Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Murphy and Lord Cormack

Friday 7th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

My Lords, I will stick to the amendment. I told the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, a few days ago that I would not support it for all the reasons that the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, mentioned, and the reasons raised by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. This is a decision by patients—let us come back to them—it is not a decision by doctors. Any judicial intervention placed between the patient and the processes by which they could be helped in what they want is likely to be difficult. Remember also that patients every day make decisions to end their lives. They make a decision not to have that last chemotherapy offered to them. They have had perhaps a year of it and they do not want any more. That wish is respected, their capacity is rarely mentioned and they make that decision.

However, I have thought a great deal over the past few days and looked again at the Second Reading debate. The anxiety raised was sufficient to suggest that perhaps we need to put in a process that can be quick. Operating in the mental health world, I know that the courts can readily convene at 24 hours’ notice; I have often had to take a magistrate’s order and get a court decision quite quickly. It is possible for someone to have judicial oversight within a short time if the process is developed correctly. Looking at the range of options provided in this group of amendments, I would say that the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, are worth supporting, and I will go with them despite my original anxieties. They will make the Bill workable and not destroy it, whereas the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, would make it unworkable. For that reason, I urge all noble Lords who like the principles of the Bill to support the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, in his amendments.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I hope we will not be called upon to vote on either amendment but very much hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, will reflect most carefully on what has been said. He knows that I totally respect, indeed honour, his motives in bringing the Bill before the House. He knows also that I have considerable misgivings. However, this House decided, rightly, to give the Bill a Second Reading, and it is now our duty to try to improve it so that those of us with misgivings have them allayed so far as possible, and so that those who believe in the Bill, and are a little impatient in their belief, will accept that we are in no sense seeking to retard the Bill’s progress, but rather to improve it. I make that point in particular to the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, who intervened a few moments ago.