Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Murphy and Lord Maginnis of Drumglass

Friday 7th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maginnis of Drumglass (Ind UU)]

My Lords, I have wondered at what stage I should intervene in this debate in so far as I am not a doctor or a lawyer. I find myself with the problem that life has not for me been exclusively about doctors and lawyers and those erudite few who can argue about other people’s lives. I hope that those who would try to persuade us that this Bill is a necessity for this so-called sophisticated age in which we live are able to understand that the majority of us live our lives on the basis of a moral code—it has never let me down in 77 years—where, collectively, we have least difficulty in finding ourselves able to coalesce in defence of what we usually refer to as the common good.

I get the impression that it is not fashionable to admit to a faith that is based on the 10 commandments but that there is a prevailing view of our times that favours—indeed, espouses—individual morality where there is no absolute right and no absolute wrong. It suggests that each individual has at a specific moment some inherent right to choose what falls within one’s own moral compass. Surely that is a selfish, if not arrogant, position that in this specific instance must toss us on the horns of a dilemma. Should we, from within this comfortable and privileged Chamber, acknowledge the established right and wrong in how we seek to protect the vulnerable, the elderly and those unable to protect themselves, or do we absolve ourselves by criticising those like the extremists in the Middle East, those who mutilate young women through FGM or abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell as they comply with the tenets of their own moral compass?

All I have to say, because I am not a lawyer or a doctor, is that we can decide to look the other way, to pass on the other side, or we can show the compassion and the responsibility of the good Samaritan, however inconvenient that may be to those who would turn our lives into a philosophy that is questionable, contradictory and argumentative.

[Baroness Murphy]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group which I wish to discuss briefly. I should say that I am an academic psychiatrist who practised in the community for many years. I have done more testamentary capacity cases than I care to remember, as I practised with elderly people for 30 years. Therefore, I reckon that I am as much an expert on capacity as anybody in this House.