Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)]

My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Davidson, on a terrific maiden speech. It was excellent, and I thank her.

I hope that the House will forgive me if I make something of a personal contribution to this debate. Having survived acute myeloid leukaemia when he was 38, my husband again contracted cancer 25 years later. It was an incurable cancer of the oesophagus and liver. The Royal Marsden Hospital was terrific. My husband wanted to die at home. The senior palliative consultant provided us with drugs to relieve pain and fear. The drugs had to be given intravenously by a district nurse when we got home. The nurse who arrived—to administer the medication, we thought—refused point-blank to give my husband the drugs. I reminded her of the Royal Marsden’s instructions about the regime she was meant to follow. She refused, saying that she was in charge in my house and would make the decisions. My husband and I were staggered. In effect, the district nurse had overruled the senior palliative consultant in the leading cancer hospital in this country. Moreover, we were very frightened.

Very shortly afterwards, it was clear to me that my husband would die soon. He was in agonising pain and overwhelming distress. He tried over and over again to get out of bed because he would not give in. It took four members of our family to hold him down, but his distress was terrible. His was an appalling and terrible death. I did not know how to alleviate his dreadful suffering. All I could do was pray that it would be over soon. If I had known how to make his death easier, calmer and quieter, I would have done so, but I did not know and could not help him. I wish that I had known how to ease his end—but that would have been illegal, of course, and remains illegal for anybody in the position I was in. That is very wrong.

I support the Bill.

Armed Services: War Crimes

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

I am grateful to my noble friend. We are aware of that and it is a matter that shall be taken into consideration.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister was unable to answer the specific point raised by my noble friend Lord West of Spithead in relation to Ireland. Would he be kind enough to write to him on that?

[Lord Faulks]

I am happy to do that when I have the relevant information to hand.

Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean Excerpts

Friday 16th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s helpful reply and for the intervention of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton. I will consider this extremely carefully. I personally think that it would be appropriate and simplest if we were to have a provision in this Bill rather than having to set in train a completely new statutory instrument, with all the separate procedures that that would involve. I should be grateful if Members of the House, after reflecting on this short debate, would get in touch with me if they have a particular view on the options that are now presented to us. For the moment, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)]

The noble Lord mentioned that legal aid should also be available to members of the family and my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer made the same point. Would he take that view if members of the family were opposed to the wish of the person seeking assisted suicide? For example, if parents of a young person of 18 or 19 wanted to intervene, would his amendment cover the position of such parents?

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I am grateful for that intervention. I think my answer is this. I speak with the experience in the early part of my career of having had a lot to do with family matters and of acting for a coroner. The sad fact is that applications under the Bill when it is enacted could be highly contested, especially in circumstances where a close relative believes that undue pressure is being brought on the person making the application and is convinced that the application needs proper airing before a judge. I know that doctors will give their opinions, but sometimes the facts are complicated. Members of the family will not be able to approach doctors to say, “For goodness’ sake, do you not know blah blah blah?”. One needs to make arrangements for legal aid in such cases. I am utterly convinced that it would be scandalous if we allowed this to go forward without making arrangements for people who cannot afford legal advice. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Dobbs]

Not at all. Of course it is for the individual to make the ultimate decision, but he is not on his own. It is not what is happening right now, when people with these conditions are killing themselves by suffocating themselves with plastic bags. That is suicide; it is not suicide when you are surrounded by all those who are there to give you help in that final matter. There is another point that I would like to make.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, is that not taken into account by the use of the word “assisted”? No one is trying to pretend that this is something without other people there, but the word “assisted” implies that there are other participants around. The noble Lord, in deliberately ignoring one of the words in “assisted suicide”, is in danger, as has been said, of being misleading in what he is saying.

[Lord Dobbs]

Far from deliberately ignoring the word, I would like to turn to another point that I think will answer the noble Baroness’s question precisely. If we insist on using the word “suicide”, as required by the amendment, we could end up with entirely unintended and counterproductive consequences. When the Bill becomes law—as I believe eventually it will—if it legalises suicide rather than assisted dying, might that not tend to make all forms of suicide more acceptable? It would become the thin end of the wedge, the slippery slope, by making suicide in general more acceptable. That is not what I want. “Suicide” is the wrong terminology because this is a different matter from the other types of death that come under the determination of suicide.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Empey]

Those are things that we have to probe in Committee. That is what Committee is for. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has many worthy objectives. If the proposal that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has just enunciated works, and if the professionals who know their business feel that it is more helpful, that is terrific. That is exactly what this Committee is for. I therefore commend what she said.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, I wanted to make exactly the same point as that made by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. I will not repeat it, but I ask my noble and learned friend to consider carefully the point that she just made about the actual timing of giving any drugs that would terminate life.

I wanted to make one other small point about something that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said earlier about thinking that doctors were overoptimistic about survival rates. My own experience of this, which the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, referred to at the beginning of this debate, was exactly the reverse of that. Right at the beginning of a very late diagnosis of leukaemia, my husband was told that there was only a 20% survival rate for that form of leukaemia and he was unlikely to be in that 20% because of the late diagnosis. Five years later, he received a letter, having gone through the dark hours of the night wanting to end his life in very much the way that the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, alluded to in others but has obviously steadfastly and gallantly resisted herself. The letter said that, in fact, the survival rate had not been 20%, as he had been advised, but 47%—more than double what the survival rate was meant to be.

I simply make the point that terminal illness is hard to define, whatever we put into legislation. The fact is that medical science is moving fast, particularly in the treatment of cancer. These definitions are enormously difficult and I would ask noble Lords to reflect on the fact that survival rates can be very much higher after a relatively short period of time.

Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble and learned friend for introducing the Bill and the whole House for the way in which it has debated this issue.

In November 1990, my father, aged 77, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia. He was terminally ill, but the doctors thought that they could prolong his life for some months with chemotherapy. He died before the chemotherapy began. Less than 14 months later, my husband, aged 38, was also diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia, which was well advanced and very aggressive. He was given less than two months to live. Again, the doctors sought to prolong his life with chemotherapy.

My father was elderly; he died without pain, and at peace. In contrast, my husband was relatively young, but suffered almost unbelievable pain, and was in acute mental anguish. I was called into the hospital in the early hours one morning. My husband’s pain was overwhelming. The only way to administer morphine was to spray it down his throat. When at last he could speak, he told me that he wanted to stop the pain and mental torment. He said that he wanted to go gently, and asked me to accept that.

I relate those experiences because they illustrate two fundamental flaws in my noble and learned friend’s Bill. My father and husband were both given little time to live, and suffered from exactly the same terminal illness. One, suffering little pain, and at peace, who very much wanted to survive a few extra months, died within days. The other, suffering constant and appalling pain, and very much not at peace, longed for release.

My noble and learned friend’s Bill tries to define a terminal illness but fails to do so, because such a definition is impossible. It was impossible in the 1990s, given the advances in medical science; now, 20 years later, any definition becomes less and less plausible. What was thought to be terminal last year may be treatable this year, and that is no basis to end a life.

My second concern is the following. Several years ago, when we debated the Bill in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, one of my noble friends—a supporter of assisted dying—told me that the Bill was aimed not at young people with terminal illnesses, such as my husband, but at those who had largely lived their lives. However, of course, the Bill does not distinguish between one adult and another. The same provisions must apply to those aged 18, 38 or 80, as they do in the Bill. Yet so often it is the young who despair, particularly young men, as the suicide statistics tell us—suicide being the greatest cause of death among young men in this country. Those young men cannot face the tragedy of a life not to be lived, and opt for the release that is offered them. I fear not only for the elderly under my noble and learned friend’s Bill, but for the young.

I cannot know what would have happened in my own family. I do not know what the outcome would have been if my noble and learned friend’s Bill had been on the statute book. However, I am profoundly grateful that it was not. I know that my husband longed for release, and that today my son still has a father, and I still have a husband.

Leveson Inquiry

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords—

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords—

[Lord Elton]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally]

My noble friend makes a very sound point, and it is extremely good that it comes from someone on the Conservative Benches with such long experience of these matters.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, the Deputy Prime Minister’s Statement makes the very important point that the statutory underpinning of the Press Council of Ireland is accepted by those very newspapers that have become so hysterical about the possibility of statutory underpinning in this country. Will the Deputy Leader of the House assure the House that this crucially important point will not be lost in the cross-party discussions that will take place and that the Deputy Prime Minister will stick to his guns on this point?

[Lord McNally]

I can assure the noble Baroness of that fact.

Political and Constitutional Reform

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

I am quite sure that the psephologists and slide-rule merchants in all parties and on television will be making calculations. We are putting this forward because it makes our system of elections fairer, and that is what people want.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, I do not want to be unkind to the Deputy Leader of the House, but his answers seem to have been a combination of, “You would say that, wouldn’t you?” to the Opposition, and, “I have heard that argument before” to members of his coalition; and it seems that he cannot say whether the Parliament Act would be used. I will ask a straightforward question: what will happen to the coalition if the referendum on an AV system is lost?

[Lord McNally]

Usually, people who say that they do not want to be unkind mean that they want to be unkind. I assure the noble Baroness that if the referendum is lost, the coalition will move on with its programme of government towards the election in May 2015. What has not got across to the other side is that we are into a new system of politics that provides better governance.