Assisted Dying: Legislation

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness O'Cathain (Con)]

My Lords, in all the millions of words that will be spoken today, next week and next year on this subject, I just want to make sure that we do not lose sight of one fact. The relationship between a doctor and a patient is not simply a commercial relationship such as that which exists between a customer and a supplier. It is a relationship of trust, involving a duty of care and protection. To suggest that a doctor should knowingly and deliberately aid and abet a patient’s suicide—I will use that word—takes clinical practice into a place where it has no business to be, and could signify the breakdown of that trust.