Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill Debate
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Lord Deben
Main Page: Lord Deben (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Deben's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(1 day, 10 hours ago)
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Lord Deben (Con)
My Lords, as a fellow Catholic, I make a confession. I have learned an enormous amount from listening to almost every moment of the Bill. The argument that most distresses me is that which suggests that this has been subject to a filibuster. I have learned a great deal, and I am the better for it, although not the happier for it. I want, therefore, to explain something that I find extremely difficult and that we have not really faced. The problem is not the problem that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has raised; the problem is the nature of the process right from the beginning.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, said that this could not be a government Bill. It is perfectly possible for the Government to have said in their manifesto that a Bill would be prepared, but people would be able to vote on it as they believed to be right. That would have meant that we had a Bill that answered the fundamental problems that many of us have.
The noble and learned Lord knows that, in principle, I disagree with the Bill, but my fundamental problem with it is that I cannot ask about or understand a whole range of things, because they are not in the Bill and are left to a Government to decide how they shall be done. That is why the Minister, with commendable and continuous patience, has had to say, “I cannot answer that, because that depends on what the Houses say, and we will have to answer that afterwards”.
This is not a satisfactory way to proceed and nor is blaming the House of Lords in our debates, when the fundamental issue is that what really happened—and we know what happened—was that the Prime Minister made a promise and then did not do it in the way it should have been done. He arranged for a Private Member’s Bill to be produced. That Bill has been produced. Now, we are told, it is a very good, robust and safe Bill. Well, a robust and safe Bill would not be the only Bill I can remember in 50 years in politics that is opposed by every representative of the disabled movement. What other Bill would we bring forward, saying that it is a suitable Bill, even though every disability organisation is opposed to it?
Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)
I thank the noble Lord for giving way. As he indicated, over 300 disability groups have expressed concerns about this. I do not think that a single disability group has come out in favour of it. That has led, in part, to the problems that we have faced. There has been a wide range of amendments, particularly those put down by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, as well as those put down by me and others, on disability issues, which have been either directly inspired or suggested by a disability group. In virtually all those cases, the answer that has come back was no. It is perhaps not surprising that there is still a level of concern and opposition from disability groups.
Lord Deben (Con)
My concern is merely to say that, whatever your views are, I do not know of a previous occasion when such concerted concerns have been, frankly, not faced up to.
The second thing that I find very difficult is for it to be said that this is a robust and safe Bill, when, so far, it has not actually met the concerns of all the royal colleges. I entirely agree with the correction made by my noble friend: some of them are opposed to it for particularities, some want particular changes and one, I believe, is opposed to it in principle. However, the point is that we are seeking to make a fundamental change, and that is this other issue that I find so difficult. I think the phrase used by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury was societal change. This is not like the other Bills with which it has been compared; this would make a change to something that we have held as a society for hundreds of years. We have never thought it proper for the state to take life, except when we believed that it was all right for capital punishment, and we certainly believe it to be right in the case of a just war.
We have to face the fact that this would be a fundamental change. Some of the comments that have been made have been really concerning. When it is said, as it was, that this was about nitpicking changes, you realise that there was no understanding of the fundamental change that we are proposing. There are many who take a different view from me about that fundamental change, but we should all accept that this is not a passing issue that can be discussed easily.
When the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, says that we ought to get through it all, I say that we can do that only if we do not do the job properly. The problem here is that much of the job that we have had to do— I say this directly to the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, with whom I have had discussions in the past—ought to have been done before the Bill came to this House. It should have been done by a royal commission. We should have had a proper Bill, which was a government Bill, and we should then have been able to use both our ability to debate and our right to decide at the end of it.
I hope that the noble and learned Lord will not bring back this Bill, unamended or even amended with the bits of amendments that he has so far been prepared to do, for which I thank him—I do not mean “bits” in an unpleasant way; I mean the pieces that he has done. I wish he would do something quite different. I very much believe in my cause, and I want this to be properly carried through a proper parliamentary system. I want to uphold what Parliament is about. I want, therefore, to have a proper commission. I want to have a proper Bill, produced by the Government, and then I want people to be able to vote on that as a matter of conscience. If he does that, he will have the respect of all of us.