Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Baroness O'Loan Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O’Loan (CB)]

My Lords, as legislators, we surely have a duty to safeguard the public good as best we can. We must legislate in the public interest, taking into account the needs not only of the strong and eloquent but also the weak and vulnerable, who have come to believe, perhaps, that their lives have no value because that is what so much of society tells them if they are sick, or ageing—as so many of us are in your Lordships’ House—if their ongoing existence is eating up the money they have faithfully saved to leave something to those they love, or if they need care and are afraid of becoming a burden on those who care for them. We have a duty to all these people, and the Bill does not provide the safeguards and protections they need from those who would encourage them to make the required declaration.

Questions about safeguards and public safety are central to whether the Bill merits the support of Parliament. If it is not safe, it must be rejected. The Bill offers no real safeguards, only vague statements of intent with no detail of how they can or should be enforced. With great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, these are not speculative concerns. Parliament is being asked to pass assisted suicide into law and let the Department of Health and Social Care develop a code of practice at a later date. There is an assumption that MPs and Peers should—and would—allow themselves to be bypassed, and that they would abdicate their responsibility, surrender their powers and fail in their duty of scrutiny.

The Bill is window-dressed, seductively, with deceptive assurances of safety. We have heard repeatedly just how difficult it is to make a prognosis of imminent death. How are a settled and informed wish for assisted suicide, mental capacity and freedom from pressure to be established? A 2020 report from Oregon revealed that 53% of patients requested lethal drugs because they feared becoming a burden on those they loved who cared for them. There is an assumption that doctors will do the dreadful work of facilitating and assisting suicides. Another 2020 survey showed that the majority of those licensed to practice who are closest to the terminally ill and dying patient, do not support legislation on assisted suicide and will not participate in it.

My postbag was unusually full on this occasion, not only with letters from people asking me to oppose the Bill, but also from a number of clinicians who set out, very articulately, why it was such a dangerous Bill. Some of those emails and letters have been quoted in your Lordships’ House today.

How are judges to assess the decisions of the doctors, who are the gatekeepers of death in this legislation? Fundamentally, as has been said, the Bill will change the role of medical professionals from caregivers into killers. I am afraid that when you terminate the life of somebody that is what happens.

We can do better than this. We can spend our money on improving palliative care. The current prohibitions against assisted suicide are effective safeguards that strike a delicate balance. Without them, the health service will become dangerous for the most vulnerable people in our society. There is nothing in the noble Baroness’s Bill to protect them, just an awful lot that may bring terrible harm.