Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Murphy Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 12th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

My Lords, I have often spoken in support of this and in most debates in this House on every Bill to introduce assisted dying in England and Wales since the Joffe Bill in 2005, and I will continue to support it. I hope that this Bill will make it through. For me, the principles are guided by support for the importance of respecting the autonomy of mentally competent people to make their own decisions about their lives, and that, as a matter of compassion, people should be assisted to end their lives when terminal illness means they no longer want to contemplate further existence or tolerate the possibility of a difficult death.

As we have heard, there are numerous jurisdictions that have implemented legislation on this based on the Oregon model, which is a very successful one and is tried and tested. Other jurisdictions have gone for another model, which I would broadly call the Canada model—a rather wider scheme, which I would have supported strongly. The Oregon model is the one we have before us, albeit modified, and that is what we need to get right and through Parliament; it is the one that has been approved by the Commons.

We know from good peer-reviewed research that there are no risks for the vulnerable. They are largely a rallying point for the fundamentally opposed, and that is all. There is no evidence of any undue influence impacting on the decision. The process can be part of good palliative care services and in many places where this model has been taken up palliative care services have improved. It makes people focus more on the realities of care of the dying. Yes, it would be great to see better palliative care—I would support that and always have—but not at the expense of trying to introduce another legitimate arm to it, which is part of good palliative care.

My problem with this Bill is what the Commons has done to it. As the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said, it is now hedged around with so many so-called safeguards that have been inserted that it might prove to be unwieldy if not unworkable. The notion that a psychiatrist should be called in to confirm capacity in some cases is probably unnecessary. All doctors are trained to assess capacity; they have to be for testamentary capacity. Of course, I love dearly psychiatrists—after all, I am one—but I think it is unlikely that my colleagues will want to be involved, except in very exceptional and unusual circumstances. Frankly, there is too much bureaucracy and oversight in this Bill. The experience of other countries suggests that the less bureaucratic the process, the better the experience for patients.

The Bill is very narrow in its criteria for eligibility. I am content to go through with this Bill as it is, but I am one who would like to see in the future an expansion of eligibility criteria to support people with irremediable diagnoses, such as Tony Nicklinson and other people with locked-in syndrome. My 100-year old mother decided to starve herself to death when her pain was excessive. She had very good palliative care support and a brilliant GP, but those three weeks in which she was determined to die—she was fully mentally competent—were the worst three weeks of my life. Nevertheless, I want to see this Bill go through, and hope it becomes legislation as soon as possible.

I am sympathetic to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, but I am very worried that it would create further problems for us. Let us try to get this Bill through, and then at least we can make some progress and respect the wishes of the Commons.

Drug Use and Possession: Royal Commission

Baroness Murphy Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Murphy]

My Lords, I am tempted to say that I agree with everybody else and just sit down, but I have four minutes and I am going to make the best of them.

I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, for this opportunity to press for a serious review of drug misuse policy. I am not usually supportive of royal commissions because they tend to kick matters into the long grass. However, we are already in the long grass on this matter. We are saddled with a policy that we all agree has largely failed. Small bits of it may have been successful, but it has largely failed. We are rather frightened to focus on the alternative harm reduction policies for reasons that we have amply aired.

On the question of evidence-based policy and the research to support it, although we have plenty of evidence about the failure of current policies, I fear that we have surprisingly little evidence on which a royal commission could base its positive recommendations for future policies. As an academic, I am always pressing people to say, “Stop calling for more research and just get on with what we know”. However, there is an extraordinary lack of social research. After all, drug use is a social activity with social impacts.

To my mind, it is strange what large and fundamental gaps remain in our understanding. For example, we have not tackled the dramatic changes in cannabis use that have occurred over the past 20 years and we know very little about enforcement of the drug laws. Following the second reclassification of cannabis back to a class B drug, there is a pressing need to evaluate how this change is impacting on policing, for example. We lack a good understanding of the routes both into and out of problematic drug use and the long-term impact of drug use on families. For example, social workers are making difficult decisions every day about the placement of children and are placing them back with families in which there is profound drug addiction, yet the evidence that they have on which to make those decisions is very poor indeed. I could mention many other pressing topics. This is merely a short list of examples of the gaps in research.

Until recently, neither the Economic and Social Research Council nor the Medical Research Council had funded major programmes of work in this area, although in the charitable sector the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has published some admirable research with modest funding. The majority of government money devoted to drug research has been spent on usage surveys, monitoring and evaluation—quite properly, since that is the Government’s job—rather than on exploratory research designed to fill the gaps.

There have been positive developments. Early in 2009, the MRC launched its addiction and substance misuse research strategy and it has now launched a new programme. However, the ESRC seems to have spent a total of just £3,000 in the last year and has given no grants either in programme grants or responsive mode funding. I think that that is extraordinary for one of the major problems that society has developed over the last 40 years.

The major research centres are mostly focused in clinical or epidemiological centres. Senior academics are from medical disciplines. I do not want to detract from the importance of this work, but I think that we have to get the balance of government research funding right. It is not heartening for researchers to know that, if they get good evidence, it will not be implemented. We have already had some evidence of that.

Finally, drugs are a highly emotive topic, which generates hyperbole, controversy and political vacillation, but it is crucial that we invest in proper social research to advise any independent inquiry on the way forward. Will the Minister say what plans the Government have to invest in the social scientific research that we need to take forward evidence-based policies?