Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Baroness Hollins Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome all discussion that would help us to be less fearful about death and to end the taboo. However, I have to ask your Lordships a question: have your Lordships discussed your end-of-life choices with those closest to you? Today, the key point has been made many times that there is a big difference between choosing to withdraw a futile or life-prolonging treatment—a legitimate everyday occurrence—and taking a prescribed lethal drug.

One of many welcome letters that I have received opposing the Bill was from an oncologist specialising in lung and pancreatic cancer. She says that most of her patients have a prognosis of less than six months and would be directly affected by a change in the law. Over 20 years, she says that she has treated in excess of 10,000 patients, and only one in that time has made persistent requests to be helped to commit suicide. The fact that the law explicitly prevents it enabled her to fully explore the reasoning behind the request. It was due to a poor experience with a family member many decades previously, which had left the patient fearful. She wanted to live, but wanted to be assured that she would be properly cared for at the time of her dying. The oncologist says that the majority of her patients remain in control and have a peaceful death, with family present and nurses nearby, through falling asleep and not waking up—contrast that with a complication rate of 23% for physician-assisted suicide in Holland.

Assisting a peaceful death is not about supporting suicide; there are so many other options. Depression has scarcely been mentioned today but there is evidence of increasing depression and anxiety as death nears for people with cancer. In those who request assistance to die, there is an association with depression and hopelessness. This was borne out in an Oregon study of those who had been prescribed lethal drugs to end their lives despite depression.

We in this House are in a somewhat privileged position. We are accustomed to making lifestyle choices with confidence. We know the law and our rights. In a word, we can look after our own interests. The present law may not give determined and strong-minded people such as ourselves what we want, but it provides protection for those who cannot speak up for themselves—people such as those I worked with as a doctor and psychiatrist.

The noble and learned Lord’s Bill assumes that a doctor can readily assess a patient’s mental state, but most doctors have little or no training or skill in capacity assessment, as was a matter of considerable concern for the post-legislative scrutiny committee for the Mental Capacity Act, which I was a member of. Doctors are also insufficiently familiar with normal death, which is why they strive too hard to keep us alive. Death is seen by many doctors as a failure, and the public are afraid too. However, many of my correspondents affirmed their experience of death and dying as being a precious time. A friend of mine who died of motor neurone disease last year died gently and peacefully, his wife said, when the oxygen was removed—when he was ready. A similar situation was referred to earlier by my noble friend Lady Finlay. This is not an intellectual argument: we need emotionally intelligent people here and, as my noble friend Lady Campbell said so powerfully on the “Today” programme this morning, to start listening to people who are terminally ill, not just to those who think that they will be able to anticipate their own feelings when their time comes.