Health and Care Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Lords Hansard _ Part 1 & Report stage
Wednesday 16th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 170 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, to which I have added my name.

As the noble Lord made clear, there is no realistic prospect of a Committee day for my Assisted Dying Bill. This makes the point that the current procedures limiting Private Members’ Bills to Fridays do not enable important legislation such as the Assisted Dying Bill to reach the statute book.

The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, introduced his amendment brilliantly. It leaves me only to reiterate that we are not discussing the pros and cons of assisted dying this evening. The House is expected to rise at 1.30 tomorrow morning. I hope for the sake of everybody in this House that noble Lords on both sides of the assisted dying debate will resist the temptation to get into such a debate—that is not as what this amendment is about. We are debating whether it is acceptable that there is no procedure at present to enable the Westminster Parliament to test the willingness of both houses to pass such a significant and popular piece of legislation. We know that not only Scotland, which the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, mentioned, but Jersey and even the Isle of Man have procedures to enable them to pass an assisted dying law, and all those three are likely to pass such legislation within the next one to three years.

We therefore ask noble Lords: do we really think it is satisfactory that the Westminster Parliament is hamstrung without a procedure for Parliament properly to debate a Bill to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill people who are mentally competent and who are suffering unbearably? For Westminster to be upstaged on such an important and popular human rights issue by our much smaller neighbours is surely unconscionable. Amendment 170 from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, deserves our support.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I oppose this amendment. Much as I admire my noble friend Lord Forsyth and fully understand the reasons why he has brought this before your Lordships’ House, it is not a good precedent to bind the Government in one Bill to introduce another a year or so hence. We should think very carefully about the constitutional issues.

We should remember Silverman and we should remember Steel: those Bills began in the other place—an elected House. An initiative of this sort should come from the elected House and not be imposed upon it by an unelected House. I do not think anybody would question my devotion to this House. I believe passionately in it. I believe passionately in an appointed House, as we are. I admire enormously the variety of expertise and experience that is in your Lordships’ House. However, we are not the elected House. I agree that it would be entirely reasonable in the elected House for time to be sought from government. The last time they debated this there was a fairly emphatic result, and it was not in favour of having an assisted dying Bill.

Much as we can admire the total sincerity of those who are committed to the principle of assisted suicide—I happen not to be of their number—it is very dangerous for us to begin in this House changing constitutional precedent by obliging government to introduce a Bill. Therefore, I urge your Lordships not to support this amendment.