Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Bishop of Chester and Lord Dobbs

Friday 16th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs]

Self-administered, when surrounded by one’s family and registered nurses, with the assistance of doctors and under the approval of a judge, is not the same situation as the noble Lord suggests. He mentioned earlier that he is usually smart enough not to tangle with other people. I am usually smart enough not to tangle with him on any matter, but on this I disagree with him profoundly.

Please allow me to finish, because I do not want to delay the House. We all know that we have to die. That we do know and, for many of us, it will be the most challenging point of our lives and a time in which we need assistance and support. The deaths covered by the Bill are not only inevitable but imminent. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, used the phrase “dying because they wish to do so”. It is not dying because they wish to do so but because they are going to die and imminently. To term those inevitable deaths as suicide would make them even more difficult and distressing. I beg the House not to do so.

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, briefly, the debate is now running into the sand a little and I hope that we can move on. I have great sympathy here for the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs. The word “suicide” could be applied to a member of the French resistance who, knowing that he was going to be captured and thinking that he would not be able to resist the Gestapo, took own life—an action I would completely understand—but it could also be applied to a suicide bomber. The word is so multivalent that once we start discussing it, we get into this interminable process. I suggest that we have now heard the arguments and should move on.