Assisted Dying: Legislation

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Blair of Boughton (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as one of the commissioners of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. I want to reflect briefly on the experience of being a commissioner.

First, I want to emphasise that whatever is being proposed is voluntary—voluntary for the person involved as a patient and voluntary for the medical practitioner. Secondly, as others have said, research on the jurisdictions that have allowed assisted dying shows no evidence of a slippery slope. Thirdly, even though I was a police officer for 35 years, the testimony that we were given of some of these dreadful deaths is among the most shocking things that I have ever encountered.

Finally, speaking as a former police officer, even if the DPP's current guidelines make prosecution unlikely, they do not make the search, questioning and possible arrest of the people involved unnecessary. At the moment that has to happen. However good the police are, someone is left not only with a death but with precious objects removed from their house, and with the decision hanging over them about whether to prosecute.