Health: End of Life

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blair of Boughton (CB)]

My Lords, I should declare an interest in that, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, I served on the commission of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. My contribution to today’s debate will be to consider some of the practicalities of the current situation and their appalling effect on individuals.

One of the main aspects of the Bill introduced by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, as the noble Lord, Lord Rowe-Beddoe, has just described, would be to seek to alter the legal framework concerning assisted dying, which it found to be unfit for purpose. As has just been said, while 14 years’ imprisonment is the penalty, no one has been prosecuted for many years. Furthermore, the previous DPP issued guidance that makes it unlikely that any non-medical person assisting another to die with no malicious reason would be prosecuted. So what is the problem and why is it unfit for purpose?

I suppose I was asked to be on the commission so that I could help it with investigative and prosecutorial experience. Actually, I did not need to because the witnesses did that. As the law sees assisted dying as a criminal act, and because such an act has no regulation, then when such a process takes place the police inevitably have to be involved. I do not think that anyone quite understands what that means. If an assisted death has taken place and the police arrive, they will deal with that as a potential homicide scene. They will photograph it, isolate it and seize notes left for relatives, gifts and computers. Those involved are under the threat of arrest, are interviewed under criminal caution and will face months of waiting for a prosecutorial decision, and it may not be possible even to have a funeral very quickly. However kind and professional the police are, how much more pain do we want to inflict on people who have done what they believe to be right, out of compassion?

I shall tell noble Lords just how much more pain. One witness spoke of his wife, who had been diagnosed with motor neurone disease. She was a nurse so she knew what the disease would do. She was determined to die before she was unable to take her own life. She told her family that but she would not ever tell them when and where she would do so, which meant, as the witness said, that the love of his life died alone with no one, particularly him, to hold her hand while she was dying. If that was not enough, it did not work, of course, because the police came in and investigated her death anyway since that is what they have to do.

That is the practicality of a law that is wrong, which is protected only by prosecutorial guidance that can be changed, and which leaves the police inevitably to have to perform an immensely distasteful process for people who are already suffering enough. We should remember the wise advice of the friends of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs.