Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Carlile of Berriew Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (LD)]

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, has initiated an extraordinary debate. Coming in to bat at number 117, as I think it is now, I am able to reflect a little on that debate.

We have heard some marvellous speeches, analytical and deeply personal in equal measure. The noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, has just given a moving description of what happened in his family. Earlier, we heard an extremely moving speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean. Those are two stories that I am sure we will all remember as eventually we go into Committee on this Bill, and I am sure will colour our judgment, whichever side we happen to be on.

However, during this debate there has been running what I submit to your Lordships is an ethical and philosophical fallacy about the primacy of choice. The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, referred to this earlier, and I agree with her carefully articulated analysis. I challenge the presumption of the primacy of choice. We are denied many choices in life in the greater public interest. For example, one of the choices that we are denied is that of killing or even injuring those who attack and injure us. If we do, we may have a defence in court but it is very different from a choice. I suggest that the slippery slope that we are really discussing here is more in the context of what legitimate choice is than in this proposed legislation. Exactly the same kinds of arguments about choice are deployed in the United States of America to justify the availability of guns. At the bottom of that slippery slope we know lie the bodies of the many innocent victims. As this Bill continues in this House, we should continue to debate that philosophical question.

How big a question does the Bill really ask? Earlier in the debate, the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, said that the Bill was not a radical innovation in the law. With great respect to the noble Lord, he could not be more wrong. Indeed, a few minutes later, the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, reminded us that this Bill dismantled the Hippocratic oath. As the Guardian’s editorial put it this morning, the Bill attempts to “redraw the moral landscape”.

I therefore ask the noble and learned Lord, before he sits down at the end of the debate, to answer some questions for which we need the answers if we are to be able to judge fairly how the Bill should proceed. They include: why has he not redrafted it in the light of the recent Supreme Court judgment so that the arbitration of these cases would not be by two random and favourably inclined doctors but through the courts? As the noble and learned Lord knows, the courts are very accustomed to these kinds of decision, as they are in vegetative syndrome cases and in cases relating to Jehovah’s Witnesses’ refusal to have operations, on which the courts decide on a regular basis. I urge on the noble and learned Lord that that provides a much better template than two doctors. On this aspect, I agree completely with the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger.

Why has the noble and learned Lord provided in the Bill for only the possibility of a ministerial code of practice, rather than the certainty? Is it a mere piece of text, or has he obtained from Ministers their acceptance that a code of practice would be promulgated? When will we see an example of the draft code of practice, which we expect to examine alongside the Bill? Why does he not insist in the Bill on doctors who actually know the patient, so that we avoid what has been described, rather extravagantly, as the Shipman problem? Would he please answer the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, about whether there will be inquests and inquiries after deaths, as he proposes should take place? These and many other questions require answers.

To sum up, I quote the Guardian leader again:

“Reshaping the moral landscape is no alternative to cherishing life and the living”.

Certainly I shall approach the Committee stage in the spirit of cherishing life and the living.