days doctors decided that there was little they could do for her and she was transferred to the new St Wilfrid’s hospice in Eastbourne. Staff there were brilliant and we cannot thank them enough. As a patron of St Barnabas House hospice in Worthing, I know of the fantastic work that hospices do. Doctors told us that our mother would be unlikely to make the weekend. It was a shock that it had happened so quickly when she apparently had been receiving good treatment.
My brother, my sister and I mounted a vigil. She was in great pain and discomfort but my mother kept telling us that she really did not want to be a burden, and that if she had known that things would turn out like this, she would have taken herself off to Dignitas to make sure she was not a burden. I do not know whether she would have gone through with that, but she was convinced that she did not want to be a burden. We will never know what she might actually have done.
The weekend came and, incredibly, my mother was still there. Fortified by a range of exotic fruits and fruit juices to quench her thirst, she actually started to improve. A few weeks later, she was still there. She had rallied sufficiently that she was deemed to be too fit to stay in the hospice and so was evicted. It was a great triumph for her; people are not normally evicted from hospices. We found her the most wonderful nursing home in Eastbourne, the Queen Alexandra Cottage home. Far from being a burden, she played an active role in helping the staff of the nursing home. She was looked after brilliantly. Her quality of life was excellent. My brother, sister and I spent much quality time with her and enjoyed trips out to favourite family places, and at family get-togethers she was surrounded by her grandchildren.
Sadly, my mother died last October, but eight months after leaving the hospice. She died peacefully and comfortably, and with her family around her, a few days short of her 77th birthday. Those bonus eight months were some of the happiest times we enjoyed with my mother, despite her illness and the limitations it placed on her. It was quality time that allowed her and us to prepare for the inevitable, but in a positive and organised way—my mother was very organised.
For my part, those eight months were just a small compensation for the missed opportunities and family neglect that the job of being an MP inevitably entails. If things had gone differently and my mother had chosen another route, completely oblivious of what was actually to happen, and if that alternative option had been readily available and state-approved, she and we would have missed out on a lot. We were lucky to have that valuable extra time, and she valued it greatly.
That is just one example, and I know that many other people’s experiences will lead them to other conclusions, but it is a major personal reason why I think that the risks and the potential loss of human experience and sensitivity outweigh the potential advantages that some people might enjoy from a change in the law, and that is why I shall be voting against the Bill.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
We have heard many compassionate and compelling words today, and the voice of conscience has come through on both sides of the debate, just as it has come through on both sides of the correspondence we have all received from our constituents. I will be opposing the Bill. Some of the constituents who have written to me have suggested that I am being Church-whipped. I am no more Church-whipped in opposing this Bill’s Second Reading than I was when I voted for the Second and Third Readings of the marriage equality Bill.
Like all Members, I come here today as a conscientious legislator dealing with difficult issues. I acknowledge the sincerity of the Members proposing the Bill, but as a legislator I cannot satisfy myself that the compassion with which it has been proposed is adequate to allow it to pass. I am not convinced by the so-called safeguards that it is claimed to have, and I do not believe that it would be enough to rely on codes of practice that might or might not be introduced in future.
In that regard I am moved by what I have heard directly from many medical professionals. We have been privileged to hear today from Members with medical experience and insights about some of the difficulties that they see arising from the Bill. They are concerned about not only the professional compromises that would be created, but the pernicious conditioning effect that would result. Many Members have rightly raised concerns about incidents of coercion arising in the discharge of this legislation, but there are also concerns about the wider conditioning effect, and many medical professionals have voiced those to me. They are concerned that it would affect their relationship not only with patients, but with colleagues and other professionals, because of the quandaries and difficulties that would arise.
I am also not convinced by people making the case for the Bill by focusing on what would not be covered by it. I cannot take from them the assurance that the Bill draws a line and could not be used to take us on a travelator towards more legislation. If the compelling cases which motivated Members to propose the Bill would not be covered by it, I find it hard to see how those same cases would not be used to take us on a further journey, so I accept the slippery slope argument.
It has been suggested that relying on the prosecution guidance as adequate would be a dereliction of duty on our part as legislators, but let us remember that those who are proposing the Bill would still be relying on the guidance for all the cases that fall outside the scope of the Bill. If it is okay for people to rely on that guidance for cases that fall outside the scope of the Bill, why would it be wrong for those of us who oppose the Bill to rely on it as well for people in that situation?
I do not claim that we have moral superiority over anyone in the decisions that we take today, but as legislators we are compelled to make those choices. I know that the choice I make as a legislator might not be the choice I would make as a terminally ill patient, or as someone who receives a strong and emotional request from a loved one who is terminally ill, or as a juror if a prosecution took place at some time; I must make the decision today as a legislator. That is why I must vote against what I regard as poor and dangerous legislation.
Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)
I have the most profound concerns about the Bill, most of which have already been rehearsed by other hon. Members. In view of the shortness of time, I do not intend to repeat them. However, I also consider it to be a deeply flawed Bill. I will focus on three concerns that I believe are sufficient to persuade hon. Members not to support it.
First, although clause 1 provides that the person seeking the consent of the court must have
“a voluntary, clear, settled and informed wish to end his or her own life”,
the Bill is completely silent on what inquiries should be undertaken to establish how that wish has been arrived at. The right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) made the perfectly reasonable point that it is possible to come to a rational decision that one does not wish to be a burden on one’s family. Equally, it is possible to be coerced, cajoled and browbeaten into that position, and the Bill provides no safeguards in that respect.
Mr Jones
I will not give way, as we have very little time.
Secondly, the Bill provides that the person seeking the order should have a terminal illness and
“as a consequence of that terminal illness, is reasonably expected to die within six months.”
Medical experts have pointed out that it is very difficult to ascertain whether an individual will die within three months. One is reminded of the Scottish case of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was convicted of the Lockerbie bombing and discharged from prison on compassionate grounds because he was not expected to survive a further three months, and that was on the evidence of highly respected oncologists. In fact, he survived a further two years and nine months. Irrespective of the merits of the release, that illustrates how difficult it is to assess how long a patient might live.
Thirdly, the Bill is totally silent about what inquiries should be made by the court on whether an order should be made. I intervened on the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) on that point, and he replied that it was a matter for the court. I venture to suggest that when one is talking about whether or not a declaration permitting assisted dying is to be made, there should be strong guidance in the Bill on how the court is to make that decision. In other words, it looks very much like a rubber-stamping operation, which cannot be right.
Ethical questions are notoriously difficult, and most of us here in this House are not medical professionals. We therefore have to rely on medical ethicists and on medical practitioners and clinicians. We should all have regard to what the BMA and the royal colleges have to say. We should listen to hospices such as St David’s and St Kentigern, which serve my constituency. In this House, we should listen to people such as the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) and my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who clearly understand the issues. I urge all hon. Members to oppose the Bill.
Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)
We debate this subject on the anniversary of 9/11, the day on which over 3,000 people had their lives snuffed out in an instant, so it is not surprising that we are debating many deaths and citing our personal experiences, such as my experiences with my parents at the end of their lives and of seeing people in Trinity hospice in Blackpool, and so many other individual examples. Of course there are good intentions on all sides, but good intentions are not enough. The balance of probability that my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) mentioned is not enough to prevent us from going down a road not to hell but to dangerous and difficult decisions.
I listened with great respect to the comments of the former DPP, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), but drew a very different conclusion—that hard cases may make bad law, but they do not necessarily make bad individual judgments. That is the point. It is not right, in my view, that we should assume that we should just accept the right of Parliament to delegate to the DPP these difficult decisions where the detail has to be tried and tested to a generic principle.
The issue of capacity is clearly worrying many people here, and rightly so. I was a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Lord Chancellor’s Department when that was brought up. It is a fluctuating issue, and that is why Scope and Mencap are very concerned about it.
We have already heard about the large proportion of medical professionals who would not be prepared to take forward the procedures in this Bill, even if they were not flawed. What does that say about the small pool of people who will have to deal with this? Words matter, as George Orwell said, so we should be using the appropriate terms. This is about assisted suicide, not assisted dying. It is not about medication—I am not going to use the word “poison”—but administering something to someone that will kill them. These are important issues.
John Donne famously said,
“No man is an island”—
and no woman, for that matter. It has been suggested today that the decision that we make is simply for the individual. It is not simply for the individual—it is for the families who are impacted by it, for the doctors who have to go through agony trying to decide what to do about it, and for all of us in society who will take the consequences on board. That is why I shall vote against the Bill.
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) for bringing this Bill to the House today. It is incredibly important that we are discussing this issue. I have been incredibly moved by many of the speeches that we have heard. This is a matter of public interest. We all know from our postbags that there are passionately held views on all sides. I am also very grateful to all Members of the House for the manner in which the debate has been conducted. It is a very sensitive, difficult issue, and people have dealt with it with respect. That is absolutely the way in which the debate should be conducted.
I am in favour of the Bill. Parliament may decide today to kick it into the long grass, but even if debate is closed down on the issue of assisted dying, we cannot make it go away. People will go on taking their loved ones to Dignitas. Doctors will go on giving just that little bit more morphine to a dying patient to relieve unbearable pain, knowing that it could lead to death. Ex post facto, the Director of Public Prosecutions will continue to be able to exercise discretion if they so choose.
I believe that is wrong. We need legal clarity on this issue. The law needs to be brought up to date to reflect modern, contemporary Britain and the way in which advances in medical care have accelerated and social attitudes have changed.
Lucy Allan
No, I am sorry—I only have two minutes.
A vote against this Bill will not stop assisted dying; it will simply send the message that we in Parliament will not debate the issue further.
I want to add something from a constituent that I found particularly moving. She is talking about her dying mother, and she says:
“It broke my heart on a daily basis watching her suffer…My darling Mom would scream from morning till night ‘please Lord, help me, let me die, please take me’. She was in so much pain, her tiny body was racked, worn and exhausted…I prayed that God would make me strong enough to gently place a pillow over her face to end her torture, but, sadly, I could not as I loved her too much, and selfishly wanted her to stay…it destroyed me because my Mom was my world, and I could see and feel her pain yet could do nothing.
Although it has been 3 years since Mom’s passing, I cannot move on or forget because all I see, and all I remember is her terrible suffering…It is impossible to erase her last days as they were horrific, no human being should EVER have to endure.”
This Bill is about principle: it is about freedom and choice. Although I respect the views of everybody who has spoken today, it is not for us to deny people a say in how they die. It is their life, not ours.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
I believe that Parliament should be in the business of giving people reason to live, not of creating laws that facilitate and accelerate people’s death. I say that with respect to those who have today given their own personal, trying and solemn examples, but I believe that the balance is all wrong in this Bill and that is why I will vote against it.
We all know that it is not necessary to change the law in order to have dignity in death. That has existed from the very beginning of time. Indeed, it is in the natural order of things.
I understand what pastoral care is like. I grew up in a manse. People would come every day to my father’s manse and witness people with illnesses and sicknesses who needed to be comforted.
I also have a more personal story to tell. A year ago to this day, my father passed away, and tomorrow we will celebrate his anniversary. Eighteen months prior to that, he had been in hospital. He had suffered a very serious illness and ended up on a life support machine. On his fifth day on that life support machine, the doctors indicated to us, “Look, your father’s probably going to die in the early hours of the morning. You should prepare yourselves and be ready for the eventuality.” We did. We prepared his funeral. We sat as a family and talked about what we should do over the next few days.
That night, amazingly, my dad sat up in bed and demanded a cup of tea. He went on to enjoy another hearty year, and we went on to enjoy his company and lovely presence for another year. We planned his funeral with him, and it was a very different plan—it was noted publicly for being very different—from ours. Some people may say, “We have a right to do this and to tell people, ‘It’s now time: this person is now a burden on society’,” but that is not what we as legislators and as a Parliament should be doing. We should be taking stock and saying, in his voice, “No.”
Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
So much has been said by those who, like me, oppose the Bill, and we have heard some profound and personal stories, so I do not want to go over all that ground.
Fundamentally, I believe that the way in which any society looks after its most disabled, most vulnerable and the elderly says something about it. I fundamentally worry that we are starting down a path of saying, in essence, that the lives of those who are profoundly disabled and who are getting old and are a burden are worth less than those of others. That is an incredibly dangerous path to go down.
I am a former lawyer, albeit a rather less distinguished lawyer than the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), whom I first came across in a college library in Oxford about 30 years ago. I am now a legislator and I profoundly believe that the law’s empire should not be extended into this highly contentious sphere. We should let common sense prevail. Perhaps we are living in a much more litigious society. That is regrettable in many ways, because we need to let guidelines cover the ground that perhaps the former Director of Public Prosecutions was reluctant to cover. I think it is fair to say that close friends and relatives of those who are terminally ill instinctively know the wishes and desires of their nearest and dearest. They should be protected by compassionate understanding rather than by delusory legal safeguards.
I am not a terribly religious person and I certainly do not stand behind many of the religious aspects that influence many colleagues who have spoken, but when all is fundamentally said and done, I instinctively believe that to support assisted dying or euthanasia is simply wrong.
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
The Motor Neurone Disease Association holds no stance on the Bill. I speak as the chair of the all-party group on motor neurone disease.
I am also the chair of the all-party group on suicide and self-harm prevention. I must say that grave offence will have been caused today to the many people who have lost loved ones to suicide. To talk of this as a suicide-prevention Bill when people have lost loved ones who had much to live for is harmful and hurtful. To use the term “commit” is to wound people who have lost loved ones to suicide. I ask Members never to use the word “commit” in relation to suicide. Suicide is not a crime. You commit murder or you commit an act against the law, but suicide is not against the law.
There has been much talk about how individuals affected by the Bill may be a burden on their families, but nothing about how life may be a burden on those who are dying. I cared for my husband for the last five years, while he was dying, and I saw when life changed to being a burden. He had no capacity to speak, to lift a hand to his mouth or to get on a train or a plane to go to Switzerland, so the Bill would not have affected him in the way that a letter that came to me affected me when somebody said that I should vote for the Bill because of my husband.
I believe that it is Parliament’s job to look at the will of the people and to consider the difficult choices in front of society. Therefore, consideration of the Bill should not be ended in the Chamber today; it must go into Committee and be debated. We must be honest with the people and have a full and frank debate.
I am aware of the time, Madam Deputy Speaker, but my one concern about the Bill is in relation to the DS1500. For those who are looking confused, the DS1500 is the form that your GP gives you that says you are terminally ill. It is a passport to benefits that are absolutely critical for the dying. Do not allow GPs who are opposed to the legislation to use it as a way of withholding those benefits from people who desperately need them. We must find something else.
We must have this debate, and we must carry it on.
Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)
I think I speak for the whole House when I say that it is an honour to follow the highly personal statement by the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon).
I am proud to take part in this debate. I, too, favour the Bill. We are thinking about what we would want for our loved ones or, indeed, for ourselves, although, professionally speaking, our personal views are not the prime focus of this debate. In part, I am speaking to express a few of my constituents’ views.
One constituent who is in favour of the Bill, said:
“I am a nurse and believe everyone has the right to die when they feel it is right for them”.
Another constituent spoke to me about his father’s death from a brain tumour. He said that his father was, in his words, “fogged by morphine”, and he wished that his father had been able to have a more meaningful time with the family. Other constituents have told me of their concerns about the measurement of terminal illness, the pressures in the NHS, the concept of utilitarianism and—as other hon. Members have mentioned—the respect accorded to palliative care. One constituent said:
“Please will you allow these real concerns to be heard in the debate?”
Our duty today is to listen well, think carefully, and clearly explain our decisions.
The current law is unclear and often people are forced to take hidden, undignified and desperate action. Some relatives and loved ones are risking criminal prosecution. Ethical problems exist today, whether for the patient, doctor or family—they are not invented by the Bill. We should aim to bring those dreadful ethical choices into the light, giving people dignity and support. We do not have to make carers risk a murder or manslaughter charge alongside their grief.
Most of all, I believe in a person’s right to determine their own life and the manner of ending it, as that is a sovereign principle. We each own our lives and no one else defines that for us. Indeed, that concept is already quite deep within the NHS when we speak of , “No decision about me without me”. I also want better palliative care, and I appreciated hearing the factual evidence provided by the National Council for Palliative Care. However, I have concerns about one ethical opinion that was implied among its facts. While explaining that doctors and nurses are
“ill-placed to make judgements on whether a request for assistance to end life prematurely stems from a clear and settled intent”
it stated that such matters are
“better decided by the courts.”
Those words forget the one person whose choice it really is—the patient. This is not about forcing someone, or indeed everyone, to do something; this is about ceasing to force an individual to do something that they no longer wish to do, which is to live.
Many make arguments about ethical issues and say that society is what matters, and I say that the human being is what matters most. The Church of England stated in its briefing for this debate that while an individual’s sense of personal worth is an “important consideration”, it
“cannot take the place of the intrinsic value of every person’s life.”
In other words, someone else gets to define the value of our life for us.
We all squeal when someone defines a person as worth less than we may think, but the more respectful and free response should be to resist defining a person in any way other than how that person wishes. We should trust people’s choices. This debate is not only about an individual’s wish to die but about the limits that ought to be placed on others, and the Church has been right to highlight that latter point. In my view, because the drugs in this Bill would only ever be self-administered, that aspect is controlled by what we are scrutinising today. Just as importantly, we should not be criminalising grieving families and friends. This right cannot mutate of its own accord. It is to give a small number of people who are suffering terribly, and their carers, the freedom not to suffer according to their stated wishes.
I cannot walk in everybody’s shoes—none of us can—but our job is to listen and to try to empathise and bring those points to the Chamber. The law must allow for different people’s positions. It is a matter of compassion, so let us have the courage to do that today.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
We all come to the House in our different capacities today, and we have heard some emotional and impressive personal experiences. Our purpose here is as legislators, and as such we cannot continue to turn a blind eye to a situation where people with financial resources can make a choice about how and when they die, and travel to Switzerland, while those without resources cannot. My view has been profoundly influenced by my work as a manager in the national health service. A few years ago I worked on a project with some excellent doctors and nurses who were trying to build, improve and develop their communication skills and those of patients, in order to talk about and get a better understanding of respiratory disease. They were committed to helping patients understand how to live with their disease, and eventually how to die with it.
I learned a huge amount, especially from patients, particularly about how poorly equipped they were to talk about how to die with dignity, and how lonely it becomes when it is nobody’s role to talk to them about dying. That insight into how little choice and control patients have, as well as the minefield being navigated by our clinicians, opened my eyes to the need for society to open this debate and acknowledge that death is a part of life. We need to end the taboo that surrounds death in our society. It also highlighted to me the need to be more open about how we respond with compassion to the knowledge of imminent and inevitable death.
In subsequent work I have done on end-of-life and palliative care services, I became more aware of the huge variability of service provision. Supporters of the Bill are not opponents of palliative care. In my parliamentary career, I will continue to work for better awareness of the need to talk about death and dying, and for better palliative care and end-of-life services. I am delighted to hear so many Members today speak about the need for better palliative care services, but at a time—this is not a party political point—when we know there will be £22 billion of cuts in our health services, I worry that that is not going to be possible in the next five years.
People who wish to choose the time of their death can do so now, but must rely on Switzerland to manage the consequences. It cannot be right that some of my constituents can afford to go to Switzerland, but the majority cannot. I respect and understand people who are worried about vulnerability, old age and disability, and I respect the concerns about safeguards, but we do deal with many similar issues. As the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) said, many of them would, and should, be considered in Committee. I also respect the reluctance to make what feels like a big decision to take a leap into a new area, but the Rubicon has been crossed, the train has already left the station and Parliament cannot keep turning a blind eye. Our purpose is to establish the principle that terminally ill people can be afforded choice and dignity.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
I shall keep my remarks short. I did not expect to be pitched, so early in my parliamentary career, into a conflict of morality, philosophy and the mundanity of legislation, but here we are. I have listened very carefully to many of the powerful speeches today, quite a lot of which, I am afraid to say, have been guilty of a cultural romanticisation of death. That is no surprise in a society in which many centuries of art, literature and religion have underlined that romanticism, creating a sense of nobility and grace about death. Even the murder and torture of Christ is referred to as the Passion. The reality for many people, of course, is nothing of the sort. It is anything but noble. The death bed is a place of misery, torture and degradation, a reign of blood, vomit and tears. It is often hard to see the compassion and the beauty in that.
The truth, as the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) said, is that the reality is already here. Doctors are hastening and helping people to their deaths every day. The Liverpool Care Pathway, and what remains of it, was about exactly that. Many people show up at hospital to find that awful acronym DNR hoisted above the bed of their relatives. The machines are turned off on a regular basis. As the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) underlined, the Rubicon has already been crossed with regards to compassionate assisted suicide. This is not something from which we in this House can shy away. As the hon. Lady has just said, we already have a business class carriage to a dignified death—if anyone has the money, they can go to Switzerland to achieve it. The reality is here and we should not abrogate our responsibilities to regulate, control or have some view on it.
A number of Members have raised questions about worth. I can understand and respect those with a religious belief who believe that the spark of life, however long and whatever the quality, is worth preserving. I would, however, ask people to question the notion of longevity versus quality. When my wife’s sister was in the final throes of breast cancer four years ago, my wife was very frustrated and angered by her unwillingness to participate in clinical trials. She had reached the end of her life and really did not want to prolong what had been an agonising and painful five years. She was focused on the quality of her life rather than on its longevity.
Finally, we have to start at the right end of the telescope in this argument. I am with my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) and the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) in believing we have to start with human rights. If we decide that someone else has dominion over my body when I am in extremis, in pain, in the final months of my life, the argument is settled and everything else becomes rhetorical. If we do not, it is for the House to find solutions to the problems that might emanate from that decision. That is why I will be supporting the Bill into its next stage. We need to have that debate to come to those decisions, if we decide that I have dominion over my body in the final stages of my life.
Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)
The Bill deals with the most profound and emotive issues. It was notable that many of those who wrote urging me to support the Bill acknowledged—presumably because they recognised the legal and ethical significance of what they advocated—that I might have concerns about changing the law in this area. They are absolutely right.
I intend to focus my comments on three specific areas, all relating to the inadequacy of the so-called safeguards in the Bill. First and foremost, I am concerned that irrespective of how robust the safeguards are perceived to be, they can never be completely effective in protecting vulnerable people against undue coercion or duress. Acts of coercion or duress are, by their very nature, exerted opaquely and in a targeted, underhand way, leaving the victim unable or unwilling to speak out for fear of what they perceive the consequences might be, particularly if they are wholly dependent for their care needs on their oppressor. In such circumstances, how are the two registered medical practitioners and the judge able to satisfy themselves that the decision to end life
“has been reached voluntarily, on an informed basis and without coercion or duress”?
Clearly, they cannot. As a result, the Bill does not adequately safeguard against the terminally ill being manipulated by those with an ulterior motive and forced into making a decision that they do not want to take or is not in their best interests.
Secondly, I am concerned that the definition of a terminally ill person for the purposes of the Bill is someone who
“is reasonably expected to die within six months”.
It is of course impossible, as experts in end-of-life care will affirm, to know definitively how long a person will live. We are, after all, dealing with a prognosis, which is by definition surrounded by inaccuracy. This has been proven many times before by those who have outlived their prognosis, sometimes by many years. Under the terms of the Bill, we would be asking doctors to make life or death decisions about matters about which there can be absolutely no clinical certainty.
Thirdly and finally, I am concerned that the Bill does not provide adequate safeguards or an appropriate legal framework to establish whether an individual
“has the capacity to make the decision to end his or her own life”.
There is no stipulation in the Bill for a mandatory psychological assessment of a patient by a medical practitioner who is registered in the specialty of psychiatry. Instead, the Bill puts the onus for establishing psychological wellbeing and capacity on the attending doctor and the independent doctor, both of whom are principally focused on, and trained to deal with, the state of health rather than the state of mind. With those who request assistance to die, there is an association with clinical depression and hopelessness, and a concern that their capacity to make rational decisions is diminished or impaired as a result.
The Bill does not make such provision and in my opinion cannot therefore be said to contain the appropriate, strong safeguards required. People say that we do not do death well in this country. We need to talk about it, but I do not want this Bill to be the start of that conversation.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
I will be voting in favour of the Bill. Having today reached my decision, I want to set out briefly the factors that made the merits of the Bill outweigh my concerns. I have heard it argued that the Bill will not help those who are locked in a coma and are without the capacity to administer their own death. This argument holds true, and I would be unable to vote for the Bill if its scope were so wide, as there would not be enough safeguards. However, the Bill is limited in its applicability.
I have heard it said that this Bill will be subject to a much wider interpretation by the courts than that which I have described. I do not discount that, but I have greater faith in both the wording of the Bill, particularly over the need for the prognosis to be terminal and for death to occur within six months, and in the reluctance of our courts to make law where the drafting is already clear and settled.
I have also heard the argument that enacting the Bill today would make it easier for future Parliaments to amend and broaden the applicability beyond those with terminal illness perhaps to those suffering from mental illness. I hope that that does not occur, but I have grappled with the persuasive argument that if this House opens the door and leaves it ajar, it will make it easier to open the door wide thereafter. If this House failed to legislate on the basis that a future House could broaden legislation, we would never produce laws at all. Ultimately, I concluded that I should make my decision based on the Bill before me, not on a hypothetical draft that may never be read.
The crux of my reasoning, which ultimately allows me to weigh up the arguments and vote in favour of the Bill, is the desire to grant a right to those who may require it and will be impacted by exercising it. This right is not for those who wrote to me, often citing religious reasons why life should not be capable of being ended prematurely. This right is not for those who will see out their final days of a terminal illness and rely on excellent palliative care. Those people would not utilise this law. This Bill is for the smaller number of people who wish to exercise their right to die earlier in their final six months—before they fade away in front of their family, before they enter a desperate period that they feel they cannot face, before they believe they will lose their dignity. It is for those people, with their own individual reasons, that I will cast my vote today to allow them this right.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
As this debate draws close to a close, it is appropriate to commend the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) for the tone she struck in opposing the Bill at the start of the debate, as well as the Herculean efforts of the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) in respect of everything that has gone on over recent months.
The most pronounced part of the debate this morning and into this afternoon has been the personal reflections of Members throughout the House. I was touched by those on both sides of the argument—whether it be listening to the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), or the hon. Members for Newport West (Paul Flynn), for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) or indeed for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick). They all touched me, but I have to say that from the outset of this proposal, my heart has been against it.
Although I cannot defend myself to my constituents on the basis of my heart alone, I have taken the time to consider the detailed proposals in the Bill and the plethora of information we have received over the last few months. My head and my heart are therefore at one on this issue.
Clause 1 says that nobody can initiate the process for a patient, but that does not exclude assisted dying becoming part of the panoply of options for a patient, which I think is a failing in the provisions. The figures for Oregon, much referred to today, show that if extrapolated to the UK, 17 people a year would take the prescribed medicine—yet still regain consciousness because their systems would not hold it. What an invidious position the Bill puts medical professionals in. I do not think we should remove those options, with no protection for the patient and no final assessment of capacity after the cooling-off period. The Bill is not appropriate and not proportionate; it does not have my support.
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)
It has been a privilege to be here and listen to both sides of the debate, which has been based on personal and moving experience. It has been a wonderful debate. I fully recognise the deeply held moral and practical views and the differences of opinion on this issue, which, although diverging in their approach to assisted dying, acknowledge and respect the responsibility of our society to show compassion.
Good intentions, however, do not always yield good results. Legislation that allows the taking of a life should not do so at the expense of vulnerable people. One of my principal concerns about the Bill remains the possibility that pressure could be put on vulnerable people to request assisted suicide. I am particularly thinking of situations where people may feel an unbearable pressure to commit suicide for fear of becoming a burden on loved ones. One of my constituents wrote to me on this point and I would like to share her comments with the House. She said:
“If I was unable to be independent, I would immediately be under pressure to go. My only daughter is fully employed and I have been a widow for over 50 years—there is no one else I could call on. As soon as I ask help of my daughter, I put pressure on her already-busy life. She would not deliberately wish me out of the way but adding the burden of mother-care would make it very hard for her to cope.”
She goes on to say:
“How could I NOT feel under pressure to get out of the way? I would be unable stubbornly to stay alive when I knew I was being the last straw in her busy life.”
If this Bill becomes law there would be hundreds, if not thousands, of people who would feel themselves to be in this position.
There is a further difficulty, which is the definition of “reasonable”. That has been talked about so I will not go into it again, but I will say the debate on both sides of this issue has been grounded in compassion, but the right to die, although argued for well, is not greater than the right of vulnerable people to live.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
The Government’s position, as set out by Lord Faulks in the Second Reading debate on the predecessor Bill in the other place, is that
“any change in the law in this emotive area is an issue of individual conscience. In our view, it is rightly a matter for Parliament to decide rather than government policy.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 18 July 2014; Vol. 755, c. 919.]
No doubt the Minister will confirm that today. The Opposition also believe that it is a matter for individual conscience, and it is right therefore that Front-Bench comments have been constrained to allow the maximum number of Back-Bench contributions.
We have not yet had 85 speeches, let alone the 133 speeches over 10 hours the other place devoted to the subject last year, but the number and quality of speeches we have heard today leave no doubt that this is a matter of great weight and controversy. We reflect, as we should, the views of our constituents; like, I am sure, all Members, I have had hundreds of representations making a passionate and compelling case on both sides of the argument.
I warmly and sincerely thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) for bringing this issue before the House after 18 years. He has had something of a rollercoaster ride of defeat and victory over the last two elections and he could have chosen a less controversial and easier life. Instead, he is totting up his staffing budget to see whether he can afford the additional assistance to deal with his engorged postbag. His aim, in his own words, is to do better for dying people.
Let me also acknowledge the work of Lord Falconer, who chaired the Commission on Assisted Dying and piloted the predecessor Bill through Second Reading and into Committee in the Lords.
There are many, including some who have spoken today, for whom the principle of assisted dying or the slippery slope argument are the start and end of their consideration. The current Archbishop of Canterbury has said that we are crossing a “legal and moral Rubicon” today, but that side of the argument does not enjoy monopoly support even among archbishops. Lord Carey has said:
“Some people have said on the issue of compassion that actually pain is a noble thing, to bear pain and to say that we are suffering with you is, in my view, a very poor argument indeed.
There is nothing noble about excruciating pain and I think we need as a nation to give people the right to decide their own fate.”
Many Members have expressed concern as to the role of the medical profession, saying that there would be a fundamental change in the doctor-patient relationship. Indeed that is an important consideration, but I equally take on board the comments of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), who says there is currently an inconsistency in the law as a result of his own guidelines. There is an opt-out for medical practitioners, and some would say that that heralds a more mature relationship between doctors and patients. My hon. and learned Friend explained with his customary precision the limits that he was able to achieve even with the excellent guidelines he introduced as Director of Public Prosecutions.
That brings me to my concluding point and, I think, the salient point for us to bear in mind today. Other bodies have tried to address this issue. The Director of Public Prosecutions has tried, as has the Supreme Court. We should bear in mind the words of the President of the Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger, who said that it was
“institutionally inappropriate at this juncture”
for the Court to declare that clause 2 was incompatible with article 8, as opposed to giving Parliament the opportunity to consider the position without a declaration. Lord Sumption referred to the “inherent difficulty” of the question, and to
“the fact that there is much to be said on both sides”—
for making—
“Parliament the proper organ for deciding it.”
Without drawing a conclusion on the rightness or wrongness of the Bill, I urge the House to take the same course that the other place took last year, which was not to vote down the Bill at this stage but to allow it to go forward into Committee where these matters could be debated further. That was the cogently expressed view of a strong opponent of the Bill in the other place, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, who stated:
“I am deeply opposed to the Bill but strongly in favour of it being afforded a Second Reading so that we may have the opportunity to discuss the many vitally important issues that it raises.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 18 July 2014; Vol. 755, c. 778.]
We abdicate our responsibility if, after 18 years, we do not fully discuss these matters in detail and look at the safeguards and the possibilities in the Bill. It is wrong that those of our constituents who can afford to do so have the option to go to Switzerland when others do not have such options. We at least owe them the courtesy of discussing these matters more fully. I personally will support the Bill’s Second Reading, but I will be doing so in order to have a stronger, fuller debate.
Robert Flello
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) to give his personal views at the Dispatch Box, when he is there in a party position?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
The hon. Member for Hammersmith is entitled to say what he likes from the Dispatch Box. It is up to him, and my understanding is that this is a free vote anyway. With that, I call Mike Penning.
The Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice (Mike Penning)
It is an honour and a privilege to be standing at the Dispatch Box today as we show the rest of the country and the world what a Parliament should be doing. We have debated this important subject with passion but shown that we all have respect for each other. It is a shame that it has been 18 years since this matter was last debated, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) on bringing it here today. We have heard some unbelievably passionate speeches.
The House has also shown that it is not just full of lawyers and professional politicians. There are people here who bring experience of their previous professions. Some of them went off to university, some of us went off into the fire service—including me and the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick)—and some went into the Army. This debate has shown what we in the Chamber can do when the electorate elect people who are representative of their communities.
It is rare for a Minister to be able to stand at the Dispatch Box and get rid of their ministerial folder, but the Government do not hold a position on this Bill. They will respect the view of the House. That is exactly what happened in the other place last year, when Lord Falconer made the position quite clear, and the position is quite clear here today. I will therefore speak from the Dispatch Box in a personal capacity, which is also unusual.
When I was 17, I was a young soldier and I had just passed out of training. I got a message from the adjutant that my grandmother had collapsed and that I had been granted compassionate leave because she was terminally ill. People do not get compassionate leave from the armed forces unless the situation is really serious. I went home and Nan was in hospital. She had had a massive stroke and was paralysed from the neck down. I am a man of faith, and that night I prayed that Nan would not make it through the night. She was in great discomfort and she was conscious most of the time. The doctors said they did not think she would make it. She saw me and she cried, as I did.
Nan lived for another 20 years. She was a feisty girl. She smoked 60 a day, which is why she had the stroke, and she had a huge mass on her lungs. She used to cough in a way that I never thought anybody could cough, and she could swear at me when she saw me smoking, even though she smoked 60 a day. The point I am trying to make is that those in the medical profession are simply fantastic people and they do fantastic things for us, day in, day out—we heard much about that from the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), who told us not only about her work, but about the work that has been done in other areas—but they get it wrong, and the will of the human being to decide when it is right for them to go, no matter what pain they are in, is something that we should not take lightly.
Nan was not in pain when she eventually got home. Strokes are horrible things; Nan was bed-bound and my grandfather nursed her for 20 years. Interestingly, I was best man for my grandfather when he remarried at the age of 71, which is also an experience. Sadly, I lost my step-grandmother only a couple of weeks ago, when she was 99. She was just as feisty as Nan, so in many ways he bought silly twice, because she very much ruled the roost.
When Nan was so ill, a group of nurses came in to help her. This was right at the start of the hospice movement, and ever since I have been involved in the hospice movement—I declare that interest. I am patron of the Hospice of St Francis and of Iain Rennie Hospice and Grove House, which are amalgamated under Rennie Grove Hospice Care. The Peace Hospice, just outside my constituency, does fantastic work, and Keech Hospice, a children’s hospice in Luton which looks after terminally ill children in my constituency, also does fantastic work.
My reasons for voting against this Bill this afternoon are twofold. First, I do not think it should be an excuse that we cannot control pain in the 21st century for people who are so ill. Secondly, I am, frankly, against suicide. I have been to too many suicides, as has the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse, where we have seen the aftermath. People who wish to commit suicide need help—we should help them, not assist in killing them.
Jonathan Reynolds
claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).
Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.
Question agreed to.
Question put accordingly, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The House proceeded to a Division.
Mr Nigel Evans
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Some Members will have sat throughout the debate today and will have decided that they will not register a vote as they cannot make up their minds. Will you confirm that outside of voting in both Lobbies, which is strongly discouraged, there is no way in which a Member of Parliament can register an abstention following a debate?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
It is indeed the case that voting in both Lobbies is discouraged, so it is not possible to register an abstention. I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point and putting it on the record.
Division 69
Ayes: 118
Labour: 73
Conservative: 27
Scottish National Party: 14
Liberal Democrat: 3
Green Party: 1
Noes: 330
Conservative: 210
Labour: 94
Scottish National Party: 11
Democratic Unionist Party: 8
Liberal Democrat: 3
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 3
UK Independence Party: 1
Ulster Unionist Party: 1
Independent: 1
Representation of the People (Young Persons’ Enfranchisement and Education) Bill
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
It is a great pleasure to follow such a high-quality debate—so much passion from Members on both sides. I know that many young people would have strong views on the positions taken in that important debate, and if they are able to engage on issues like that, surely they should be given the vote, allowing them the chance to decide who represents them. But it is not just on that subject that young people have strong views. Let us take the Scottish referendum. Young people were engaged: 75% of young people who were registered to vote did so. And when I visit schools in my constituency, the young people I speak to are motivated, enthusiastic and passionate. They are worried about their future. They are worried about what is happening around them—cuts to youth service provision, cuts to police numbers and about safety in their area. They want to have a say over their future education. They have a voice; they want to be heard. I have been told this time and time again. The strength of feeling among the young people that I have spoken to is clear, and it is for that reason that I chose to introduce the Bill.
While debating the EU referendum, this House had the opportunity to introduce votes for 16 and 17-year-olds, and it is such a shame that it did not. Many Members contributed to those debates, including many Conservative Members. For example, the hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) said that
“surely it is better that a constitutional issue that is so important that it affects all elections should be fully debated by the House as a separate matter.”—[Official Report, 18 July 2015; Vol. 597, c. 509.]
And the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs said:
“I concede that there are those in the House who will wish to debate whether that franchise itself should be extended to 16 and 17-year-olds, but the Government are not persuaded and that is a debate for another day.”—[Official Report, 9 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 1053.]
Well, this is that day. The Bill has an added plus—improved citizenship education, giving pupils the knowledge, skills and confidence to prepare them for the responsibilities of voting and the opportunities to become politically active.
Vicky Foxcroft
No, I do not have time.
Some say that young people cannot make informed decisions, that they are not educated enough in politics and that they lack the life experience to be able to vote. To those people I say this: you are wrong and you are scared. Young people are a lot more informed and clued-up than they are given credit for. They are a lot more informed and clued-up than—dare I say it—some hon. Members here.
Whenever change takes place, people are often afraid of what that means, but once delivered it can become the norm, as in 1919, when the Representation of the People Act gave women over 30 the right to vote, or in 1928, when the Equal Franchise Act finally gave women the same voting rights as men. That was nearly 100 years ago, when we did not have a single female Member of Parliament. In 1919 Nancy Astor, the first female MP, was elected to Parliament. By 1945 there were still only 24 female MPs. It took a Labour victory in 1997 for a huge increase to take place in female representation. In that election 120 female MPs were elected, 101 of whom were Labour.
The House may wonder why I am talking about female representation when I am putting forward a Bill for votes for 16 and 17-year-olds. I am highlighting the fact that progress can be slow, but that does not mean that it is not the right thing to do. Just as Parliament has been enhanced by women’s participation, the political system can be improved by young people’s votes.
The issues that matter to young people need to be at the heart of our politics. Young people tell me they are concerned about further education, university funding, apprenticeships, jobs and the minimum wage for young people. They want the education maintenance allowance back. They are concerned about housing and whether they will be able to afford to buy a property or even to rent one.
Vicky Foxcroft
Let me give a little more historical analysis, specifically on young people. Back in 1969 it was felt that people under 21 were too young to vote. Many of the arguments used then are arguments that I continue to hear today, so I shall quote the words of James Callaghan when debating lowering the voting age to 18. He said:
“It will become increasingly difficult to explain to young people why for all social purposes they are entitled to regard themselves as adult at the age of 18, except on the question of the vote. I believe that this would be an anomaly that would become increasingly difficult to explain.—[Official Report, 26 November 1968; Vol. 774, c. 624.]
Why is it that at 16 young people can give full consent to medical treatment, pay income tax and national insurance, obtain tax credits and welfare benefits in their own right, consent to sexual relationships, get married or enter a civil partnership, change their name by deed poll, become a director of a company or even serve in the armed forces, but they cannot vote? Over the past month Labour party members from the age of 15 have been voting in our leadership election. Young Conservatives can also vote in elections, though I hope in their own. Our deadline has now passed.
In closing, let me quote one of the strongest advocates of votes at 16 and what he wants—the ability to vote in the Mayor of London election and the upcoming EU referendum. The young mayor of Lewisham, Liam Islam, is one of the most passionate, articulate young people I have ever met, and he is not alone. There are so many Liams out there who are desperate to have their voice reflected at the ballot box. Let us be part of that historic change today. I urge all Members to support the Bill and ensure that young people’s voices are reflected in politics. I commend the Bill to the House.
Business without Debate
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Rugby World Cup 2015
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)
After today’s incredible debate, I can truthfully say, “Now for something completely different.” In ancient Greece it was traditional for the actors in a heavy tragedy to return to the arena to perform a comic piece, because that is what the audience needed. My speech is not a comedy, but it will be a joyous piece; it is about rugby.
Soon the world will turn oval-shaped. In just 44 days maybe 3 million rugby fans will visit 11 cities, and maybe £2.2 billion will be contributed to our economy, but definitely some world-class rugby will be played in our country. My constituency will host 10 of the matches, including the first and last, because Twickenham is the alpha and the omega—we are the home—of rugby.
I am pleased that there is already a legacy of sorts, because many of the people who were fortunate enough to get a ticket online also donated. The rugby world cup has partnered the UN World Food Programme and already 1 million World Food Programme meals have been funded, so the legacy has already started with the ticketing process.
VisitEngland is preparing for the sports tourists, and I am told that they tend to spend more money than other tourists.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
Milton Keynes is one of the host venues for the rugby world cup, so I just want to add my congratulations to VisitBritain, VisitEngland, Destination Milton Keynes and all the other tourist organisations that are doing so much to market not only the world cup but the other tourist attractions in the home areas.
Dr Mathias
I absolutely concur with my hon. Friend. I have been to Milton Keynes on occasion. If it is anything like Twickenham, it will be looking even better as a result of the rugby celebration. All the host cities have already got the bug, which is brilliant.
We have a legacy in Twickenham that I do not believe my hon. Friend has in Milton Keynes, because we have had a Herculean transport project. I commend England Rugby 2015 for what they have been doing. Some residents have already said that their access permits have made the situation even better than it is on an average match day. I know that for every single match the project will be managing the traffic and making things as easy as possible for residents.
Of course, the best, most positive legacy will be if England wins the world cup.
Dr Mathias
I am half Welsh, I must confess.
We will have a great legacy. I have to say that the England team is looking exceptionally good. Having watched them in August in the friendly with France and seen Anthony Watson score those two tries, there is a chance that England could win the world cup. However, as the Minister is well aware, there are no guarantees in competitive sport. That is why we enjoy sport at this level.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
My hon. Friend’s constituency is the home of the game of rugby; my constituency is its birthplace—where it all happened. The tourism opportunities she has mentioned are incredibly important. The challenge will be for England to do well in order to maintain that tourism offer. That is no more true than in my constituency, where we have a fan zone where we are expecting visitors, but we have no games. Let us all hope that England do particularly well during the tournament.
Dr Mathias
I absolutely agree. I feel for my hon. Friend in not having any matches. Yesterday we had the Webb Ellis cup touring, and that invigorated people. I can assure him that we were thinking of him, with that trophy named in honour of his area.
For the legacy, we have to go beyond the stadium. The Rugby Football Union in Twickenham is an amazing sports business with annual revenues of over £150 million. It is doing great things in England for rugby, especially for schools and clubhouses up and down the country, and for training. Importantly for Twickenham, it has introduced rugby to some of our schools; I wish it was to all of them. It has given free tickets to some matches to residents who live nearby and are affected by the matches taking place. The RFU also has Home Turf, which is funding street festivals in Twickenham. Very commendably, it donates to charities such as the Dallaglio Foundation, which uses rugby to give young people other skills—life skills—showing that rugby goes beyond the stadium. The RFU is also very energy-conscious. That is important in my constituency, where many people are highly environmentally aware.
The RFU has a very good museum that holds exhibitions that are pertinent to locals. I was very proud that their exhibition of world war one heroes who were also rugby players had my grandfather’s medals—his Royal Flying Corps medals and his Military Cross—because he was a world war one hero and also a great rugby player.
We in Twickenham, and the RFU in particular, do look to the stadium. However, my concern, and the reason for this debate, is that some people in Twickenham consider the stadium to be more like a giant UFO that just happens to there. Some residents do not have on repeat on their smartphones iconic tries such as the one by Sir Gareth Edwards in the Barbarians-All Blacks game in 1973. Some residents do not think of those in the line-out statue as giants but more as extraterrestrials who just happen to be there. We have to look out for residents who are not completely in love with the game—we have to go beyond the sport.
This House has already debated the legacy of the Olympics, which led to many people taking up more sports.
Dr Mathias
I will come on to that. I hope that people in Twickenham and in England generally will take up rugby. In my area, pre-school children are learning the ball skills of rugby through Rugbytots, which is independent and not run by the RFU.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
Coming from a rugby-mad constituency, I am grateful to my hon. Friend for initiating this debate. I want to mention the fantastic efforts of the Homeless Rugby community interest company. It has been doing brilliant, pioneering work in Worcester with the Warriors Community Foundation and will, in parallel with the rugby world cup, host the first homeless rugby international between England and Scotland in Newcastle later this year. Does my hon. Friend agree that raising awareness of homelessness can be a very important part of the legacy of this rugby world cup?
Dr Mathias
I agree with my hon. Friend. I was not aware of that programme and I hope he will get me a ticket for that match—that is always a plus. It is amazing how much of an effect one sport can have. As I was told by the people running Rugbytots, it is not just about the sport: rugby is incredibly important for children developmentally. Women’s rugby and women’s rugby 7s are doing incredibly well, and it is wonderful to hear about the project in my hon. Friend’s constituency.
Just yesterday I came across, from an experiential point of view, wheelchair rugby. I played it for about 15 minutes and was the weakest member of the team, but it is a brilliant sport that is thoroughly exciting to watch and frightening to play. It has come to everybody’s attention only because of the world cup. Rugby can provide a substantial legacy.
The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) tried to make a point about the legacy of the Olympics. I believe that the Olympics changed people’s sporting behaviour, but before the Olympics a social anthropologist told me that the games would not change behaviour. They said it was possible to predict that people who were sporty before, during and after the Olympics would still be sporty people now and that they might take up another sport or increase their sport participation for a time. The problem was that those who were non-sporty people before, during and after the Olympics, might watch and enjoy the games but would not change their behaviour, and would remain non-sporty people. Although I am passionate about rugby, I am concerned that a lot of people in Twickenham are not going to take it up, so the legacy has to go beyond that.
I was excited, surprised and pleased to hear this morning that the RFU has announced a community project at Murray Park in Whitton. That is fabulous, because the park is more than 100 years old and has a brilliant friends group. I am amazed and delighted that a legacy is already being created. I believe it will be of the order of £10,000, which is great, bearing in mind the annual revenue. I am also told that the community will be able to discuss and bid for other projects, which is absolutely brilliant. I am also amazed and delighted that just this morning the RFU announced that Twickenham may get a capital project. That is exactly what I wanted. Twickenham could get so many things from this once-in-a-generation opportunity.
A resident told me that there was a plan a while ago for affordable housing on the RFU land north of the stadium and that it would be wonderful if we could have such a legacy. My constituency is desperate for affordable, key-worker housing. Friends of the River Crane Environment—an incredibly important group in my constituency—tell me that the Duke of Northumberland’s River is right up against the RFU land. This is another opportunity for the community and the sport of rugby to come together to enhance our rivers and our biodiversity, which we are passionate about. That can also be part of our legacy.
Rugby is an amazingly exciting and creative game, and the legacy should also be exciting and creative. Everybody knows about the A316 because of all the lane closures and the need for a resident’s permit. One of the footbridges over the A316 needs upkeep and maintenance. It is desperately needed and used by primary schoolchildren going to St Stephen’s school, and we have campaigned to keep the bridge. How fabulous it would be if a “rugby bridge” could be one of the projects. There are so many legacy options. I am very glad that such excitement and creativity has begun today.
The volunteers have enhanced Twickenham. As I said in the debate on the Olympics, when I went from west London to the Olympics, I was blown away by the volunteers. What England Rugby 2011 have done, even at friendly games, with the Pack—that is what we call the volunteers—is transforming the experience of rugby in Twickenham. I am very pleased that the RFU will try to continue that legacy.
We have a chance to make a step change in Twickenham. It is an oval world, but a new world for rugby and Twickenham. I think that rugby has taken Twickenham for granted; perhaps Twickenham has taken rugby for granted. This is a chance to make a change. It is great that one community project has been announced today—I applaud it—but I challenge the RFU and other rugby bodies to increase the legacies both financially and by continuing them long term. We need such community involvement not just in world cup year, but in the years to come. I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and other hon. Members for this debate.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Tracey Crouch)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias) on securing this incredibly important and extremely timely debate. She and other hon. Members have made constructive and interesting contributions on an issue that is clearly of great importance to their constituents. As the Minister with responsibility for tourism, I also welcome and am grateful for the positive comments made about the valuable link between tourism and sport. We know that there is such a link, and we would like to make more of it.
I am delighted that the rugby world cup will be held in England and Wales this year. I am hugely looking forward to the action starting next week. I am confident that the tournament will enable us to show again our expertise in putting on successful major events, and that all the home nations’ teams will give their all and make us proud. The rugby world cup is one of the biggest events in the sporting calendar. It lasts six weeks, and is likely to be watched by a global TV audience of about 4 billion and by well over 2 million people in 13 stadiums in 11 cities across England and Wales. All 48 matches will be shown on terrestrial TV, thanks to ITV.
The organisers, England Rugby 2015, have been very successful in selling tickets for the matches. More than 2 million tickets have been sold at a range of prices, starting at £7 for children and £15 for adults at certain matches. Tickets are on sale for a number of matches, and additional tickets will be available on the official ticket site as fans re-sell unwanted tickets at face value. I know that not everyone who wanted a ticket has got one—my ears are as bent as those of a prop forward from pub regulars and colleagues telling me so—but I encourage those not yet fortunate enough to have secured a ticket to keep trying the official site.
Tracey Crouch
No, they should not use illegal sites. There are plenty of legal and official sites, on which tickets are still available.
Spectators attending matches will be helped and directed by the 6,000-strong Pack—the volunteers, whom my hon. Friend mentioned—who have been recruited from the rugby community in England and Wales, recognising those who support and deliver the game week in, week out, and from the general public.
Mark Pawsey
Will the Minister pay tribute to the broader rugby community, which is not just players but ex-players and kids, and to the great nature that exists between rugby supporters from all clubs and towns? When I take my friends to Twickenham stadium in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias) people ask, “Why are there so few police here? Are we at the England end or the other team’s end?” We do not need that segregation because the rugby community is so warm-hearted.
Tracey Crouch
I agree with my hon. Friend. The rugby community, whether at big games or local rugby clubs, is incredibly friendly. That is why volunteers have been recruited from the entire community and those who deliver the game week in, week out, which includes many volunteers from local clubs. We saw the impact of games makers at London 2012 on the enjoyment of spectators, and I am sure that the Pack will have a similar impact. That is an additional aspect of the legacy of big events such as this tournament and the Olympics.
Before I turn to more general comments about the wider legacy of the rugby world cup, I know that legitimate concerns have been raised by constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham about match-day events at Twickenham stadium. I am also reassured that tournament organisers have held a series of community engagement events to listen to local residents and businesses.
I appreciate that Twickenham residents, while used to rugby, may not have previously experienced this number of matches over a short period of time. This once-in-a-lifetime event will bring significant benefits to the local economy. I hope that the local council and local residents will appreciate that although it might interrupt their lives for a short period, they will get something positive out of it in future.
Turning now to the wider issue, it is vital that, as well as holding a successful tournament, we drive the best possible legacy from the event, both in terms of participation in rugby, and in the wider economic and social benefits. I am delighted that the RFU has put in place detailed plans, and earmarked significant resources for increasing participation in the grassroots of the game. That includes spreading the game in schools, especially state schools that have not traditionally played rugby. This programme has reached 130,000 pupils, one third of whom are girls. As a result 3,000 have joined clubs and are playing the game regularly.
In general, mini and junior sections are extremely strong in rugby clubs. There are 150,000 registered players and 6,000 teams in clubs with players between the ages of six and 13. Tag and touch rugby tournaments aimed at youngsters are becoming incredibly popular—I see that in my own local clubs, as I am sure do many others, where hundreds of children turn up to play rugby. I am sure that I am alone in my neighbourhood, but I find it more of a thrill than an irritation when on the odd day here or there parking is more difficult than usual because of the vast numbers of children playing rugby.
In addition, the legacy will include a programme to train new referees and coaches. Furthermore, building on my comments about little ones playing rugby, the O2 Touch Tour is helping to attract new players to touch rugby, and the Unity Project is building the game across parts of Europe that are at the development stage in rugby terms, linking English counties with European countries, and building relationships as well as the game of rugby.
It is great to see a number of different varieties of rugby being enjoyed—my hon. Friend mentioned wheelchair rugby, which is phenomenal to watch. We are also seeing developments in other areas, such as walking rugby, which can bring an older generation of players into the sport. The tournament is being celebrated at more than 700 events under the Festival of Rugby 2015 banner, which is on target to reach 1 million people. In addition, the Domestic Trophy Tour is taking the trophy around the UK and the Republic of Ireland, and will see 300 events in 100 days by the time it finishes next week—I believe that today is day 93. I feel I have been slightly stalked by the trophy, having seen it on a number of occasions, but it was an incredibly proud moment for my own local club—Aylesford Bulls—to host it last week, enabling the ladies premiership team to run a training session for all the youngsters who had turned up for a picture with the trophy. In turn I hope that that will inspire a future generation of boys and girls to get involved.
In addition to the RFU’s activities, others are using the tournament to promote their own legacy objectives. In one of the host cities, Exeter, all pupils from reception to year 2, across 23 primary schools, are receiving a “My First Rugby Ball” book, promoting rugby’s morals and values while increasing interest in the sport. The city has held an economic business benefits conference, established a cash for communities legacy fund and launched a healthy lifestyle initiative with Devon county council. These may be initiatives my hon. Friend’s own local council might want to pick up with Exeter to see if it can replicate them.
Those of us in government are also keen to drive a strong legacy from the rugby world cup. UK Trade & Investment and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have plans in place to ensure that the many influential visitors we are expecting from important partner nations receive a warm welcome, and that we maximise the economic and political benefits to the UK. This will include a UKTI-led business festival, which will see events across the regions ensuring the positive effects of the tournament reach every corner of the country. The 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games showed how legacy plans that are devised well in advance and implemented by a range of partners working together can pay huge dividends, including £14.2 billion in economic benefits through trade and investment.
There has been a large increase in sport participation since 2005, but I am concerned that the Active People survey shows recent falls in participation numbers among those aged 14 and over, including in rugby. I am therefore especially keen to see participation in rugby increase off the back of the rugby world cup.
The wider issue of participation is something that the Department is currently consulting on. This will lead to a new strategy for sport, the first such strategy for 13 years. This is not the time to go into detail about the strategy, but I encourage everyone who cares about sport, including rugby, to take part in the consultation, which closes on 2 October.
I thank my hon. Friend for drawing the House’s attention to this important event. I am sure that everyone here today will join me in wishing those taking part in and organising the event the best possible success over the next few weeks. I am confident we will be celebrating the tournament’s legacy long into the future.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Statements
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Regional Growth Fund
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise (Anna Soubry)
Today I am announcing the publication of the Regional Growth Fund (RGF) 2014-15 annual monitoring report.
The progress made by the Regional Growth Fund in 2014-15 is set out in the publication of the annual monitoring report. This is the third RGF annual monitoring report. It covers rounds 1-5, including projects funded under the exceptional RGF, up to 31 March 2015. The report focuses on the delivery of RGF investment, jobs created and safeguarded by the RGF, and private sector investment leveraged.
Nine hundred and twenty four million pounds of RGF support reached companies in 2014-15. This brings the total funding paid by RGF to £1.53 billion, which has leveraged £4.63 billion in private sector investment. As of 31 March 2015, RGF beneficiaries had delivered 141,000 monitored jobs.
As well as reporting on the outcomes achieved against those operational projects and programmes, we are also publishing a list of 16 projects and programmes that have withdrawn since the last annual monitoring report.
Bidders may withdraw a project or programme for a number of reasons. Commonly these include global market conditions; realisation through the due diligence process that the project could not be supported (including on state aid grounds); and changes in senior management or parent company strategy.
A list of bids that withdrew during the 14-15 reporting year is below.
No. | Round | Name of beneficiary |
|---|---|---|
1 | eRGF | North Sails |
2 | 2 | Bentley Motors Ltd (R&D) |
3 | 2 | DI UK |
4 | 2 | Surgical Innovations Ltd |
5 | 3 | Sea Change Sussex |
6 | 4 | Avanti Communications Group plc |
7 | 4 | JDR Enterprises Limited |
8 | 4 | Marine Current Turbines Ltd |
9 | 4 | Sidcot Investments Limited |
10 | 5 | Absynth Biologics Ltd |
11 | 5 | Farnborough International Ltd |
12 | 5 | Gestamp Tallent Ltd |
13 | 5 | GT Energy UK Ltd |
14 | 6 | Arlington Wheels Limited |
15 | 6 | Conder Structures |
16 | 6 | S Cartwright & Sons (Coachbuilders) Limited |
I will be placing the report in the Libraries of the House. It will also be published online at: www.bis.gov.uk/rgf.
[HCWS188]
Emergency Services
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
The police, fire and rescue and NHS ambulance services play a vital role in serving and protecting our communities. The Government are committed to ensuring that they continue to deliver for the public and believe greater collaboration between the services is fundamental to this ambition.
We know that where the emergency services already collaborate, they can deliver efficiencies and service improvements. The Government have already invested over £70 million in local blue light collaboration projects. However, despite some good local examples, the overall picture on emergency services collaboration is patchy and we must do more to improve the position.
I am clear, as are the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and the Secretary of State for Health, that the emergency services should be accountable to the communities they serve. In keeping with the Government’s broader approach to the devolution of powers to local people, we want to ensure that the public has a real say in the way that emergency services are delivered in their area. Directly elected Police and Crime Commissioners can provide this, with their clear local accountability and strong incentive to pursue ambitious reform to improve local services and deliver value for money in the interests of the people they serve.
We have today published a joint Home Office, Department for Communities and Local Government and Department for Health consultation paper to seek views on proposals to improve joint working between the emergency services and provide local accountability. The consultation paper proposes:
introducing a high level duty to collaborate on the three emergency services to improve efficiency and effectiveness;
enabling Police and Crime Commissioners to take over governance of their local fire and rescue authority, where a local case is made;
where a Police and Crime Commissioner takes on the responsibilities of a fire and rescue authority, enabling him or her to create a single employer for police and fire staff, facilitating the sharing of back office functions and streamlining management;enabling Police and Crime Commissioners to be represented on fire and rescue authorities, in areas where such authorities remain in place;
bringing fire and rescue services in London under the direct responsibility of the Mayor of London by abolishing the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority; and
encouraging local ambulance foundation trusts to consider their engagement with their local Police Crime and Commissioners and whether to have Police and Crime Commissioner representation on their council of governors.
The consultation ends on 23 October 2015. A copy of the consultation paper has been placed in the Library of the House.
Our public services need to continue to adapt and innovate to carry on delivering the world-class services that communities deserve. We strongly believe that greater collaboration and closer working is the best way for the emergency services to achieve this.
[HCWS191]
Justice and Home Affairs Pre-Council Statement
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
An extraordinary meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Council will be held on 14 September in Brussels. The presidency has convened this meeting in a response to a joint request I made with the French and German Interior Ministers when we met in Paris on 29 August. I will attend on behalf of the United Kingdom.
The meeting has been convened by the Luxembourg presidency of the Council of the European Union in response to the growing migration crisis currently facing the European Union. The meeting will cover the whole migration agenda and aims to assess the situation on the ground, the political actions under-way and to discuss the next steps in order to strengthen the European response.
The meeting will also hold an initial discussion on the European Commission’s most recent proposals to address the EU migration issue, including its proposals on the relocation of asylum seekers, set out by President Jean-Claude Juncker in his State of the Union speech on 9 September.
[HCWS189]
Youth Justice
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Michael Gove)
In recent years we have seen a significant and welcome reduction in the number of young people entering the youth justice system. However, little progress has been made in reducing reoffending, with 67% of young people leaving custody reoffending within a year.
The time is right to examine our approach to tackling youth offending. We need to consider whether the current system, which was created in 2000, remains able to meet the challenges we face in 2015.
It is vital that we seize the opportunity to rehabilitate young people who have offended, to steer them away from a life of crime, and to set them on a more positive course which will benefit both them and society.
For this reason Charlie Taylor will lead a departmental review of the youth justice system. Charlie is the former Chief Executive of the National College of Teaching and Leadership, the former head teacher of an outstanding school for children with complex behavioural, emotional and social difficulties, and an expert in managing young people’s behaviour. His experience and expertise in working with children with severe behavioural difficulties give him a real understanding of the wider challenges in preventing youth offending, and I am confident he will bring a fresh perspective and energy to the task.
As part of the review Charlie will look at the evidence and current practice in preventing youth crime and rehabilitating young offenders; he will explore how the youth justice system can most effectively interact with wider services for children and young people; and he will consider whether the current arrangements are fit for purpose.
The review will report in the summer of next year.
The terms of reference for the review will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
[HCWS190]
House of Lords
Council Tax Valuation Bands Bill [HL]
Lord Marlesford (Con)
My Lords, it is one of the great privileges of being a Member of your Lordships’ House to be able to initiate legislation through Private Members’ Bills. It is even better to be able to get one’s Bill debated, but that is now a matter of luck. I introduced this Bill in the previous Parliament but it never got to the top of the queue for a Second Reading. This time I was lucky in the ballot, with my Bill coming seventh out of 42 Bills. So, of course, I am now a supporter of House of Lords reform—at least as far as procedure goes.
Let me say straight away what this Bill is not. It is not a new system of local government taxation. The Bill seeks, quite simply, to update the system of council tax in England. I emphasise England because, as drafted, it covers Scotland and Wales and, as they are covered by devolution, my first amendment would be to confine it to England.
Local government taxation has always been a tricky matter. The old rating system fell into disrepute, as had the schedule A income tax on imputed rental value of owner-occupied housing, which was the system from 1918 to 1952. The 1990 poll tax lasted rather less time; it was, of course, a political disaster for the Tory party. In 1993 it was replaced by council tax, introduced by my noble friend Lord Heseltine. It has served us well, but it needs refreshment. Five years of coalition government did nothing to help. I suspect that we will hear from the Minister that this Conservative Government will oppose my Bill, but that they have nothing new to offer either.
My Bill does not seek to change the two basic principles or the design of the council tax. Those principles are: first, to divide residential properties into eight bands of value labelled A to H; and, secondly, to apply a different level of taxation to each band with progressive levels of taxation for each band.
In 1991 the bottom band A was for properties worth up to £40,000 and the top band H for those worth more than £320,000. Those are the same today. The ratio of tax was set at the figure of six for band A and 18 for band H. For some arithmetical reason, six was chosen to start with. Thus the most expensive properties paid, and still pay, three times those of the lowest value. There are some differences between the rates at which different local authorities level council tax, but they are not very great overall. Give or take a couple of hundred pounds, band A properties attract council tax of about £1,000 a year. Thus the most expensive of all properties attract only about £3,000 a year. This is, I believe, no longer either fair or publicly acceptable.
It was, indeed, endless bad publicity for the small amount paid by those buying properties for many tens of millions of pounds that tempted the Lib Dems into inventing their mansion tax, which was a wealth tax on only one form of asset. The Lib Dems wisely dropped it; Mr Miliband unwisely scooped it up. He made much of it during the election campaign. Practically every desirable policy from health to education was to be financed from this miraculous pool of wealth. My Labour friends tell me that it did them little good on the doorstep. Many marginal Labour voters, who individually would have been most unlikely to reach the £2 million mansion tax threshold, rejected what they saw as a vindictive “soak the rich” policy.
There has long been a need to update the council tax to reflect current market values. The inhibiting factor has always been the task of revaluation: colossal in both cost and human resources, and controversial in that all valuations tend to be—must be—subjective and therefore result in expensive argument and dispute. The most accurate value of a property at any point in time is obviously the price actually paid for it. Fortunately we now have the Land Registry, one of the most efficient and respected public bodies in the whole public sector. Since April 2000 it has recorded all prices for the transfer of ownership of dwellings. Well over half of all dwellings are now on the register. The register is completely transparent.
My Bill does two things: it updates the prices in the bands and it increases the rate of progression. In the Explanatory Notes, which I hope your Lordships have with you, illustrative tables show the bands that I propose and the rate of progression that I suggest. I say at once that both the bands and the rates of progression are amendable as far as I am concerned. They merely represent my own view of what seems sensible, after quite a lot of consultation.
I have used the existing denominator—the ratio figure of six—as the starting point for band A, which would now cover properties of up to £250,000 in value. I have made band B properties up to £500,000. That will be slightly more progressive than the old system, at eight instead of seven, thus a 33% increase rather than 17% above band A. Thus, existing band A properties would continue to pay exactly the same—about £1,000—and band B would pay about £1,300. My suggestion is that it would get more progressive towards the top, with the new band H properties worth more than £20 million paying £42,000 council tax rather than the present £3,000. Again, I emphasise that this is not introducing a new element into the existing system, which has always been progressive and never made any attempt to limit the charge on expensive properties to any relative use made by households of local government services.
I also emphasise that my proposals are no more a wealth tax than is the present system. The £42,000 charge for band H is a mere 0.21% of £20 million, while £8,000 is a mere 0.16% of £5 million. We were never really told the details of the mansion tax, but at 1% on all properties worth more than £2 million, a £5 million property would have paid £50,000 a year and a band H property would have paid £200,000 a year. There may be some danger that stamp duty, to some extent increased to meet public concerns, may be becoming counterproductive to retaining London as a magnet for wealth, which we wish it to continue to be. Perhaps key to my Bill, enabling updating to be introduced in a timely manner, is Clause 1(2), which states that any property that has not been bought or sold since 1 April 2000 will continue to be subjected to council tax in exactly the same way as at present. All such properties would migrate to the new system of bands and charges when they change hands. Meanwhile, there will be two scales operating side by side.
To those who say that it is inequitable for similar properties to pay different rates of council tax I say only that there has always been a differential between the tax liabilities of similar properties that are in different locations, bought at different times and subject to different economic and social influences. The only way to counter that would be to revalue all properties, not only at frequent intervals but when any significant change affecting them took place. That could be anything from a development, a new road, mining, fracking, or even the waxing or waning of local schools—or perhaps a change of neighbours. But it would be quite impossible for officialdom to take account of all such factors. That is the job of the market, which is why tying council tax to the price actually paid for a property is sound economics.
A crucial point is that the purchaser of a property will know exactly what the financial implications are of a transaction. To some extent that would make market prices more realistic. There is good evidence that buyers already take account of stamp duty, as well as legal and financing costs, in what they are prepared to pay a seller. They would also want to take account of council tax bills. In this sense it is the seller who pays part of such costs.
I have had much encouragement after discussing the Bill with many colleagues. Sadly, not everyone has skipped back to enjoy the delights of a sunny Friday in September at Westminster. Three who are not able to be here but who have been particularly supportive of what I am trying to do are my noble friends Lord Lawson of Blaby and Lord Baker of Dorking and the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell.
In summary, I am proposing a practical, cost-effective and much overdue refurbishment of council tax. It will use up-to-date values of houses as determined by the market and recorded by the Land Registry. Those who live in modest dwellings will pay no more than they do now. It will increase considerably but not excessively the contribution to local government revenues from the most expensive houses, especially in the London area. There will be no need for widespread and costly bureaucratic revaluations. I beg to move.
Lord Flight (Con)
My Lords, the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, for reforming council tax valuation bands strike me as inherently sensible and fair. I am surprised that none of the political parties has taken up this model.
It seems to me ridiculous that for a long time the top valuation bands in London have started at a value of a mere £320,000, when, in Kensington, you can get little more than a garage for that money, and the difference between the amounts paid at the top and bottom bands is far too small in relation to the values of the properties and, indeed, the potential local authority services being used. The existing difference in council tax bills between modest and grand houses is, as I say, far too small, and so greater rate progression is justified. In addition, very large houses often have more people living in them, and to the extent that council tax is there to finance local authority services, they are burning up more of those services.
It was very clever of the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, to take April 2000 as the cut-off date and, as he said, make it possible, on a going forward basis, to use the purchase prices recorded in the Land Register and save all the hassle of valuation and revaluation in the future. I do not see any great problem in leaving pre-April 2000 dates of purchase properties with the old rate. Over time, obviously, it will change to the new rate as ownership changes and people move on or die.
Council tax is also a cheap and easy way to collect tax. I would be interested to know whether the arithmetic of the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, means that local authorities would become virtually self-financing, which I think is also extremely desirable. Should the same formula be applied to Greater London as to the rest of the country, when house prices in the Greater London area are clearly wildly in excess of those outside London? At the end of the day, the size and luxury of the accommodation are what matter. It is debateable whether the noble Lord’s proposed progression arithmetic of increasing the ratio between the lowest and the highest band from three to 42 is right. Arguably, it might be a little too high. It might be an idea to, as it were, cap the maximum that is payable, but those are only minor points.
However, my major quid pro quo or proviso concerns stamp duty. Irrespective of whether these changes are made, there is, in any case, as a matter of principle, a need to reduce stamp duty rates. The reform of the slab effect is fine but stamp duty bills in London are now far too high and are already considerably damaging turnover in the market. In many parts of central London a fairly ordinary family home with a garden now costs in the order of £3 million, and the stamp duty bill is £117,750—a cash cost. It is no wonder that everyone is digging out their basements or adding another floor to their houses because that is a lot cheaper than moving house. This situation may also discourage older citizens from trading down as they incur a substantial stamp duty cash cost.
It may sound as if I am shedding crocodile tears for the more fortunate. However, it is bad enough that young professionals in London have to borrow huge sums and mortgage their future to buy somewhere decent to live, but the addition of stamp duty cash costs means that they cannot afford to move to a larger house as and when they have a family and need more space and, they hope, a garden. The top rates of 10% and 12% are self-evidently too high and are a rip-off. They make even lawyers’ charges look cheap. Unbelievably, you do not get much in central London for £1.3 million, but the stamp duty at that level is £36,000. That means that those whose career requires them to move around the country cannot move their families as they cannot afford the cash cost of such large stamp duty bills. Therefore, you get the unsatisfactory situation whereby someone rents a room near where they work and leaves their family a long way away, and often the marriage breaks up as a result. That is unfair. Teachers are particularly hit by this situation. How on earth they can afford to pay these stamp duty bills on their remuneration I cannot imagine.
From a practical point of view, I also suggest that the Government have their estimates and calculations wrong of the level at which to pitch stamp duty to optimise revenues. I think they did the same thing with the CGT changes. The present charges are already reducing significantly the volume of transactions. A recent analysis by Knight Frank showed that sales of £1 million-plus properties were down 21% in the year to this April. In addition, it is a discriminatory tax on those living in London. While Greater London transactions accounted for 13% of the total, Greater London stamp duty revenues in the first quarter of this year were nearly half of the national total, so this tax is silently affecting major redistribution from London and the south-east to other parts of the country. From a purely practical point of view, it would be sensible to pitch stamp duty charges at a level that at least optimises revenues rather than at a level which, Laffer curve-like, potentially reduces revenues as well as messing up the market.
The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, is absolutely on the right track. It is necessary and fair to move in that direction, but it needs to be accompanied by some sensible reductions in the rates of stamp duty.
Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Marlesford on having secured time for this Bill and on his tenacity, as he managed to use the cities Bill in July to give us an amuse-bouche and almost a forerunner of his speech today. I also congratulate him on his bravery, as the story associated with anybody who has tampered with, or sought to amend, property taxes is not a very happy one. I suspect that my noble friend the Minister will, in her very charming way, want to give this Bill a very wide berth indeed.
I wish to highlight two of the points that my noble friend Lord Marlesford made which I think are important and will not go away. The first is the anomaly whereby, especially in London, the very expensive houses and properties of bankers, hedge fund managers and oligarchs, costing millions of pounds, are taxed at the same rate as the modest homes of people with much more modest jobs and earnings. My noble friend is right to examine how the bands can be extended to make those living in more expensive properties pay a fairer share of the cost of local government. If one of the canons of taxation is fairness, he is right to draw attention to that aspect.
The other point I want to highlight is how property should be valued; my noble friend raised this question. At the moment it is valued on valuations going back 25 years. It would be absolutely absurd if the rates of income tax were levied on the incomes earned 25 years ago. He has found a very ingenious way of dealing with this problem.
At some stage in the future, both those points will have to be dealt with. As I said, Governments are understandably badly scarred by property tax reform and they will no doubt delay dealing with this, but at some point it will have to be dealt with. The longer that takes, the greater the danger that the council tax system will fall into disrepute, as have other local government taxes in the past, and that when the adjustments have to be made, they will be even more painful than they need have been.
I congratulate my noble friend on having brought this Bill to the attention of the House and having highlighted what I think are really important points.
Lord Desai (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, on not only having secured a date for his Bill but having done it on his birthday, which is a rare achievement. The best compliment I can pay him about his Bill is that I wish I had thought of it myself.
We have had Prime Ministers fall on the question of appropriate property taxation. Your Lordships will remember that when we were trying to remove the rates, there were stories of little old ladies in large houses living next door to another house where there were four adult men working full time, and what a great injustice the rates caused. There were not enough old ladies in large houses in the census but that was the propaganda and therefore we moved to the community charge, or poll tax. The poll tax became a complete disaster but it happened because of the reluctance of politicians of all parties to revalue property according to what the market was doing. People who swore by the market—who had always sworn by the market—and encouraged property-owning democracy, and congratulated themselves when house prices were rising, refused to pass it on into taxation. That anomaly caused the loss of Mrs Thatcher and then when the new Government tried to do the council tax, my party—which used to listen to me in those days, long gone—asked me if I could think of an alternative. I racked my brains but I did not come up with anything as good and radical as the noble Lord has done.
This is an excellent Bill because it restores progressivity to property taxation. We do not have much progression when it comes to wealth taxation but he has at least restored it here—if the Government accept it, which I very much doubt because we already heard the noble Lord, Lord Flight, crying copious tears about people living in merely £3 million houses who are struggling to make ends meet; no doubt these sorry tales of the poor rich will multiply. But I hope the Government have the courage—they have the majority, they have the numbers and I am sure my party would try only to make it more radical, not less radical—to seize this opportunity and go ahead and do it.
The most brilliant part of the noble Lord’s suggestion is that rather than having any official revaluation committee, he is relying on the market to do the revaluation. By protecting people who have not sold a house since 2000, he is protecting the people who are vulnerable and have not moved out; they might be elderly and they do not want to. This is a humane, progressive, radical and economically intelligent Bill—a rare thing. It is so rare that it may not get government support but I urge the Government to support the noble Lord.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure and a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Desai, who speaks in the midst of a sea of Conservative Back-Benchers. It is not the first time that the noble Lord’s enthusiasm for the solitary has embraced me. During the 2001 general election, he was the only Peer in a British IPU delegation to a great jamboree in Havana to dance the salsa. I fear neither my noble friend Lord Fowler nor myself followed him in that experience.
This is going to be a brief speech for reasons irrelevant to this Bill but since a Second Reading debate is on the principle of the Bill in question, I wanted to support my noble friend Lord Marlesford. I was one of the relatively few Members of your Lordships’ House present just over eight weeks ago when the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, launched the dress rehearsal for this debate with her Amendment 75A to the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill on 15 July, as my noble friend Lord Sherbourne has already mentioned. That Bill was in the charge of my noble friend Lady Williams of Trafford, who of course is here today to respond for the Government.
The subject of the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, was broadly the same as today’s—council tax bands—and would have committed the Secretary of State to consult with local authorities before laying,
“before each House of Parliament a report on the introduction of additional higher bands of council tax in England for the areas of combined or local authorities which may assume additional functions under the provisions of this Act”.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, alluded in her remarks to my noble friend Lord Marlesford’s creative endeavours in this area, and he immediately followed her; he was immediately followed by my noble friend Lord True, who is speaking today as well. There is a marked overlap of dramatis personae in these matters.
I am not proposing to retrace our steps on that terrain today—they occurred in a somewhat different context and anyone who was not present can read the debate for themselves. My noble friend Lady Williams of Trafford made it clear in her response that she would reserve her comments on our noble friend Lord Marlesford’s speech until today. Her remarks were understandably less than the full exposition of Her Majesty’s Government’s case to which we look forward today.
I support my noble friend Lord Marlesford today because his Bill is characteristic of his admirable trait of getting inside a genuine issue that for a variety of reasons has not received the recent scrutiny it deserves. Other examples of his persistence are outside the scope of this debate but they all occur in a manner directly reflecting the essence of this Chamber’s function as a scrutinising and revising body, and he deserves the approbation of your Lordships’ House at large. He has defined the problem in an admirably comprehensive speech. He has also sought to present imaginative and ingenious legislative remedies which would ameliorate a state of affairs that will deteriorate further if a searchlight is not shone upon it.
I can guess the outline of the Government’s case, which I suspect will owe not a little to the legendary Fabius Maximus Cunctator. I am happy to serve as a member of the infantry in my noble friend’s troop of interested supporters, and this debate, whatever the outcome, will have been a very worthwhile illumination of an issue that will fester unhelpfully if it is not further attended to. In the mean time, we are all in my noble friend Lord Marlesford’s debt.
Lord Wasserman (Con)
My Lords, I support the Motion proposed by my noble friend Lord Marlesford that the Bill be read a second time. As it is a very short Bill, I propose to keep my comments very short, too. As my noble friend Lord Brooke has already pointed out, my noble friend Lord Marlesford has a well-deserved reputation for identifying bits of our administrative arrangements which are in need of updating, either to take account of changed economic and social circumstances or new technology, or simply because the world has moved on and we look at things in a different way. Our statute books contain several examples of what I call Marlesford modifications, aimed at making our bureaucracy more cost-effective and our society fairer. This Bill is his latest contribution to this campaign.
Although it carries the innocuous and, dare I say it, rather tedious title of Council Tax Valuation Bands Bill, which sounds very much like something out of a “Monty Python” sketch, it is in fact a very ingenious Bill with wide-ranging implications. As the noble Lord, Lord Desai, pointed out, it is also very radical because it proposes that those who own the most expensive properties should pay not three times more in council tax than those who live in the least expensive, as is now the case, but 42 times as much.
Is 42 the right number? This is clearly a matter of opinion. I am not going to try to defend it or any other set of ratios set out in Clause 1(3). Debates about numbers and ratios are best left for Committee, when the real experts in the intricacies of council tax collection—of whom I am definitely not one—will no doubt have plenty to say. However, I welcome the progressive nature of the Bill’s proposals, particularly at the higher ends of the scale, and believe that they are much more in keeping with the spirit of the times than our present arrangements, whereby those at the top pay only three times as much as those at the bottom. Those arrangements are simply no longer defensible in a world where fairness has become a basic principle across the whole political spectrum.
The Bill is concerned with more than simply increasing the progressivity of the council tax system so as to achieve greater fairness. It makes two other ingenious, important and very sensible proposals. The first is that council tax bands should reflect more accurately the actual values of the properties being taxed. As has already been pointed out several times this morning, the present bands were set as at 1 April 1991, which is almost 25 years ago, when a property worth more than £320,000—the beginning of the top band—was something to behold. I noticed the other day that there is a property for sale in Smith Square, which is very convenient for Members of your Lordships’ House. It is on the market now for £25 million, although I will admit that it contains a gym, a jacuzzi and a lift. Is it sensible that that property should be lumped in the present band H, with all other properties valued at more than £320,000? Is it fair that the purchaser of this property should pay no more than three times as much in council tax as someone who owns a property at the very bottom of the scale?
It seems obvious that the property values used to assess council tax should reflect the situation in the real world. Here is where the Bill’s third ingenious and sensible proposal comes in. The main argument against revaluing all properties in England for council tax purposes is one of cost. In our so-called age of austerity this is indeed a powerful argument but, as has been pointed out several times already, the Bill deals with this objection by proposing that the new property values used for assessing council tax should be taken from the land register—that is, from the list of actual property transactions recorded under the Land Registration Act 2002, rather than being produced as the result of a massive revaluation of the kind completed 25 years ago. I have no doubt that those who know much more about this subject than me will tell us in Committee why this proposal is fraught with administrative and technical difficulties—but that is what Committee is for. For these reasons, I urge your Lordships to give the Bill a Second Reading.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I guess that I speak for the away team and, in so doing, I declare an interest as leader of a local authority. I make no apology in following my noble friend by saying that the technicalities and administrative details of measures matter and that your Lordships’ House is very good at considering precisely those things. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Marlesford on bringing the Bill forward but if it proceeds to Committee, as I am sure your Lordships will intend and which I think would be an excellent idea, we shall want to look at those details.
I start on a more general note as this is Second Reading. My noble friend Lord Marlesford and I come from the same stable, as indeed does my noble friend Lord Sherbourne: the Conservative research department. My noble friend Lord Brooke did so as well, I believe.
Lord True
Sorry, my noble friend’s father—I apologise. Anyway, we are interested in policy and it is absolutely true that what my noble friend Lord Marlesford has come up with has some ingenious aspects.
When you think about policy, you need to think about what you are trying to achieve. One effect of reforming a tax might be to raise more revenue. I noticed from the noddings on the other side at the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Desai, that there is certainly some interest in the possibility of raising more tax from the better off by this mechanism. Personally, I would like to hear of a little more ingenuity in reducing spending. I do not think that my noble friend was after raising more revenue overall.
The second reason might be redistributive. Actually, if you want to redistribute money from the wealthy to poorer people, there are far more effective methods than working through bricks and mortar; you go directly to income and the pay packet. That is a well-tried mechanism. Another motivation might be—I have heard a lot about this in this debate—some sort of mild embarrassment about the fact that wealthy people live cheek-by-jowl with people not so well-off: a distaste for the privileges of substantial wealth, one of which might be property.
We are getting a rather confused approach in the way that policy is going at the moment. Do we want to have wealthy people or do we not? I follow very much my noble friend Lord Flight’s remarks about stamp duty. We have lately seen a reform of child benefit, which has effectively been withdrawn from those earning over £60,000 a year— not necessarily the way I would have reformed child benefit, but it is done and I am perfectly content with it. On the pension side, we want to reduce privileges for those earning more than £150,000. Meanwhile, before the Recess, we had a measure in your Lordships’ House proposing unlimited free childcare on the ratepayers for people earning up to £5 million, £10 million or £20 million a year. Indeed, we pay for free school meals for the five and six year-old children of people of unlimited wealth—a policy which overall costs the country more than £1,000 million a year. So we have a slightly confused view in different areas of policy on whether or not we want to get after wealthy people.
The trouble with going after property, as others have indicated, is that it is an imperfect measure of what is actual wealth now. Income and property value do not always coincide. This is a point which others have alluded to and which we can look at in Committee, but I say to my noble friend that this is written as a retrospective measure. Anyone now living in a property which had been bought or sold since 2000 would suddenly find, on the passing of this Bill, that their council tax went up overnight if they were at the upper end in parallel to the other measure. We would be introducing a new taxation system based on the values of up to 15 years ago in place of one based on the values of up to 23 years ago. I do not know whether that is what is intended but it looks to me to be retrospective.
I believe that property taxes in this country are relatively high in international terms. There are good economic arguments, as the noble Lord, Lord Desai, said, for raising them if we wish to. It is absolutely correct to say that stamp duty in the south-east, and in London in particular, is counterproductively high, and one would not wish to add another disincentive effect by setting council tax levels too high and discouraging people from moving. Inheritance tax, contrary to the sleight of hand of my right honourable friend the Chancellor, is scheduled to go on rising—the take from it will rise by 50% in the survey period, whatever you see in the headlines. So property is quite heavily taxed, particularly at the higher level, but that is not necessarily a reason to address reform in itself of a tax which, I remind noble Lords, is about paying for council services. It is not a surrogate wealth tax or a surrogate mansion tax; it is designed to pay for council services. That is another philosophical issue that we need to consider.
In the detail of the Bill is an extremely ingenious proposal to put the Valuation Office Agency out of business—and, as a good Tory, I can certainly follow that. Measuring values when properties change hands in any reform is a very ingenious proposal. Many properties of course change hands not on sale but on succession: they change title when somebody dies, and the value is registered through the IHT system. The Bill would seem to include that form of succession, so the higher council tax would immediately bite on the carer of an older person who had died. The definition in the Bill is “bought or sold”, and whether that includes inherited needs to be clarified in Committee. A lot of people who are living together and who already fear the impact of inheritance tax will be interested in that aspect, which is something to probe in Committee.
I do not want to tire the House too much, but we need to look at the impact of the measures in Committee. It is certainly fiercely redistributive, as my noble friend has said, within local authority areas. The dampening effects within the council tax system would lower band D in an area such as mine with a large number of higher-value properties.
What then is the impact on the authority as a whole? Normally, the grant system would adjust itself to account for the impact of changes in council tax and would claw back the kind of windfall gains that some authorities might get. If this came in, it would probably have the effect of my authority getting a negative grant and having to pay the Treasury money. Some might support that. Before Committee, for the convenience of the House and my noble friend, I will run a council tax model through our computer on this basis and see what impact it would actually have. I do not think that every Government would compensate local authorities for the possible effect on their area of this change in the system. There is therefore a risk that people across the financial board might lose money if Governments claw money back.
Although the suggestion is ingenious and the mechanism is particularly interesting, I am concerned about the retrospective effect. As other noble Lords have said, we have to look carefully at what the impact of the new bands might be and whether the levels are right. There are irrationalities in council tax, as there are in every form of local taxation. Unless central government deals with it, there are basically only three ways of doing it: a local income tax, direct charges for services or a levy on property. At the moment we have a sort of mix. I personally think the balance overall is not too bad at present. My noble friend’s Bill is certainly worth considering, but would I go forward with it without considering very carefully in Committee the specifics of some of the issues that I have raised more broadly? On balance, I would probably leave it, but I would want to investigate further whether we could make savings through the Valuation Office Agency issue.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, for bringing his Private Member’s Bill to your Lordships’ House today. I declare an interest as an elected member of Lewisham Borough Council in London. I am unable to give the noble Lord the full support of the Opposition today, but I wish him and his Bill well. I think we can all agree that there is an issue, and this is an important part of the discussion in seeking to resolve matters. I agree with the noble Lords, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville and Lord Wasserman, about the noble Lord’s creative endeavours and his ability to get a grip on issues that may not have been looked at for some time.
As my noble friend Lord Desai said, the council tax was introduced to replace the poll tax, the very unpopular form of local taxation that the Conservative Government introduced in 1989, first in Scotland and then in England and Wales. As we all know, it led to Mrs Thatcher being deposed as Prime Minister and replaced by John Major. If I am correct, it was the first policy announcement he made: he immediately said in the other place that the poll tax was to be scrapped. The council tax is how local people pay for the services they receive from their local authority or authorities, which include housing, social services, transport, policing, and fire and rescue services. However, it covers only part of the cost, with the rest of the money coming from central government through grants and other forms of funding.
As the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, outlined, properties are allocated one of eight bands, coded by the letters A to H, on the basis of an assumed capital value as of 1 April 1991. There are discounts for single people and other exemptions where properties are unoccupied. The noble Lord, Lord Flight, has a point about the narrowness of the bands, particularly in London, something which was also mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman. However, my experience in Lewisham suggests that we would certainly not be self-financing on the basis of these changes.
The previous Labour Government did not proceed with a revaluation, and I am sure part of the reason for that was the effect on poorer families. The coalition Government also did not proceed with a revaluation, and I suspect this Conservative Government are going to do exactly the same thing. The point of the noble Lord’s scheme is that it does not require a revaluation but would instead deal with the issue as properties are sold. The problem that I have is that I do not want people, particularly people struggling to make ends meet, having to take on extra costs that they would not otherwise have to pay. That of course would be the effect if this Bill became law.
As a councillor in Lewisham, I was delighted that we froze our council tax this year. I believe I am correct in saying that we have frozen our council tax in all but one of the last four years, but that was before I became a member of the authority. I hope we are able to continue to freeze our council tax for many years to come.
If the Bill manages to get some time in Committee, it will be possible, through probing amendments, to see how it could be improved and the idea put forward by the noble Lord explored further in debate. The noble Lord, Lord True, made that very point about dealing with these matters in Committee. We can also look at this in terms of policy development for local government, and one thing that I will want to look at is the whole question of value for money. I am concerned about the value we get in local government when tendering out services. There is an issue there in terms of the cost that local government actually pays. I fully support wealth creation—we all need wealth creators, because they provide the tax that we need to pay for our public services.
The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, mentioned the proposed mansion tax when introducing the Bill. One of the problems with the mansion tax is of course its application in London. With property prices ahead of many other parts of the country, family homes in London—often very nice ones—can be bought and sold for large sums of money, but they would not be, in anyone’s understanding, a mansion. That is a real problem.
One of the criticisms of the council tax is of course its perceived unfairness in not taking into account the ability to pay. Critics point out that although the capital value of a property in which a person lives might give some indication of the relative wealth of an individual, it does not necessarily relate to current income. On the other hand, benefits are available to reduce the amount of council tax paid—although we are all aware of the cuts there in recent years.
It is important to say in looking at any element of local government funding that the cuts that have been asked of local government have been difficult to absorb. Local government has risen to the challenge in recent years and delivered local services at a level that local people would expect, but that is becoming more and more difficult. I see that first hand in Lewisham, with the difficult decision that we had to take to balance our budget and deliver the best possible services with fewer resources.
I hope that the Bill gets some time in Committee for us to debate the matter further. The funding of local government is a complex area. I want fair funding for local authorities—fair for local people, fair for everyone involved, and getting the best possible value for money.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, first, I apologise to my noble friend Lord Marlesford and other Members of your Lordships’ House that I entered the Chamber after my noble friend had started speaking. I was in fact dealing with another matter of interest to him, but I apologise.
I thank my noble friend for setting out the purpose of his Bill, for his interest in the fairness of the council tax system, and for providing the Government with an opportunity to set out their position on the subject of council tax revaluation. I also congratulate him on giving a bit of a warm-up act during the passage of the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill, as other noble Lords mentioned, and wish him a happy birthday.
I know that these are matters about which my noble friend has been concerned for some time and I congratulate him on his determination to bring a Bill before this House. He will not be surprised to hear that the Government have reservations about the Bill, and I would like to explain them for the benefit of the whole House.
First, the Bill’s proposals would require the formation of a second council tax list based on Land Registry values, to which properties would transfer from the valuation list as they were sold, the start date being 2000. My noble friend envisages that eventually this would be the only property list for council tax. However, I fear that he overlooks the protracted transition period in which two parallel council tax lists are likely to require maintenance and use.
Not only would this extended period place a heavy and potentially complex administrative burden on those administering the tax but it would lead to confusion and an understandable sense of unfairness among taxpayers. Residents in similar houses on the same street could face radically different council tax bills purely on the basis of when they had bought their property. Council tax is used to pay for local services, and to charge one household significantly more or less than another according to arbitrary parameters set out in the Bill may rightly be considered unfair.
The use of Land Registry values throws up another issue. The provisions in this Bill would mandate the use of property values across a range of years going back to 2000. Placing properties in bands on the basis of different valuation dates does not strike me as particularly progressive. Indeed it leaves banding at the mercy of fluctuations in the market across time.
The Government believe that it is fairer and more consistent to have properties banded in a single list, on the basis of their value at a common date. The current council tax system already offers a means of updating a property’s band if it appears incorrect. Council tax payers have the right formally to challenge whether their home is in the correct band within six months of becoming liable for the council tax on a property for the first time. This council tax band may increase on sale if this operation is clearly understood by those selling and buying properties, and avoids an arbitrary distinction between pre-2000 properties and post-2000 properties. The band may also be changed to reflect significant changes in the locality—for example, if a motorway has been built nearby.
The other aim of the Bill is to make a very large adjustment to the council tax banding charge ratios. The suggested ratios show a steeper progression than those currently in place. On Report of the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill on 15 July, my noble friend accepted that the increase from band A to band B under his proposals would produce an increase of 33%, compared to only 17% under the existing arrangements. That does not strike me as an increase in fairness. At the top end of the scale, for the highest value properties, the tax paid would be 42 times the value of a band A property. I know that my noble friend may disagree, but that creates the very picture of a punitive mansion tax, penalising those households living in larger homes simply because they have been bought or sold since 2000. That is of course something which the Government have long opposed, and we see no reason to change our position.
Looking beyond the numbers, however, I remind my noble friend that council tax is intentionally not a wealth tax. It is not the domestic rates but rather a hybrid property and personal tax. It is a tax which aims to raise income for the council to help to fund services, taking account of the value of a person’s home and their personal circumstances. Local council tax support goes even further and takes account of their income. Council tax is deliberately not a version of the old domestic rates, and the use of bands, rather than point values, and the moderate ratios between bands reflect that as much as the inclusion of personal circumstances.
A number of noble Lords have talked about an additional band, band H, for expensive properties, and it seems an attractive proposition. It would cost less than a full revaluation and it would get at the highest-value homes. However, there are a number of logistical problems with such an approach, even beyond the principle that more bands are not needed.
The Valuation Office Agency does not hold specific information on the precise value of properties in any band, only that they fall within that band. It would therefore need to reach a view about the actual point value of properties before they could be ascribed a new band. It would need to undertake a substantial data enhancement exercise to ensure that its physical property data were sufficient for the task and undertake an analysis of sales evidence.
Newly valued properties could also be subject to appeals, causing lack of certainty for all involved. The revaluation in Wales in 2005 prompted overall appeal rates of about 5% of all properties. We would expect similar or increased levels of appeals following a revaluation and the implementation of a new band in England.
Although the above costs might not be huge, they are significant, and in a time when money is tight and households are hard pressed, such a voluntary cost is unacceptable for the marginal change that it would bring about.
However, the main issue for me with the idea of an additional band is that if we were to set in train a revaluation of one set of properties, it would be likely to raise questions about the integrity of other bands. Any change that creates a two-tier system will increase the sense of unfairness rather than diminish it, and, as I have explained, the Government have no intention of conducting a full revaluation during this Parliament.
Above all, we must bear in mind that, despite arguments set out today, there is no public clamour for change in the bands of council tax or for a new revaluation. Collection rates remain extremely high, at 97%, which does not create the picture of a population that considers it unfair and in need of fundamental reform.
Given the unfairness of the proposed changes to council tax and the logistical difficulties of implementation, I must express my reservations with regard to the Bill and reiterate the Government’s firm and abiding commitment to protecting hard-working taxpayers from the financial pressures of high council tax bills.
Lord Marlesford
My Lords, I thank everybody who was kind enough to take part in this debate. I very much appreciated the general feeling that it was worth proceeding along the sort of lines that I have been thinking on. I felt particularly encouraged by what the noble Lord, Lord Desai, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said: that it is worth considering in this way.
I was much more disappointed than I expected to be by what the Minister said. It was really rather sad. A lot of quite irrelevant points were made. I do not blame her; she was saying what she had been told to say. I quite understand the way that the system works.
I will not go into all the inaccuracies, but there is no question of forming a new band. Other points were made which we will discuss in Committee, because they are mainly Committee points.
The point about stamp duty is a valid one. I made it myself to some extent—I think that there is a need, as with all taxes, to get that balance right, as my noble friend Lord Flight said. My noble friend Lord Sherbourne gave a general welcome to the Bill, but he is right that we need to go into considerably more detail. It was good to be signed off on the economics of it by as distinguished an economist as the noble Lord, Lord Desai. He and I came into the House on the same day, in the same list. In those days, the great and the good were put here for what they had done, and there were others who had no particular merit but were put here for what they might do, and he and I were in that list. In those days, there were 10 a year of those people. The system has grown in rather a different direction in rather a large way since then.
I was very grateful for what my noble friend Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville said. We must progress it along the sorts of lines that he is talking about. My noble friend Lord Wasserman has considerable experience of the sorts of things that I am trying to do, in devising methods to improve technical aspects of government. In fact, one of his great achievements is the invention of the police and crime commissioner system, which is not relevant to the Bill but, despite what people say, is working extremely well, particularly in Suffolk, where I come from.
My noble friend Lord True knows an enormous amount about local government, and I take very seriously the points that he made. I do not think that there is an element of retrospection, in the sense that at any moment, when a system is introduced, it will apply to people in the form that it is introduced. Rather luckily, the date on which the Land Registry started to have its full record was April 2000, which means basically that—
Lord Trefgarne (Con)
I am sorry to interrupt, but if my noble friend would point forward, rather than addressing my noble friend Lord True directly, we could hear what he was saying.
Lord Marlesford
I am so sorry. It is rather fortunate that the date of 2000 was the date when the full Land Registry started, because that is basically before the big explosion in prices. Therefore, there would, in practical terms, be a very limited element of retrospection.
Lord True
I should explain retrospection, since my noble friend Lord Marlesford is on the point—and my noble friend on the Front Bench made the same point. What is proposed, if it is going to look back to anybody who bought a house before 2000, is to tax people on their past choices and on potentially capricious values. I do not think that that is a very fair way in which to proceed. In that sense, it is retrospective but, obviously, it would come into force and go forward.
Lord Marlesford
The point that I was trying to make on that is that, for many people already on the register, there would probably be very little difference in bands, because they would have bought their property before the big explosion. To be honest, I think that the people who had just bought a property at a huge price would be among those who I would be content to pay a much higher tax. So, yes, of course it would apply. Indeed, from now on until this measure comes into force, which I hope that it will, people will be able to say to themselves, “Well, if this comes into force, it will do so on the price that I am paying now”. Therefore, people can take it into account. I do not feel that the oligarch who bought a £20 million house in Smith Square with his jacuzzi and swimming pool can really have an enormous amount to complain about if he pays £42,000 rather than £3,000 in council tax. I think that he will be very pleased to be living in this country, with all the benefits that go with it, compared to his own country, perhaps, and pleased to pay that small ticket.
Most of these points need to be dealt with in Committee, but I would just say to my noble friend Lord True that yes, indeed, prices of houses are registered when ownership is transferred—and, indeed, death is a transfer. The valuation made in that case is, of course, made by a valuer. But the number of dwellings transferred at death are very few compared to those transferred by market transactions, so a valuation is required then. That value is often argued about with the capital taxes office, and all the rest.
Lord Flight
On both death and gifting, valuations are required for IHT and capital gains tax reasons, so it is going to happen automatically, anyway.
Lord Marlesford
Exactly, there are valuations in those cases. But there is a very big difference between doing it just for those and doing it for everything. The argument has always been that we cannot have a complete revaluation. The Minister used again that very old argument, which I reject, and I have tried to meet it by saying that, fortunately, we have the Land Registry and, fortunately, for well over half of dwellings at the moment, we have the actual prices that have been paid. As for the poorer people at the bottom of the market, very few people at that end will find that they pay a higher council tax. The movement in my banding from £40,000 to £250,000 would include virtually all the people in band A anyway—it is very unlikely that people would find themselves in band B. Quite a lot of the people currently in band B will remain in band B, because that goes up to £500,000. So there is a certain automatic adjustment from the price mechanism and the market in that respect.
I shall not continue now, because a lot of these points need to be studied in detail. I hope that the Government will show themselves perhaps a trifle more open-minded, rather than merely trying to produce old and jaded arguments and persuade some unfortunate Minister to put them forward for them. I ask the House to be graciously prepared to give this Bill a Second Reading.
Property Boundaries (Resolution of Disputes) Bill [HL]
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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The Earl of Lytton (CB)
My Lords, in outlining the Bill’s purposes, I have a particular interest to declare. First, I am a practising chartered surveyor, with involvement in the realms of boundary, title and party-wall matters. I chair my profession’s specialist panel in this area, and together we produce guidance notes for members. I am also a property owner—although, thankfully, without any current boundary disputes.
I must express my thanks and appreciation to a number of people, and first to Charlie Elphicke MP, whose original Bill was introduced in another place in 2012, which started all this rolling. I am most grateful to him for his advice and support. Secondly, I thank the group of what I might describe as the top five professional boundary practitioners, under the leadership of Andrew Schofield, FRICS, who took that earlier Bill away and substantially reworked it to produce the document before us today. I particularly single out Mr Schofield because he has been my adviser, mentor and supporter on many of the technical issues relating to this Bill. Thirdly, I must thank the staff of the Public Bill Office for their unfailing assistance and courtesy. Their help with preparing the Explanatory Notes has been frankly beyond price. Perhaps I should also thank Lady Luck, who has favoured my entry in the ballot, enabling me to introduce this Bill.
I also thank the Minister and his department for being ready to listen, even if they do not entirely buy the reasons why this Bill is needed, and, not least, I thank the Minister’s officials for meeting me yesterday at short notice. I note with appreciation and satisfaction the support of my professional body, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, and, in particular, I thank Mr Martin Burns of the RICS for his advice and encouragement. I thank the Pyramus & Thisbe Club, a learned society, mainly of surveyors but of other professions as well, which has a particular interest in this matter. It so happens that I am a member of that club. A number of individuals showed a positive interest in this. Finally, I express my fondest thanks to my wife for her patience about all the late nights when I have been dealing with this thing and have come home from the office or from this House late in the evening.
I look forward to the comments of the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. His late father was a great supporter of the Party Wall etc. Act, which I had the privilege of taking through your Lordships’ House in 1995-96. I very much look forward to what he has to say and to hearing the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, who has such extensive knowledge of the residential world, its foibles and its areas of conflict.
The fundamental premise behind this Bill is the undeniable fact that boundary issues are a matter of technical complexity and, as such, are most amenable to scrutiny by technicians first and foremost and to legal overview as a second stage. This Bill is intended to be in tune with the general direction of policy to reduce conflicts and provide alternative non-judicial means of resolving disputes. This is the broader public interest hook on which the Bill hangs. I know that the Minister and his department are very much aware of this. I hope he does not feel that I am trying to force the pace by this Bill having its Second Reading today; it just so happens that it is the date I was offered.
Any consideration of property boundaries brings with it considerations of title, but title is a legal construct based on the documentary and other paper evidence and in many cases is now registered at the Land Registry. However, on the ground, the proper interpretation of these factors is a matter of observation, identification, physical facts, measurement and cartographic or other documentary interpretation. This is a surveying task. For what is shown by a line on the registered title plan—plotted, as it is, on to a Ordnance Survey plan base—at best denotes the presence of a feature that a cartographer believed to be in the position shown, but it is entirely silent about what that feature is on the ground. Moreover, Ordnance Survey has a standard disclaimer that a line on a map does not reflect a legal boundary, just as the Land Registry has a standard proviso that the title plan accords with what is known as the general boundary rule. This rule ultimately boils down to little more than a plan for identification purposes, though invariably this is ignored by owners, who believe the title plan is to be taken literally. Therein lies part of the problem.
One may be lucky as a practitioner and find a more accurate pre-registration deed plan lurking somewhere, but one quickly runs into the legacy of hand-drawn or traced plans, plans not to scale, or plans defaced with overzealous outlining, subsequently photocopied and then re-coloured. This is a legacy issue, an historic failing of those involved with conveyancing at a time when, I am afraid to say, precise boundaries did not matter that much. Now, with more intensive uses of land, competing neighbour aspirations and high property values, it does matter, and often it matters very much indeed.
Practitioners, the judiciary, the professions, local government and public bodies all agree that boundary disputes are toxic. Evidence from Citizens Advice in correspondence with me reveals that last year it dealt with around 3,600 inquiries in England and Wales. Practitioners believe that with the cases they handle, usually via solicitors, the total may be in excess of 5,000 per annum, but I admit that no accurate records are kept. One well-known specialist practitioner recently advised that additional staff had just been taken on to deal with the increasing workload. Other practitioners share the view that the problem is growing.
Although there is, of course, access to forms of alternative dispute resolution, such as mediation, arbitration or adjudication, the parties to a property boundary dispute can very seldom be compelled to use them and even less to honour the spirit of the process. Furthermore, for voluntary ADR to work, it needs to be in the common and reasonably balanced interests of the respective parties—often even for voluntary agreement on the process to be reached, let alone on being bound by the outcome. There is seldom the necessary convergence of financial strength, commonality of motives or intended outcomes to make this a reality. Sadly, owners of property can be very defensive about boundary issues, which are often tied up with other matters: pets, trees, children, lifestyles, poor living conditions, poverty and maybe racial or cultural differences. Bad or uncertain title can be added to that rather heady mix.
The fact that it is difficult, expensive and, in terms of disposing of property, a serious barrier to transactions means that there are abuses, with some owners apparently wilfully ignoring the mores of polite society and being prepared to chance it to see what they can get away with or just in total denial that they might be in the wrong. A neighbour, realising that the defence of their property carries a high tariff, has to either accept the incursion or fight it to the bitter end.
Once parties start down the road of litigation, it very quickly becomes impossible to reverse the process because of the rapidly accumulating costs. These costs can quickly overtake the original issue to become the real bone of contention, and frequently dwarf many times over the economic value of the disputed land. I am inclined to give clients a bit of advice that the ferocity with which boundary disputes are pursued is in inverse proportion to the value of the land in question, and after many years I have no reason to resile from that advice. Because of the effects on transacting property subject to a dispute—effectively it is a block on being able to dispose of it—there is no retreat: a conclusion must be reached some way or other.
Practitioners’ experience is that a boundary dispute that goes to court is likely to cost on average in excess of £100,000. When coupled with the costs of the winning party, this can be ruinous for the loser, and most specialist practitioners are aware of cases where a party has been forced to sell their property to meet the bills. While it is, of course, a free world in which a fool and his money may be deemed to take their chance or be parted, I submit that it is also the duty of public law and administration to have such measures in place as will reduce, if not completely protect citizens from, such activity, if not their folly.
We also know that the civil courts cannot cope with present workloads and have been described in some quarters as sclerotic. Boundary cases in the courts typically take years to reach a conclusion. I think it was David Powell, FRICS, a well-known practitioner and technical author, who once remarked that when meeting a new client on a boundary case, he would warn that such disputes can be hugely expensive, so much so that for the same money one could have a very good family holiday in some delightful foreign spot or even construct a swimming pool in the back garden. He then added that the majority of clients ignored his advice, which is why he enjoyed many foreign holidays and had a large swimming pool. I give that as an anecdote. Citizens Advice’s recent email to me observed that many of its cases relating to planning also have a boundary element but are not included in its boundary inquiry figures. It is often in the planning and construction of home extensions that the need to know a boundary position with precision is most pressing. The definition of “title” has not kept up with this, or with advances in measurement and positional accuracy.
The views of the judiciary in some high-profile cases have been quite illuminating. In the case of Moncrieff v Jameson before the House of Lords in 2007, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott of Foscote, noted the regrettable and surely unnecessary falling out of neighbours who had lived in amity for many years. Lord Justice Sedley, in the Court of Appeal case of Strachey v Ramage in 2008, similarly observed how defective conveyancing has led to war being unnecessarily declared between neighbours, with costs that vastly exceeded the value of the land. The 1997 court case of Alan Wibberley Building Ltd v Insley induced Lord Justice Ward to lament the dread with which judges would greet the label “boundary dispute”. Later, in the same case before the House of lords, Lord Hoffman referred to them as a particularly painful form of litigation, with disproportionate amounts of money spent and claims often involving small and valueless pieces of land but,
“pressed with the zeal of Fortinbras’s army”.
So the Bill, or at any rate its principle, has the support of several key sectors. I suggest that it would have the following advantages. It would restrict occasions of conflict; reduce costs; lower the burdens on the courts; give greater certainty of outcomes; substantially reduce timeframes for resolution; provide a determinative conclusion; and retain ultimate redress on matters of law to the courts. It would also do the same for easements and rights of way. However, being based on the construct of existing land entitlement, it would not address or determine adverse possession cases, though it might clarify just how much of the possession was actually adverse. It seems to me that if the boundary is uncertain, you cannot log the degree of your adverse possession. As I said earlier, though, it is in line with the general thrust of public policy, which I know to be espoused by the Minister: that these cases should be kept out of the courts at all costs. It is a public interest issue of a pressing and apparent nature, and I believe that it can no longer be ignored.
The Bill is in effect largely enabling legislation, empowering the Secretary of State to make orders governing much of the finer detail. This is deliberate. The power is confined within the Bill’s purposes, so it would not afford a wider power—even less a Henry VIII provision—but it provides for future flexibility. It provides for boundary dispute cases to be referred to technical experts first, rather than to litigators. It would intercept certain existing cases before the courts as well as providing a trigger mechanism where, before action has been commenced, a boundary issue has arisen. It then provides for a dispute resolution process that is very similar to that in the Party Wall etc. Act 1996, which, as I have said, it was my privilege to take through your Lordships’ House at the time. That Act has been in force since 1997. It is believed that around 500,000 to 600,000 cases have been dealt with under its umbrella, and only about three cases of substance have proceeded to the senior courts and not many more than that to the county courts. It is a tried and tested formula in which surveyors are appointed and charged with objectively considering the issues and producing a document, known as an award, setting out their agreement and determination. On matters where they cannot agree, there is a third surveyor who will effectively act as a referee. The award so produced, by either the two surveyors or one or other of them, or the third surveyor, as the case may be, is appealable to the courts. So there is judicial oversight.
Unappealed awards, however, would require registration of the outcome with the Land Registry as a determined boundary. The determined boundary is a specific process, which means that, as opposed to the general boundary rule, the actual boundary in question—not necessarily the whole boundary of the property but the particular boundary—becomes part of the registered title, and any future purchaser has due notice of that. So it makes that boundary definitive for the purposes of the registered title, and the purpose of that is to avoid the case then resurfacing at some future date because of a change of ownership.
The Bill provides for the role of surveyor to be discharged by certain specified types of person. There are some precedents for this; for example, in some agricultural arbitrations the arbitration function has to be exercised by a chartered surveyor. The point is that the exercise of technical expertise in boundary matters must necessarily be done by someone with the requisite training, subject to continuous professional development and with a proper policy of indemnity insurance. Only professional bodies such as those referred to in the Bill encompass all of these and monitor them year on year.
To summarise: I believe that the Bill, or something like it, would defuse many potentially contentious situations; provide orderly and more predictable outcomes to cases that have become contentious; reduce costs; and substantially reduce timeframes from years to months. A typical party wall case, for instance, is normally dealt with in a matter of a few months, seldom running into years. More to the point, it would contain the risk and reduce the heartache, stress and bitterness of these often very emotive situations. I believe that the courts would thereby be freed up. It would prevent serious and protracted blocks on transacted property and, with that, the corrosive risks of attendant uncertainty. It would be flexible and, as I have suggested, reasonably future-proof.
There have been some criticisms of and comments on the Bill, and I will address one or two of them. First, it has been said that it would somehow cut across title issues. For the reasons I have already stated, I do not believe that that is the case. It has also been suggested that it is unnecessary, but I believe that I have made the case for its necessity, even though the numerical incidence of such cases may appear low in statistical terms. It has been suggested that the Bill would sit ill with adverse possession cases. Again, I do not believe that the Bill trespasses—if I can use that term—on that territory.
It has been suggested that there are other suitable forms of dispute resolution. Sadly, this does not seem to be the case because, as I say, the parties to a dispute cannot be obliged to use them or adhere to the outcomes. It has been suggested that the Technology and Construction Court, the judicial body to which the Bill proposes that an appeal be made, is not the appropriate forum for that. I have had some very helpful email correspondence with Judge Anthony Edwards-Stuart, who is in charge of the Technology and Construction Court. He said that it was not the right forum, but very helpfully suggested that perhaps the Bill might merely refer to a right of appeal to the High Court, leaving the Heads of Chancery and Queen’s Bench divisions to work out which court should actually deal with the appeal. I am very happy to accept that sound advice.
It has been suggested that the definition of “surveyor” may need tweaking—funnily enough, because it makes a technically incorrect reference to “engineers”. Again, I am very happy to tweak that and oblige by dealing with that in an amendment. I believe that these and other matters can be dealt with by amendment to the Bill. With that, I beg to move.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl on bringing the Bill to the House, the second in his suite of “neighbourly matters” legislation—the first being, as he said, the Party Wall etc. Act 1996, of which more in a second. I welcome the very clear reasoning that he has just set out.
Boundary disputes of course happen naturally and always will. Those who sit in tutorials learning Roman law at Oxbridge have to learn about them from several thousand years ago, and Citizens Advice has advised that last year alone it was giving advice on 3,700 such disputes. I dare say that there were many more.
The situation in England and Wales at the moment means that such disputes are extremely expensive to sort out and very slow. They give rise to blight on an affected property, and that blight is expressed both in the saleability of the property and in the ability to raise mortgage finance on it. They give rise to problems between what one might term big party property owners and small party property owners because the big party will be tempted by use of wallet to be, frankly, unfair to the small party, and abuses can and do happen. They also clog up the courts, about which I shall say more in a second.
I feel that the Bill is in line with a general policy in life of trying to provide better access to justice for people. It would speed things up and produce much lower costs. It would also blunt the abuse weapon, to which I have just referred, between larger and smaller parties.
I have much direct experience of the Party Wall etc. Act 1996, both as a private individual and corporately. At least two of the things that I have been involved in have become very contentious indeed. I feel that, after nearly two decades of it being in service, the one thing that one can say is that the mechanism provided under that Act really works well.
One party wall surveyor, who I think is the chairman of the Pyramus & Thisbe Club and who has been in practice for more than 25 years, told me proudly that he has never had to go to a third surveyor in his line of work. There is a very clear reason for that, which is that to be a successful surveyor you have to have as a core skill relationship management; otherwise, you simply will not get any clients. That ability to have relationship management is, I am sure, at the core of being able to bring together parties whose feelings often run very high and at the core of being able to get a deal done.
The noble Earl mentioned previous criticisms of efforts to bring forward legislation of this kind. There is one more criticism, which is that surveyors lack legal expertise. I think that is a weak point and I shall make three counterpoints, although there are more. The first is that, very often in these disputes, the issues are not legal but factual. A surveyor with gum-boots on is probably much better suited to facilitating a resolution in a dispute than someone sitting in a lawyer’s office.
The second point that I make in rebuttal is that surveyors can and do employ a lawyer if a legal point comes up. Indeed, in one of these very contentious cases that came up, precisely that happened. Both surveyors immediately wanted to instruct a lawyer on a very arcane point. Legal advice was taken and prepared, and the dispute was eventually resolved.
The third point concerns the judiciary. We have had various quotations and in fact the law reports are littered with interesting quotations from the judiciary about how little they enjoy boundary disputes. I have a quotation from Lord Justice Mummery in Bradford v James in 2008:
“There are too many calamitous neighbour disputes in the courts. Greater use should be made of the services of local mediators, who have specialist legal and surveying skills”.
He went on:
“Litigation hardens attitudes. Costs become an additional aggravating issue. Almost by its own momentum the case that cried out for compromise moves onwards and upwards to a conclusion that is disastrous for one of the parties, possibly for both”.
I think that the judiciary would certainly want to try to export a lot of boundary disputes to another method of resolution.
In summary, I agree very much with the noble Earl that the current arrangements produce disputes that go on for too long, are too expensive, are open to abuse—there are instances of abuse—and clog up the courts system. I have three very short questions for the Minister. First, does he agree that it is preferable to do something about this issue now than to let the status quo be? Secondly, does he agree that the Party Wall etc. Act mechanism has been a great success over its nearly two decades? Thirdly and accordingly, does he agree that such a mechanism could successfully be applied to other boundary disputes to the benefit of all?
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
My Lords, I declare at the outset my property interests, which are in the register.
I support the Bill for two reasons. One is that I think it is a very positive and good idea, and I like what is in it. The second is that I have huge respect for the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and his expertise in this field. I am a qualified dentist but I am not a qualified anything in terms of property, other than having experience of being a sufferer of people who argue about something and then it ends up in court. I found myself in a situation where, although the case was withdrawn and ruled to be completely out of order, my legal bills simply to have the case withdrawn and have it vanish from the list were horrendous.
Therefore, I support something that is practical and easy to operate, as well as being a system in which the public can have confidence, as I believe they can as there is a parallel with the party-wall procedures. I have never had any problem with party-wall procedures; I have found them very effective. I think that this country is tending more and more to push out smaller self-help systems in favour of putting us all into court. I am very opposed to that. The leasehold valuation tribunal, where you could take your case and you were told that it would not cost you more than £500, was thrown out. Now, it costs you much more than that even for an appearance. I understand that employment law has gone the same way in that you can no longer handle cases yourself. I think that there are many very good things about people being able to deal with their own cases with the benefit of help from someone such as a qualified surveyor, who is well qualified and understands the process. I believe that the public in general would be relieved to know where to go to get this sort of advice. The party-wall system is well known, and something similar, as proposed in the Bill, would definitely have a very good effect.
I am also delighted to speak after the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, because I served with his father for many years on the Woolwich Building Society board. I held him in very high regard, and I hope and trust that his successor has the same ability. From the sound of it, that seems very likely, and I hope that we will hear more from the noble Earl.
I like the fact that the Bill proposes the establishment of clear and simple processes. They can be understood by ordinary people in the street or by a neighbour who has a boundary issue with you. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, mentioned that people are terrified of getting involved in something where the costs are unlimited. People can even find themselves losing their properties after they have taken on a legal challenge. Qualified surveyors are respected and valued.
I think it was mentioned that there would be a code of practice, and I feel that that would be very important. Of course, the Government and Members of this House will probably have an opportunity to look at any code of practice that goes with the Bill, and it will be important to consider it in detail. However, it is the sort of thing that people are used to. They like to know that there are procedures that they can follow and understand. Technical procedures have a complexity, which the noble Earl mentioned, and therefore you need to know where to go to get the right advice. I stress that I very much support non-judicial means that work. If they do not work, you can find yourself in an expensive situation. However, by that time, you will know a little more about the situation and might be more willing to agree to something. I certainly believe that to be the case.
I do not intend to go on at great length because the issue is clear-cut and the proposal is good. The case has been presented in great detail by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. It is worrying that every politician seems to be pushing the public more and more into litigation. Instead, simple procedures such as that proposed would avoid much of that. It would also do away with the acrimony which it is terribly sad to see develop between people who have been neighbours for years, and have got along well; suddenly there is bitterness, which is not forgotten and lives on.
I strongly support the Bill. I will not go on any more because everything that needs to be said has and will be said here today.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
My Lords, I want to say a couple of brief things in the gap. A dispute such as this happened to my family and it would be useful if a proposal such as this covered it, although I am not sure whether it does.
What happened was that there was a privately owned lane with a verge along it. The title deeds to it were probably lost in the mists of time. No one could find them and it did not really matter. However, the people who owned land along the lane sold off building plots. The trouble is that the chap at the end of the lane, where it joined the highway, then put in a claim for adverse possession over the verge, which the Land Registry accepted, even though there was no fence along the verge edge. The registry said that the applicant had mown it or whatever, and agreed to the application. The challenge is that the water meters for the entire lane are at the end of it. That is all right because an existing right can be proved, and the water for all the other properties down the lane runs under it. However, the owners of those properties have no right to dig up another person’s land—or apparently they do. We understand that there is probably a right to maintain the water pipe; therefore, although adverse possession over the land was granted, there is probably also a pre-existing right to use of the lane.
That may be fine, but no one is sure where the telephone lines, sewage or other things run. What is under there? And what happens when one wants to put in something new, such as broadband, when there is a need to run a fibre-optic cable under the lane? Can you do this? The answer is probably no because the owner has adverse possession, and I am not sure how fair that is. The challenge is that because the Land Registry has accepted the application and registered it, the situation cannot be disentangled. Should one be able to?
I merely describe the situation; these disputes get complicated and there needs to be a simple way in which to sort them out. Perhaps issues such as this could be incorporated within the scope of a Bill such as this. It may be too difficult; I do not know. However, unravelling such issues should be possible because it is easy to make mistakes, particularly when no one knows the precise position. This issue arose partly because there was no duty to inform the people who lived up the lane about the fact that adverse possession was being registered because there was no apparent interest in it. I leave noble Lords with that other difficult problem.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, for bringing this Private Member’s Bill forward for debate today. He is a man of considerable expertise in this area, and the intention of his Bill is to resolve property boundary disputes at the earliest opportunity and with the least cost to the individuals concerned. That is a very welcome intention indeed.
We are all aware that matters concerning boundaries can lead to highly charged and protracted legal proceedings, which can be extremely expensive for the parties involved and certainly far more expensive, as the noble Earl said, than the value of the land in question or the boundary in dispute. That situation is of benefit to no one and one we all should all be concerned to remedy.
We had a useful debate on this very issue on 15 January this year, led by the noble Earl. Being able to move forward quickly and consider proposed legislation in this area is welcome progress. I generally welcome the Bill and what it proposes. That is not to say that there are no areas where it could be improved and refined in your Lordships’ House, and I hope we will have a day in Committee to do that.
As has already been outlined, the Bill makes provision for the resolution of disputes concerning the location or placement of boundaries and of private rights of way relating to the title of an estate in land. It seeks to do this by requiring the owner of land who wishes to establish a boundary to serve notice on the adjoining landowner. If the adjoining landowner does not specifically consent to the notice, a dispute is deemed to have arisen. The dispute is then resolved by an agreed surveyor or, where there is no agreed surveyor, three surveyors who shall determine the precise location of the boundary or location and extent of the private right of way. I very much agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, that too many matters are driven towards the courts, and the Bill gives us a clear and straightforward way in which to resolve these disputes.
The matter is not to be questioned in court except through an appeal to the Technology and Construction Court, or perhaps just the High Court, and if no appeal is made within 28 days, the award is submitted to the Land Registry. The Secretary of State shall by regulation approve a code of practice that would set out the form and manner in which the documents are to be served and used under this procedure. Where a party to the dispute seeks to disrupt or not co-operate with this process, they would be guilty of an offence and, on summary conviction, liable to a fine.
I am assuming that the Bill is not going to receive an enthusiastic welcome by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, but I hope that he can recognise that this is a real issue—a real problem—and that this is an attempt to reduce the costs and have these boundary disputes determined quickly and efficiently for as little cost as possible to the parties involved. The noble Lord on a previous occasion has said that this proposal would not always return beneficial results and suggested that this could be due to the adversarial nature of these disputes and the potential lack of legal expertise held by the appointed surveyors. I agree with the points made by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, in that respect. If the Minister intends to pursue the opinion he stated previously, perhaps he could also address the argument that it is the very expertise of these surveyors in determining these matters that in fact would make the likelihood of successful appeal proceedings less likely. That is because the determination will have been made by a qualified professional who is expert in their field, following a code of practice set out by the Secretary of State on how these matters are to be determined.
It would also be helpful to your Lordships’ House if the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, said that he is of the view that this and a combination of factors would mean that a high number of appeals is likely. That would not be beneficial. Does he expect more boundary dispute appeals to appear before the courts, or would there be fewer appeals but not sufficiently few to justify making the change proposed in the Bill? How did he and his department come to that conclusion—if, indeed, that is the conclusion? Will he share that information with your Lordships’ House by placing a copy in the Library?
It may be that Minister is absolutely right, but I should like to understand what is behind that thinking if he is going to put forward arguments such as those he advanced in January. With those questions to the Minister, I bring my remarks to a close and again thank the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, for bringing this matter before your Lordships’ House. It is a valuable contribution to the debate on these matters and a pointer to where we need to make improvements.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Faulks) (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, on securing a Second Reading for his Bill on this important issue.
As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, indicated, we had a debate, initiated by the noble Earl in January this year, in which many of the issues that have been discussed today were canvassed. That is nothing but to the good. Similarly, I have had an opportunity to meet with him and others who are concerned with the issues that the Bill generates. I am grateful for that opportunity, and for the noble Earl’s acknowledging his engagement with officials in my department.
The Bill’s core aim is making it easier to resolve boundary disputes. It proposes to do this through a system like that adopted in the Party Wall etc. Act 1996, which would require disputes about the exact location of a boundary between adjoining properties in England and Wales to be referred to a surveyor or surveyors acting as independent adjudicators for final determination, subject only to a right of appeal to the Technology and Construction Court.
Pausing there, I note that the noble Earl has been in communication with Sir Antony Edwards-Stuart about the suitability of the TC court as a venue for appeals. He has indicated that he does not think it appropriate but makes some useful suggestions. I am sure that, if the Bill were otherwise to proceed, the precise venue for an appeal is something that could be satisfactorily concluded.
The Bill also proposes to apply this system to disputes relating to the location and extent of private rights of way.
The noble Earl considers that the procedure proposed in the Bill will make dispute resolution simpler, faster and more cost-effective. These are laudable aims, which the Government share. Indeed, we have made, and continue to make, considerable efforts to control the cost of civil litigation to ensure that the costs incurred are proportionate to the subject matter of the dispute. However, we have significant reservations about the extent to which the proposals contained in the Bill would in fact improve matters. Indeed, we are concerned that they could have the unfortunate effect of making the resolution of these disputes more complex and costly than at present.
A similar Private Member’s Bill relating to the resolution of boundary disputes was introduced in the other place in 2012 by the honourable Member for Dover, Charlie Elphicke. In the light of the concerns that that raised, the Government decided to carry out an initial scoping study, the results of which were published on 15 January this year. The core conclusions of the scoping study were that there would be merit in the Government carrying out further work to assess the feasibility of improving a number of aspects of the current system, including, in particular, the use of mediation and expert determination, the spreading of best practice and the provision of better information, but that more radical reform, such as that proposed in this Bill and its predecessor, would not currently be justified.
The noble Earl’s Bill differs in some important respects from its predecessor and, in particular, extends to disputes about the location and extent of rights of way. These were not considered in the scoping study to which I have referred.
Before I update the House on the steps the Government have taken since the publication of the scoping study in considering improvements in the current system, I would like to focus on what we see as the core difficulties with the approach proposed by the noble Earl.
Responses to the scoping study confirmed that boundary disputes can arise for a number of reasons. Although some disputes may follow an unprincipled unilateral annexation of a strip of land, many more will derive from two honestly held beliefs—or fairly honestly held beliefs—as to where the boundary lies. At the root of these divergent views will frequently lie a conveyance that is poorly drafted or, at least, does not define the property to be transferred with sufficient clarity and precision. Because of this, such disputes will ultimately hinge on the legal question of who owns a particular piece of land or is entitled to exercise a particular right of access, and will fall to be decided on the interpretation of the evidence in the light of the law. In particular, the outcome will depend on the interpretation or construction of legal documents, such as conveyances and the plans incorporated in them.
I do not, in any way, wish to downgrade the very substantial contribution that surveyors can and do make to the resolution of these disputes. It is of course the case that judges will often rely to a considerable extent on the advice and expert evidence that surveyors provide.
In answer to the question raised by the noble Earl—is a boundary line a technical issue or a legal one?—a technical assessment of where a boundary lies is, in part, a surveying exercise. It would be unusual not to consider the lie of the land. However, this is not the whole story. The line of a boundary is ultimately a legal issue. I note the distinction that the noble Earl has made but am afraid that I am not entirely convinced by it.
The kind of dispute with which we are concerned is one that the courts and the land registration division of the property chamber of the First-tier Tribunal are designed to determine. I entirely agree with all speakers in this debate who confirmed that surveyors have great expertise in this area. However, a surveyor, no matter how expert in technical issues, will not be able to give a ruling that is conclusive in legal terms and will not necessarily have the legal expertise to deal with the complex legal issues that might arise; of course, I include adverse possession in this. This in itself would make it likely that many decisions would be appealed—this is my answer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. That prospect becomes even more likely when one takes into account the considerable bitterness and antagonism that such disputes can generate.
I agree with all noble Lords who have expressed the view that it is far better that these matters are resolved out of court by simple arbitration or the involvement, perhaps, of one surveyor in a relatively informal context. However, as a number of noble Lords have pointed out, the reality is that these disputes can escalate and often involve costs that are out of all proportion to the amount in dispute. I fear that the mere interpolation of a process, which this Bill envisages, will not prevent those determined to see these disputes carried out to the bitter end.
The comparison with party-wall cases is of course important. However, unlike party-wall cases, boundary disputes are generally likely to produce a winner and a loser. Therefore, the chances that a loser will be determined to vindicate his or her view of what is right by bringing an appeal are high. A rigid system requiring referral in all cases at an early stage to the process, as set out in this Bill, could also serve to raise the stakes in the dispute, increase hostility and entrench attitudes.
Taken together, these points would mean that the Bill would simply add a further layer to the proceedings, which would increase the costs involved rather than reducing them. In addition, in some cases, the early appointment of experts could itself front-load costs where the dispute might have been resolved in other ways.
We believe that a more effective and proportionate approach is to look at practical procedural improvements to the current system, rather than undertake a radical overhaul. With that in mind, we are exploring the scope for improving court and tribunal procedure, encouraging the use of mediation and expert determination, and improving the availability of information on ways to settle disputes. We are in the process of developing firm proposals in the light of our discussion of these issues with the relevant bodies. As we announced in the report on the scoping study, we aim to announce our emerging conclusions before the end of the year.
I note, of course, that the noble Earl quite fairly said that the date for the Second Reading of his Bill was rather beyond his choice. I think he might accept that, in some ways, he would have been a little happier if it had come after the scoping report had been concluded. Be that as it may, I hope he will be reassured by the fact that the matters raised by his Bill are receiving serious consideration by the Government.
The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, with whom I shared the experience of studying Roman law at Oxford—there is some comparison with these issues—referred to the inequality of arms that quite often prevails in these disputes and which can result in their escalation. It is difficult to avoid that, whatever particular procedure we adopt. He also quite rightly made the point that surveyors are often particularly useful in resolving these disputes because of their skills in relationship management. That, of course, is a valuable quality in any profession, as I am sure he would agree.
The noble Earl said that the disputes are often factual, not legal. I agree with him to some extent. They are a bit of both: both fact and law. He referred, as did a number of other noble Lords, to the fact that the judiciary tend not to welcome such disputes. That is true. In my own experience, I have seen that judges, knowing that they are facing a boundary dispute, do not jump for joy at the prospect of the decision they will have to make. But not all judges, despite the quotations that we have received, share this lack of enthusiasm for boundary disputes. Indeed, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, who spoke in the debate in January, told the House that he found them extremely interesting. He also, valuably, pointed out some of the advantages that there were in Scotland in resolving these issues, and in his careful consideration of the noble Earl’s Bill said that,
“I am not entirely convinced that making it compulsory for every such dispute to be resolved by reference to a panel of surveyors and excluding the courts entirely—as I think the draft Bill seeks to do—is either necessary or desirable. There will be cases where the title deeds alone will provide the answer and it may be that agreements can be reached; but I am not entirely sure that understanding these deeds is within the exclusive competence of a surveyor. There is then the problem of how to deal with other evidence about the way the property has been used, which may be hotly disputed and requires analysis, presentation of evidence, cross-examination of witnesses and so on. There is also the matter of adverse possession, which could raise very difficult issues”.—[Official Report, 15/1/15; col. GC 267.]
The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, asked me three questions. I think that I have dealt with the party wall issue and the comparison, which I respectfully suggest only goes so far. On the status quo not being satisfactory, we are well aware of the difficulties and, as I have indicated, are considering them.
I am sure that many noble Lords have similar experience of potentially difficult and expensive disputes to that of my noble friend Lady Gardner, and the Government share her desire to do all we can to limit the expense and heartache which such disputes can cause. The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, spoke of the immense complexity that is sometimes involved in such disputes. I cannot of course comment on the particular problem that he outlined in detail, but I detect that what he was suggesting was that, if there is to be a change in the law, it would be good if it embraced as many of the potential difficulties such as those which he has described.
We are grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this dispute.
Lord Faulks
I mean this debate—I am most grateful. I hope that my comments in this debate will reassure the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and others who have spoken that the Government are committed to ensuring that boundary disputes can be resolved fairly and effectively and to minimising the adverse impact of adversarial behaviour and entrenched positions. We believe that the work that we are undertaking represents a more effective approach than radical reform of the law, which the Bill suggests. While the Government will not oppose the Motion to give the Bill a Second Reading, for the reasons that I have given we have reservations about the changes to the law that it proposes.
The Earl of Lytton
My Lords, I thank warmly all noble Lords who have spoken. I hope that they will excuse me if I do not go into a huge amount of detail on what has been said, because all the matters that I feel are important have already been covered.
The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, raised two core issues: first, access to justice and, secondly, the question: if not this Bill, then what and when? That will perhaps be more apparent at the end of the year, when the results of the scoping study are better known and the department’s further consideration becomes available to us. I live in hope, but at this juncture it is difficult to predict that.
The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, raised a different type of issue. I will ask him to forgive me if I do not go into detail on that either, save to say that questions of orphan bits of land—verges, footpaths, left-over bits from once larger landed estates and so on—are hostage to what can sometimes look like a land grab. With it, the extent of public and private rights and easements are considerations that are often shorn from the resultant successful registration of title by adverse possession, regardless of the physical presence of the representative bits of conduit underneath the ground.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for the support of his party on this issue. I think that we all share the fundamental aims that we are trying to achieve.
I thank the Minister for saying that the question of the reference to the Technical and Construction Court can relatively easily be dealt with, and I believe that that is the case. He then turned to his core reservations. He felt that expert determination or mediation was the way forward but he regarded this Bill as radical. I do not entirely share that view given that the constituent bits of the mix, as I have explained, have been rather well trailed and bench-tested for the past decade or more. That apart, the Minister still did not explain why under current terms enforcing expert determination and mediation, which is ultimately the only way of corralling these things, can be dealt with other than by being somewhat radical in approach. So we possibly part company there, but it may be a matter for further discussion at some juncture.
I appreciate that an assessment of a boundary may only partly be a technical issue, but getting rid of the assessment of what I might call the physical issues in advance and dealing with it by way of surveyors of both sides would refine the situation in a way that it tends to be refined anyway at the stage when, later on, litigation is well under way. At that point, the trial judge and the protocols demand that a technical expert be appointed by either side if they cannot agree a single joint expert and that a report be then produced which has to be exchanged or, at any rate, comes before the court. However, at that stage, much powder and shot has already been expended in the battle of wits between, as we have heard, often very unequal parties. I cannot help thinking that putting the consideration of the factual and technical basis before the process rather than part way through would be of benefit generally.
Clearly, the Minister has to have the construct of due process and the proper sanctity of the court. He mentioned comments made back in January by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, when he referred to excluding the court entirely. I suggest that that is a slight exaggeration of what is contained within the Bill because that is not what it does. It leaves the backstop of judicial scrutiny in place. I understand the issues and in a sense we are where we are, but I believe that the Bill has merit. We should continue to discuss it and therefore I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.
Succession to Peerages Bill [HL]
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Trefgarne (Con)
My Lords, this Bill has nothing whatever to do with membership of your Lordships’ House. It concerns only the arrangements for succession to hereditary peerages, which Peers may, or may not, wish to come to your Lordships’ House. It intends only to bring the succession arrangements into the 21st century.
Noble Lords will be aware that most hereditary peerages can descend only through the male line. Thus it follows that in some cases, where there is no male heir, sadly therefore the peerage usually dies out. There are a few peerages, mostly Scottish ones or very ancient ones, which can descend through the female line and there are a very small number of other peerages where the letters patent specifically allow descent through a woman. My noble friend Lord Fellowes, when he comes to speak, will explain from his position of special knowledge some further details on this matter.
There are two other points that I would like to make. First, a number of your Lordships asked me why I do not propose that hereditary peerages simply descend through the oldest child, come what may. Speaking personally, I would have no particular objection to such an arrangement. But the plain fact is that that proposition has been before Parliament on several occasions and has on each of those occasions failed to attract your Lordships’ support. I therefore propose a more modest arrangement. Modernisation of the hereditary peerage should now begin and it is for that reason that I bring this modest proposal before your Lordships. Thus it is that the purpose of the Bill is to authorise succession through the female line in those circumstances where the peerage would otherwise disappear. I hope that your Lordships will agree that this proposition is right and proper in the present circumstances and will agree to the Bill.
I make just one further final point. A peerage is not the only hereditary title within our system. There are also baronetcies and one or two other more obscure hereditary titles, mostly within Scotland. I have received several representations from those representing baronets who would like their titles, too, which like peerages descend only through the male line, to be the subject of this Bill. Again, I would have no objection to widening my Bill in that way, but I fear that any such amendments may be said to be outside the scope of the Long Title and therefore out of order. That is a matter for the clerks rather than for me and I make no further observations.
There is a difference between abeyance of a peerage and extinction of a peerage. It is a highly technical difference and I would not claim to be an expert on it, save to say that abeyance generally applies to the very oldest peerages and may therefore come within the scope of this Bill. I have nothing more to say in connection with this measure and I hope that it will find favour with your Lordships. I beg to move.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, on bringing this Bill before the House and on doing so in such economical terms.
No one could suggest that a Bill on this subject is premature. The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 removed sex discrimination in relation to the exercise of public functions, or the holding of any civil or judicial office or post, or from entering or carrying on any civil profession or vocation. Yet here we are, nearly 100 years later, debating a Bill that will remove some of the inequality—although, as the noble Lord said, only some of it—in relation to succession to peerages. This is a quite remarkable situation.
Women were given the same voting rights as men in 1925. The Equal Pay Act 1970 and the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 addressed sex discrimination in employment, education and in the provision of goods, facilities and services. Even the Church of England, not known for being in the advance of social progress, has now provided for women bishops, and Parliament has provided recently that succession to the Crown no longer depends at all on a person’s gender—see Section 1 of the Succession to the Crown Act 2013—and rightly so. The only area of public life that I am aware of that retains institutional discrimination against women is the hereditary peerage.
I can think of only one argument in favour of such prejudice: that the hereditary peerage is so absurd and anachronistic an institution—why on earth should a person’s status depend on that of his or her father—that we cannot expect to apply basic principles of fairness in that context. But that will not do. The peerage is not a private club. Indeed, 92 hereditary Peers, of whom the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, is a distinguished example, sit in this House helping to make the laws of the land. The peerage cannot claim to be exempt from the basic principles of fairness that govern the rest of our society.
In this context, as in others, discrimination against women is simply objectionable. It is entirely without justification and we have tolerated it in relation to the peerage for far too long. I therefore welcome the Bill because it puts this issue on the parliamentary agenda.
But the Bill, as drafted, is patently inadequate. It will need substantial amendment in Committee. Clause 2(3) would allow a woman to succeed to a title if she has no male siblings. If she has younger male siblings, they will have precedence over her. The noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, said in a quite remarkable statement that his Bill aims to bring succession to the peerage into the 21st century—really? He said that his proposal is modest, but it will perpetuate sex discrimination and for that reason it needs to be amended.
If the oldest child of the monarch now succeeds to the Throne, whether they are male or female, how can it possibly be defensible to retain a position that the oldest male child of a Peer will succeed to the title? If this Bill were to be enacted, then in the magnificent creation of the noble Lord, Lord Fellowes, “Downton Abbey”, as I understand it the Earl of Grantham would now be succeeded by his eldest daughter, but only because he had no sons. However, a younger son would retain precedence over an older daughter. That is quite indefensible.
In his play, “A Woman of No Importance”, Oscar Wilde wrote:
“You should study the Peerage, Gerald … it is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done”.
It is time that we brought the peerage into the real world. The peerage has hitherto treated women as being of no importance. This Bill, which is a modest improvement, would treat women as being of very limited importance. The peerage needs to do better than that. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, on introducing the Bill and I look forward to noble Lords improving it in Committee.
Lord Fellowes of West Stafford (Con)
My Lords, I rise to support the Second Reading of this Bill, and I must immediately declare an interest. My wife was born female, something of which I am very glad, but the fact remains that had she been born male, she would now be the fourth Earl Kitchener of Khartoum. As it is, our law preferred to let this title, probably the most historic of any of the imperial creations, become extinct rather than have it be held by a woman. As the niece of the last Earl, the reason she does not have that rank is only and entirely due to her sex. Of course, she is expected to take on the duties of the name, to be president of the Kitchener charities and to award the Kitchener scholarships, but the name she may not have because she is female. And if noble Lords think I find that extraordinary in 2015, they would be absolutely right. The fact is that women born into titled families are non-persons. They have none of the legal status of their fathers and brothers and none of their rights, even if they are sometimes obliged to perform their duties. It is an absurd and outdated situation.
Of course, there are many, no doubt some in your Lordships’ House, who would be happy to see the end of hereditary titles altogether, but that is not what we are debating here. They exist at the heart of many modern institutions and they enshrine an attitude to women that has no place in modern society. We may hear that the exemption of women will bring these titles to a natural end more quickly, but it will not. There are more than 800 of them, and especially the older ones will live on indefinitely without the intervention of a new law. It would be statistically impossible for a situation ever to arise where there was no heir to the dukedom of Norfolk, the earldom of Derby, the earldom of Devon or many others. There may be an argument for abolition, but there is no plan to abolish them yet. While they exist, are we prepared to tolerate the negative status of women they represent across the board, with the exception of a few Scottish titles and a tiny handful of English baronies?
An argument in this debate that always strikes me as questionable is when a speaker will say, “Why should we bother with this? Why spend useful time on it when we have more important things to do?”. This has the double benefit of conferring a place on the moral high ground to the speaker, showing how unsnobbish and unfrivolous they are, while at the same time changing nothing and leaving women at the bottom of the pit. But it does not wash because the suggestion that holding a title is no longer of any importance in Britain today does not wash. It is still a privilege to hold one, and it is a privilege that is denied to women.
It is true that there was a belief in the 1960s that by stopping their creation, the status of the hereditary aristocracy would soon fade and be replaced in terms of public profile by the life peers, but this has not happened. You will find holders of hereditary titles or their wives on the boards of many, if not most, charities, chambers of commerce, universities and hospitals, to say nothing of the Court, where almost every major position is still conferred on a hereditary Peer or his wife. I am sure, indeed I know, that many of these people take their appointment seriously and do excellent work, but that it is clearly thought by the authorities that their noble names will add lustre to the various organisations is proof that a hereditary title is still viewed by the public as conferring distinction, however illogical that may be. If, therefore, holding a hereditary title can be construed as a distinguished position and a privilege, how can we allow women to be excluded solely because of their sex?
Of course, there may be—I am sure there are—many of your Lordships who think that the trouble with my noble friend Lord Trefgarne’s Bill, as we have just heard, is that it does not go far enough and that the peerage should follow the Crown’s example and simply have succession in order of birth, with the firstborn inheriting irrespective of sex. I do not propose to put up a stout argument against this because I believe in it. However, I would point out only that there have been several attempts to encourage some interest in the idea, but it never gets off the ground, and the reason is simple. An immediate change now to eldest child inheritance would mean that a great many men would be stripped of their courtesy titles and the names they have lived under for years, and so would their children. It would mean that the financial arrangements that have been designed to protect a large number of families’ interests would be wrecked, and that those same families would be facing an intolerable position, dividing siblings and bringing real unhappiness.
The Royal Family took advantage, very sensibly, of a moment when the next three heirs—two then, but three now—were male eldest children and so nobody would be deprived of anything. By the time the new law will have any effect with Prince George’s daughter or granddaughter, the public and the Royal Family will have had many years to make the necessary adjustments and to grow used to the plan. The peerage would have no such luxury. Because of that—this is the point—as things stand, no such Bill will ever pass. However, once the law has been changed to give women at least some legal status within noble families, and once they are allowed to pass on the rights that their brothers can pass on, I am reasonably convinced that public opinion will cease to regard female Peers as anything very unusual and the climate will alter, perhaps leading to further reform. But we have to take the first step, and this Bill is the only first step that may pass into law.
Of course there will be losers, even in the proposed scheme. No one will be stripped of a courtesy title, and almost no one will have their financial arrangements disturbed since most Peers without a son nowadays rightly prefer to leave their fortunes to their daughters, whether or not they can control the descent of their title. But there will be heirs presumptive who will have to yield the senior position in the succession to their nieces or cousins. I would point out only that heirs presumptive have never enjoyed the security of heirs apparent. There has always been a chance that the Peer in question would marry again and produce a son, thereby displacing a more distant relative. My own cousin lost a baronetcy, which he had assumed was his until half way through his 20s, when a baby boy was suddenly and rather surprisingly born. The father of the present Marquess of Northampton was 61 when his son appeared, no doubt putting a few noses out of joint. But even the displaced heirs will not lose their rights entirely. They will merely have to step back to allow a better position in the queue to their female relatives who will have a senior claim—and what is wrong with that?
The advantage of allowing the revival of peerages made extinct in the present reign is twofold. It would seem harsh to exclude living women who would have had the right to succeed under the new system, and by including them there can be no risk of opening the running sore of legal action to defend their rights. This change will, or should, allow all female heirs who were alive when the last holder of their family’s peerage died to make a claim within one year of the Bill’s becoming law. Of course, some will not, and many of the extinct peerages were new and had no heirs, male or female, but there will still be a number of them, which is the strength of the clause.
By the measure, there will immediately be a group of hereditary lady Peers who will render the situation normal. It will not be necessary to wait for three-quarters of a century for a sufficient number to build up to make it ordinary. Of course, to quote Mandy Rice-Davies, I would say that, wouldn’t I? The fact is that my wife’s situation does not make it any less true. The sooner the female hereditary Peer becomes ordinary, the sooner these women are accepted within the traditional system, and the sooner the climate may be right for further reform.
In short, if your Lordships believe there should be no area of our public life where women are made nothing, please support this Bill. If you would like to see total equality, support this Bill to get the process started, because if you do not, there will be no change. If you believe that women are the equals of men and that leaving them as non-persons in any part of our constitution is wrong, support the Second Reading of this Bill. In fact, your Lordships should oppose it only if you believe that it is quite correct for women to occupy an inferior position, and be denied all rights, on so public a stage. The choice, of course, is yours.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, for the opportunity to discuss this issue. I have a hereditary title and I have a daughter who could inherit that title if the law were changed. I should also say that my wife, the journalist Victoria Lambert, is a co-founder, with Liza Campbell and Sarah Long, of the campaign group that wants to see gender discrimination removed from titles.
We now have women bishops. Since 2013 women, including Dame Ellen MacArthur, can be members of the Royal Yacht Squadron. From this year, women can be members of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, and this year as well, women competed for the first time on the same day as men in the equivalent Oxford and Cambridge boat race. These changes will not apply to all women; they are niche changes, but nevertheless significant ones for the advancement of gender equality. So it should be with hereditary titles; women should have an entirely equal chance of inheriting a title.
There are those, of course, who do not believe in the hereditary system at all because of its innate unfairness and think that it should be swept away. Not all of those people will be anti-monarchists, and it is worth reflecting on the fact that the monarchy itself is simply a part—the top part, certainly, but a part of the wider system of hereditary titles. If hereditary titles are unfair, so is the monarchy. They are part of the very same system. As long as we have the monarchy—and it remains hugely popular—the system as a whole needs to be dealt with in the same way that the monarchy has very correctly been dealt with through the Succession to the Crown Act. Otherwise, the system remains inconsistent in terms of gender equality, which is unsatisfactory.
The titles themselves are not abstract. They are the property of the Crown. It needs to be more widely recognised that the great majority of these titles and offices, which are owned by the Crown, and for which it has responsibility, are gender-discriminatory. There are significant wider ramifications. One is that titles often go with other possessions which means that women can sometimes be excluded from the home they grew up in through the inheritance of a title by a stranger—a distant relative from the other side of the world—because there are no boys in the immediate family. That is not uncommon. Also, what should not be underestimated is the influence that this system has at all levels of society when women can still be left out of inheritance entirely because that is the way things have been done. Nor should we ignore what continuing influence such gender discrimination has abroad.
In terms of the Bill itself, it is worth noting that when we discussed this topic last at the Committee stage of the Equality (Titles) Bill, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, the year before last, with the will of all sides of the House behind us, we were heading at the time the Committee stage was halted towards a greatly simplified Bill that stated simply that the eldest child of either sex was the one who would inherit. In my view, that is the Bill that should go to the Commons, and which would stand the best chance of being passed. Clause 3(2) of this Bill, which still allows men to inherit before women, and is therefore gender-discriminatory, must go. Surely it contradicts current equality legislation.
There are those who say, “But what about the expectations of young men?”—to which the reply is, “What about the expectations of women?”. In contemporary times this cuts both ways. The hopes of young women are as valid as the hopes of young men. The previous Government said that this change would be,
“far more complicated to implement fairly”.
The answer to that is clear. If the Government can sort this out for the Royal Family, with all the international complications involved, a simple, effective Bill can do the same for the other titles which the Crown owns and has responsibility for.
Baroness Flather (CB)
My Lords, as noble Lords will have noticed, I am British but not English and I look at a lot of things in a slightly different way. When I came to your Lordships’ House in 1990, I was the only Asian and the only minority woman in this House. The House was full of hereditary Peers, and I was worried about this because I had not met any aristocrats before I came to your Lordships’ House. I wondered how they would treat me. I can tell your Lordships that I was treated better in this House by the hereditary Peers than I have ever been treated anywhere else in my life. They became my friends—and my entertainment as well—and I learned a lot from them. They had a great sense of humour and they had a light touch about life. I have to tell your Lordships that I miss them and I have great affection for hereditary Peers.
That is by the by. We are talking about the Bill. When I saw it on the list I thought that I must speak because I must support it. Then I read the Bill and I got really quite upset. I thought that I was going to support something that I have always wanted: the eldest child inheriting regardless of gender. I cannot put it better than the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. He is the ultimate person for saying the piece. I am delighted with and endorse everything that he has said.
I am not sure about the other Bills because I am not very good with dates, but the other Bills may have come before we decided on the monarchy. They may have come before we had decided that the eldest child will be the next monarch. That will make a huge difference in people’s thinking: if the eldest child is a girl, she will inherit; if the eldest child is a boy, he will inherit. If they can do it, I cannot imagine that this House cannot do it.
I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Fellowes, with interest. He is really worried about the situation of some of the boys: how are they going to live? How are they going to manage? They will not have the amount of money that they would have had. In the old days they got sent to the colonies, as we all know. The younger sons were all sent to the colonies. You have not got any colonies so we have to find some other way of finding employment for them. Maybe it will encourage them to become professionals and to become more able to fend for themselves. That also would not be a bad thing.
In the case of Countess Mountbatten, Earl Mountbatten did not have a son. It had to go through Parliament to pass the title to Countess Mountbatten. Of course that is wrong. Viscount Whitelaw did not have a son and his title has died. It is quite right that that should not happen. If we want to make a change we have to make it gender neutral, as the fashionable term is these days. It has to be the eldest child. Thank you very much.
Lord Northbrook (Con)
My Lords, I welcome my noble friend Lord Trefgarne’s Succession to Peerages Bill. As an aficionado of the topic, I declare an interest as my title will die out under current peerage inheritance rules. I have a very capable eldest daughter who would be more than suitable to carry it on.
I believe that the Bill offers a way forward to prevent this extinction without seriously threatening the status quo for those peerages where there are male heirs. It is better than Lord Diamond’s Bills of 1992 and 1994, which proposed that hereditary Peers could petition the Crown to amend their letters patent so that the peerage could descend to the eldest legitimate child, male or female. It seems more logical than my noble friend Lord Lucas’s recent Bill, which sought to enable the succession of female heirs to hereditary peerages if the incumbent of the peerage wrote to the Lord Chancellor to ask that this should occur. I prefer it also to Mary Macleod’s Succession to Hereditary Peerages and Estates Bill in the other place, which included provision to remove male preference primogeniture in succession to hereditary peerages.
After the Succession to the Crown Act has passed, it seems only logical that appropriate change should be made for hereditary peerages. The House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee’s 2011 report on the rules of succession to the Crown noted that the proposal to end the preferential treatment of men in the line of succession had been,
“widely welcomed, and with good reason”.
It also drew attention to holders of hereditary peerages, noting that,
“the way in which their titles are inherited, and its effect on the gender balance in Parliament, remain matters of public interest”.
My noble friend Lord Fellowes of West Stafford stated in a submission to the Hereditary Peerage Association in 2008:
“People will tell you how difficult it would be and how it would involve re-creating all the peerages from new. … When”—
in the 1700s—
“the Duke of Marlborough was needed for another campaign and his only son was dead, a bill was introduced into Parliament granting a new remainder allowing a unique form of female descent to the existing title, without recreating it”.
As we have heard, my noble friend Lord Fellowes has now approved what are essentially the contents of this Bill, based on the Marlborough precedent.
In the same submission, my noble friend Lord Fellowes touched on his concern that, if nothing is done in this sphere, European law may step in with a solution of its own. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, surprisingly did not mention it, but as I understand it Section 14 of the Human Rights Act 1998 makes it now illegal to discriminate on the basis of sex, where both sexes may perform the function required. Discriminating against women solely on the basis of their sex is also illegal. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has also mentioned to me that, if a legitimate female issue, where the peerage would otherwise become extinct, referred a case to the European Court of Human Rights, they could well have a chance of success. The organisation called The Hares—I think I see a couple in the audience—may well pursue this route, or much worse could happen if Mr Corbyn gets into power. It is far less disruptive to peerages, in my view, to pre-empt such a referral by enacting this Bill. Will the Minister give the Government’s thoughts on the outcome of such a referral, and their reaction to it?
I can understand the logic of Clause 3, which would guarantee a batch of new Peeresses, making the peerage look refreshed and modern from the first moment of the change, as opposed to having to wait years for any alteration really to show, and 1952 seems a sensible date. It is striking that there are currently no women on the most recent register of hereditary Peers who have put themselves forward to be eligible as candidates for future by-elections. All the hereditary by-elections since 1999 have been won by men. As of now, only one Peer of the 92 hereditary Peers who were allowed to continue in 1999 is female.
I have two other issues to raise. I think that there should be an amendment extending the change to baronets, although I take the point made by my noble friend Lord Trefgarne about that being outside the Title of the Bill. I am not sure either about the principle in the Bill of excluding a very close relative such as a brother from inheriting a peerage. Ruling out cousins and distant relatives is fair enough as their expectations are never high, but a very close relation may be a step too far. As the noble Lord, Lord Fellowes, stated, family financial arrangements could be seriously disrupted. There could be an argument for an amendment extending the peerage succession to brothers—a modification of the semi-Salic system, although it has to be said that an heir presumptive has never had the security of an heir apparent.
But overall I welcome this Bill wholeheartedly. It would merely put peerage succession on to the same basis as the Crown used to be. I wish it a safe passage through the House.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, for bringing this issue to the House, if only to tease out the Government’s and, indeed, the Opposition’s, view on the issue.
It is obvious that the Bill will not affect the size of the House one way or the other, yet, of course, that is the big issue that concerns probably all noble Lords, as evidenced by the debate that will take place here on Tuesday. The increase in the size of your Lordships’ House to 826 gives great urgency to reducing the number of Members rather than suggesting ways of bringing in a new category of Peer. Indeed, as we know, the Prime Minister has already appointed in five years more than double the number of Peers that Labour did in 11 years, creating new Peers at a faster rate than any other Prime Minister since life peerages began. Therefore, it seems to me that the priority for the House is to look at size rather than this issue. That is partly for the sake of this House and how it works but also, I have to say, because of the anachronism of appointing Peers here not by virtue of their own experience and attributes but those of their fathers, grandfathers or even great-uncles. Therefore, ending the hereditary by-elections as any of the 92 places fall vacant should surely be a better way forward. The calls I have heard today for maintaining the status of titled families are ones I did not believe I would hear in the 21st century. But more than that, as has been said, the flaw of the Bill is that it stands feminism on its head. For the very pragmatic reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, gave, it does not get rid of primogeniture for hereditary titles but says only that, where there is no man, a woman will do.
Your Lordships will have noted that there is only one other woman speaking today, which I think says something about how our sisters in the rest of the House feel about this issue. Perhaps they are not present because they also regard this Bill as deeply anti-feminist. It is saying, “Let us have some more women in this House”, of which I approve, “not for what they have to offer, their experience, knowledge, ability, insights, professionalism or anything like that but because some male forebear either fought, bought—
The Earl of Clancarty
I accept entirely that hereditary peerages will be removed from this House. Sooner or later that will happen. However, this Bill has nothing to do with hereditary peerages in this House, as the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, said.
Baroness Flather
I know that I am the only other woman speaking, and, as I said, I am not even English, but the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, made the same points that I did. They did so very strongly and in some ways better than me.
Lord Winston (Lab)
I am very grateful to my noble friend for allowing me to say a word. I want to be a loyal member of a paid-up Labour Party. I suspect, although I do not know, that there are quite a few disloyal members. However, I do not understand the argument here. Surely we are not talking about membership of the House of Lords or the size of the House; this is a different issue. We have to accept that we have to address that issue in a logical and rational fashion. I understand that on the whole my party is not particularly favourably disposed to the hereditary peerage for whatever reason. However, that is not really what we are discussing here, is it?
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
What we are discussing is whether as a House we want to continue with titles and the privilege and status—I think respectability has been mentioned—and whether that is a priority. Surely, if we are to do anything, the priority is to do something about the peerages in this House. That is something my party would like to do by removing by-elections for hereditary Members.
We want women, whether in this House or with the other titles they may earn, to get them by their own ability. The examples are the women who serve in this House. They may get damehoods before they get here. We would not want those to be inherited, I assume, because the awarding of a title is about what they have done for themselves. The point I am trying to make—perhaps ineffectively—is that surely the priority is for more women, whether in this House or with other titles such as dame, to receive them by virtue of what they have done for themselves. The examples I want to give are the people who have got peerages here on their own abilities rather than the abilities of some male forebear.
The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, was a dame before she came here. She did not get that because her father was a great athlete. She got it because she had won 16 Paralympic medals, 30 world titles and the London Marathon six times; she chairs the Women’s Sports and Fitness Foundation; and she was BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year. The noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, is an actress and television presenter, and chancellor of the University of Exeter. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, is past president of the Royal Society of Medicine and a consultant professor of palliative medicine. These are women who have gained their titles—which happened to bring them here; some of them had damehoods before—because of what they did. Those are the examples I want to give.
There are, of course, people such as the noble Baroness, Lady Harding of Winscombe, the chief executive of TalkTalk and named as one of the 10 most influential women. She happens to be the daughter and granddaughter of Peers, but has her title because of what she has done in her own right.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
Could I just finish with this example? I am arguing that the Bill seems to be based on the continued assumption that women should not gain a title—recognition—because of what they have done but because of what a father, grandfather or great-uncle did. I give way to the noble Baroness.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)
I am sorry, my Lords, I think in this debate you cannot give way—you just have to keep going.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I am delighted to get that bit of advice. The assumption behind this—that because there are titled families the best way to deal with that is to pass the title, where there is not a man, to a woman—is, in the 21st century, the wrong assumption. As a feminist and on behalf of the other women here who have great experience in the trade union movement, for example, and who have won their spurs by their own efforts, I say that that is the way we should recognise women, not because of what their male forebears have done. If a woman wants a title, I say, “Do the same as anyone else. Go out and earn your spurs. Work in civil society, trade unions, business, academia, medicine or law”. That, surely, is the way to be recognised and to be valued in society. In the 21st century, that is the feminist way forward—not to inherit a title because of a male forebear.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Lord Bridges of Headley) (Con)
My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Trefgarne on securing this Second Reading, which has provoked an engaging, thoughtful and at times entertaining debate. Among his many accomplishments, I know that my noble friend has spent much time supporting the excellent Brooklands Museum, which I thoroughly recommend to your Lordships, where he has helped to conserve and restore to life the gems of British motoring and aviation. Today his intention and energy has turned to protecting and conserving that other part of our nation’s history, the peerage.
My noble friend’s energy and tenacity is obviously shared by a number of your Lordships who have spoken today. Although it is invidious to single out anyone in particular, I thank my noble friend Lord Fellowes for his passionate contribution to the debate. He is clearly following in the footsteps of the great Lord Kitchener and becoming the recruiting sergeant for this campaign. I can see the poster now: “Your peerage needs you!”.
This debate reminds me that while a number of your Lordships have spent many years looking into this issue I am a mere novice, trying to get my GCSE on issues such as abeyance while many of your Lordships clearly have doctorates on the subject, so forgive me for stating the obvious and repeating a point made before. This Bill, as its title suggests, is about the succession of peerages. Its purpose is to ensure hereditary peerages do not die out and like that noble prince in Sleeping Beauty, it aims to give the kiss of life back to peerages that now lie dormant. Its primary purpose is not therefore to address the inheritance of peerages discriminating against women, which I know that a number of your Lordships have debated before.
This latter issue—the equality of treatment before the law—is one that this Government take seriously in every walk of life. As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and others have said, during the last Parliament the coalition introduced what became the Succession to the Crown Act 2013, which removed, as your Lordships know, the male bias with regard to the descent of the Crown. We therefore sympathise with the concerns over gender inequality in the area raised and discussed by your Lordships today.
However, as your Lordships know better than me, and as has been pointed out, addressing this area of discrimination means tackling a very thorny legal thicket. Over the summer, I asked my officials to give me the relevant debates on this issue. I rather regretted that, as I got a very large pile of reading for my deckchair. As I ploughed through those previous debates, I must confess that I felt as if I was reading a mix of Jarndyce v Jarndyce and “Kind Hearts and Coronets” with a good sprinkling of “Downton Abbey”. Indeed, as Dickens described Jarndyce v Jarndyce:
“Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it”.
The same could be said of this issue.
With that in mind, while it is obviously true that the succession of most peerages does not treat men and women equally, one must ask whether the Government ought to be devoting time and resources, both of which are limited, to addressing this extremely complex subject. Discrimination on the grounds of not just gender but race and age is clearly and sadly present in many parts of society and, despite the efforts of this Government and their predecessors, continues to blight the opportunities of many people—many more than those affected by the issues we are discussing today. When it comes to our approach to tackling discrimination, addressing these wider aspects is the Government’s priority.
I realise that these words will irk some of your Lordships and those who have campaigned on the issue that we are discussing. As has been mentioned, I see that a group called The Hares has been specifically created to lobby for a change to the law to create gender equality in the peerage by ending male primogeniture. I fear that to them I am yet another tortoise whose plodding is holding up progress but I assure your Lordships that I am more than willing to hear of ways in which this area of discrimination might be tackled. Let us not forget that, in the end, the tortoise wins the race.
The fact is that the Bill would have a very limited impact in addressing the fundamental issue here, namely gender inequality in the succession of hereditary peerages. As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, pointed out, Clause 2(3) of the Bill explicitly states:
“Within each group of siblings”,
male heirs,
“in order of birth and their issue”,
would succeed before female heirs in order of birth and their issue. The Bill therefore permits women to inherit hereditary peerages only when there is no direct male heir. Surely, if we are to achieve equality in this area, the first born should inherit the title irrespective of their gender. I am not alone in saying this. The campaign group The Hares described the clause in an email to me as,
“clearly gender discriminatory. Under present equality legislation this is unacceptable”.
I also draw your Lordships’ attention to Clause 2(2), which states that,
“any daughter (‘D’) and her issue shall be treated for the purpose of succession as they would be treated if D had been male, save as provided by subsection (3)”.
It is not clear whose daughter is being referred to and whether this provision excludes female relatives, other than a daughter of the incumbent, from inheriting a peerage. If that is the case, this further highlights the Bill’s inadequacy in promoting gender equality.
I will now explain the concerns that the Government have with Clause 3, which provides for the revival of peerages that have become extinct. Given that we believe that many peerages have the potential to fall within the scope of this clause, it is vital that there is thorough consideration of and consultation on the significant impact this clause could have. To begin with, the effect of immediately reviving a large number of extinct peerages should not be underestimated. Before a peerage can be revived, its provenance and the right of the individual in question to inherit must be proven before the peerage can be entered on the Roll of the Peerage. The Bill would therefore create a considerable amount of additional work for the Crown Office and, most probably, the College of Arms. If the descent of a title were in any way unclear or contested, it could take years for matters to be resolved. I can almost hear the solicitors in Lincoln’s Inn rubbing their hands with glee.
Clause 3(1) states:
“For any peerage which became extinct on or after 6 February 1952”,
the Bill shall vest the peerage,
“in the person who would have succeeded to that peerage if the universal rule of succession had applied”,
to it since 6 February 1952. The Bill therefore proposes that the line of succession for all peerages that became extinct on or after 6 February 1952 is to be traced back and potentially altered from that exact date. This is very likely to have odd, and potentially unfair, consequences in some cases. For example, suppose a now-extinct peerage had been inherited by a distant male relative after 6 February 1952 and that male relative had since died. It may be the case that, applying the “universal rule of succession” from that date, the title would not have been inherited by that male relative but by a closer female relative instead. In that case, according to Clause 3(1), the fact the peerage had been inherited by the male relative would be ignored. Instead, the inheritance would be retrospectively redirected through the female. This is not only a somewhat strange method to adopt but could affect the legitimate expectations of the male relative’s successors who wished to revive the peerage. Clause 3(1), which applies the new rule of succession on and after 6 February 1952, would therefore appear to be incompatible with Clause 5(3)—which states that the Bill will not affect any succession to a peerage which has already taken place. Similar issues arise in respect of Clause 3(2) and (3), which make provision for peerages which became extinct before 6 February 1952. These are changes that should not be undertaken lightly without proper consideration of their effects or of any potential unfairness or conflict they could cause.
Turning to the issue of the inheritance of land associated with some peerages, Clause 5(2) states that the Bill, if it were to become law, would,
“not affect the succession to land or any other property real or personal”.
It should be noted, however, that there are a number of hereditary peerages which carry estates, either by virtue of the terms of the instrument creating the peerage or as a result of a trust arrangement which has been put in place in order to ensure that the peerage and property descend together. In those cases, the Bill would create a strange system whereby property would continue to be inherited by the oldest male heir even if, under the Bill’s provisions, the title went to a female heir, leading to titles being split from their associated estates. It would be impossible to say how many titles would be affected by this provision, given that trust arrangements are often confidential matters. This is another aspect of the Bill that would have to be carefully considered in order to prevent any unintended consequences.
My noble friend Lord Northbrook raised the issue of the ECHR and Article 14. During my summer reading, I also had the opportunity to look into it. The prohibition of discrimination set out in Article 14 of the ECHR applies only in conjunction with other rights set out in the convention. The right to peaceful enjoyment of one’s possessions is set out in Article 1 of Protocol 1 to the convention. It has been argued—unsuccessfully—that Article 1 of Protocol 1 applies to hereditary peerages and the right to inherit a peerage, and therefore that accession to hereditary peerages engages Article 14. Although peerages have been described as a type of property under English law, there is Strasbourg case law to the effect that nobility titles cannot be regarded as possessions within the meaning of Article 1, Protocol 1.
The High Court of England and Wales has confirmed that the right to sit and vote in Parliament by virtue of a hereditary peerage is not a possession. Furthermore, Strasbourg has held that Article 1 of Protocol 1 applies only to a person’s existing possessions, not future ones. It does not guarantee the right to acquire or succeed to possessions. Therefore, as Article 1 of Protocol 1 does not extend to peerages or the right to succeed to a peerage, Article 14 cannot be engaged. It is highly unlikely that a successful claim could be raised under the Human Rights Act 1998 in the UK domestic courts, as the Act does not apply to the Lords Select Committee on Privileges and Conduct, which is the only domestic court with jurisdiction to hear peerage claims.
To conclude, I fully understand the interest and passion that this issue raises for some families, but as your Lordships would, I hope, agree, one of the great strengths of this House is to legislate with care and caution, to kick the tyres of policy and to think through the consequences of our actions. In that spirit, I hope that I have clearly set out the Government’s reservations about the approach set out in the Bill.
The Bill itself fails properly to address the issue of gender discrimination in the succession to hereditary peerages: rather, it provides a means by which hereditary peerages which have died out can readily be revived. In addition, the Bill raises numerous problems and concerns, particularly relating to Clauses 2 and 3— problems which would take up a significant amount of parliamentary time and consideration in attempting to work out. Indeed, they may never be resolved, due to considerable uncertainties as to whom the provisions of this Bill may adversely affect and the likely unintended consequences were it to become law.
By making a single, rather sweeping change to the descent of all hereditary peerages, potentially the Bill would affect a considerable number of families in different ways, according to their own individual circumstances.
The Earl of Caithness (Con)
My noble friend has spoken on this point, and we have listened with care. Can he tell us how many peerages have become extinct since 6 February 1952?
Lord Bridges of Headley
I will have to write to confirm that, but I am led to believe that there are scores. I will need to write to my noble friend to confirm that.
In some cases, the Bill will lead to the disinheritance of individuals with legitimate expectations to inherit an hereditary peerage. Whereas the Succession to the Crown Act could be introduced without disturbing the legitimate expectations of anyone in line to the throne, I suggest that even with lengthy and detailed consideration and research, it would be impossible to foresee clearly all the effects of the Bill. At the very least, such a change should not be undertaken without extensive consultation and public discussion.
Above all, I hope that your Lordships would agree that given this complexity, the Government’s priorities should rightly lie elsewhere, as I said at the start.
Let me conclude by stressing that I hope that all I have said will be seen as constructive criticism. The Government recognise the inherent inequality in the succession of hereditary peerages and are happy to consider further attempts by interested parties to address the multitude of issues of gender discrimination which overcome the complexity that I have outlined.
Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, I am grateful to every noble Lord and noble Baroness who has contributed to this debate, and particularly grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his lengthy, interesting and detailed reply. I am reminded that back in 1956 a case came before Parliament relating to a peerage that had gone into abeyance in 1302—so there is some complexity in these matters.
I have an open mind on many of the issues that have been raised during the debate, and I shall be happy to consider amendments that might correct the anomalies referred to, particularly the one referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and repeated by others.