Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Deben and Lord Blair of Boughton

Friday 7th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, I do not believe that hard cases make bad law. I have always thought that that is one of the phrases which make it difficult to have a sensible conversation. I believe that you have to be careful not to make law because of a stereotyped position. One of the difficulties in this debate is that we tend to have stereotyped views about what is happening at the bedside. It is important to realise that a whole range of different things happen at the bedside and the relationship between the patient and his or her friends and family is never the same.

I listened with great care to what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said. I am not a lawyer and I cannot be precise as to whether his particularities are the best that we can achieve, but I hope that the House will think seriously about the need for three key elements. First, there is speed. If we are going to have this Bill, we want someone to be able to make this decision with the courtesy that speed demands. The process needs to be fast enough to be commensurate with the seriousness of the decision. Otherwise it lengthens something which someone is in desperate need to finish.

Secondly, it needs rigour. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, said that. There is nothing wrong with rigour, unless it is of a kind which makes speed impossible. I do not think that the rigour which the noble Lord suggested makes speed impossible. It says to the public as a whole that we have made this change in the law, but it is not a change in the way in which we think about human life. Those who support this Bill believe that it is an enhancement of their view of human life and that the rigour is the mechanism whereby society says that it still believes deeply in the standards and values which respect human life. On this specific and particular occasion, according to these very rigorous rules, they believe it right for someone to take their own life with the assistance of someone else.

Thirdly, we have to do this in a way in which the aftermath is as manageable as possible. I hope that noble Lords will think very carefully about the effect of assisted suicide on the family and friends after it has happened. I believe that the Victorians spoke far too little about sex and far too much about death. The reverse is true today. We do not understand—because very often we are unprepared to talk about it—the effect of death on the rest of the family. I remember receiving a very considerable rebuke when I allowed—and, indeed, organised—my children to see their dead grandmother. I thought it was necessary to start the whole process of grieving. I have become more aware of the different ways in which people react today and of the difficult issue of how someone might react to death before it happens. Anyone who has been involved pastorally—whether in parliamentary or religious terms or just in terms of neighbourliness—recognises that it is hard to know how a particular person will react ultimately to what has happened.

Changes in the law along the lines that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has proposed are very important. We should be prepared to recognise that, although this is a decision of the patient, guaranteed by the law to be an individual decision, we as legislators have to legislate in a way which also respects and protects the effect of that decision on society. In an odd way, that is actually our biggest job. We represent society in trying to make these tough decisions. I hope that your Lordships will take seriously the need to do as my noble friend Lord Carlile has suggested, not just for the patient, not just for the doctor and not just for the assurance that we have really professional assessment of the medical advice, but also to make sure that when the children look back on the occasion, they are protected in the best possible way and are able to accept it. After all, whichever side of this argument you are on, that is crucial. Anyone who does not realise what grieving has to be if the future is not going to be seriously tarnished and damaged has not been through that experience.

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

May I ask the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, about the declaration in Amendment 172? I have no difficulty with the declaration except that it changes the nature of the Bill. Is this a typo or a deliberate change? The declaration declares that the person is going,

“to die within three months”.

However, the Bill says six months. If we are going to change what is in the Bill by such a significant amount, it would be better if it were an amendment in its own right.

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Lord Blair of Boughton

Monday 21st July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I ask the Government to think carefully about this clause—and I do so because they have pushed me into the very unlikely position of finding it impossible to support this proposal. The reason I find it impossible is that we already have more people in prison than any comparable country in the world. When we had a discussion about that, Ministers said, “Ah well, judges deem it right to send people to prison”. I do not see how you can say that and then say that in circumstances of this kind, judges should be told that they have to send people to prison. That is the first point that I find very difficult to take.

The second point is that judges are in a position to make proper decisions about very vulnerable young people. When I had a young persons’ prison in my constituency, to go there was one of the most depressing moments of the month because you met all sorts of young men who could so easily have been your own children, if they had not been brought up in circumstances of such horror and in such appalling situations that you were surprised that anybody could have turned out other than criminal. You cannot excuse people by their background or environment but you have to make your judgments on punishment with a full understanding of the circumstances and likely effects of the punishment that you make.

The third reason is this. If you can think of a way most likely to ensure that someone who has broken the law will continue to do so, a short prison sentence must be it. It is manifestly true that it does not work; it is even more true that it normally can make things worse. If other countries manage to have a different system without having some enormous increase in crime, the Government really have to think again. After all, if you walk in the streets of Paris or Berlin, or indeed in Dusseldorf or Lille, do you feel less safe because there are half as many people in prison? Of course you do not. They have found better ways of doing this. I am citing not Scandinavian countries but those countries with which we would normally compare ourselves.

There is a further reason, too, which is this. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will not be embarrassed by this but I do not like the way that this got into the Bill. It was not in the Bill originally; the Government did not think that it was the answer. What happened was that people outside, not known for their concern for young people or their concern for moderation and real facts, started a campaign to say that this was the answer. But that is the same campaign that we have had for years and years, which is: “Be tougher, lock up more people and really show which side you are on”.

I do not think that anyone could claim that I am on any side other than having the toughest belief in the rule of law and the most concern to protect people. However, I do not like it when the law is changed, or proposed to be changed, not by the sober reflection of those who have to carry the consequences but by the noisy statement of those who will move on to another campaign the moment that that one ceases to sell newspapers or gain support. That for me is the reason why this is intolerable. We must make our laws because we know that they are right and have thought about them; otherwise, we will go backwards in so many ways.

I end by saying to my noble friend that one of the things that characterises this Government—and, indeed, this moment in our history—is that we have become more understanding about things and less damagingly demonstrative about our attitude to other people. We have become more willing to say that there must be another way. As we are going to discuss the appalling situations created by those who think that the only way forward is to use force against others, we ought also to think about ourselves. We do not have this right. We have not made our whole punishment system work as well as those of many of our neighbours. Is not this the moment to say that we are not going to keep going down this route but are genuinely going to see whether we can learn more from other people and, having done so, change our system so that we can get the results we need without the knee-jerk reaction of “lock ’em up”?

[Lord Blair of Boughton (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly oppose the proposal that Clause 25 should not stand part of the Bill and it appears that commissioners may think in the same way, according to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. Since the early 19th century, it has been the received wisdom that people are deterred from committing crime by the likelihood of detection rather than the length of sentence. I agree with that in general.

As a former Metropolitan Police commissioner and deputy-commissioner, I have experience of two categories of crime that proved the rule by being exceptions to it. The first is the one that Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has apparently already mentioned: that is, the reduction in shootings that occurred in London after a five-year mandatory sentence was announced. That occurred because communication among the criminal fraternity is good. It is particularly good among the women of that group, who stopped carrying the guns in their handbags. Therefore the guns are not as much in evidence as they were.

I imagine that many noble Lords will recall my second example, which was a response to the marked rise in fatal and near fatal stabbings of teenagers in London a few years ago. The most important factor in reducing that was the issue of a practice direction from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge—I do not think that he is in his place—when he was Lord Chief Justice, that a first offence of unlawful possession of a knife should normally be considered for a custodial sentence. Knife crime started to fall and I believe that is because people knew that that message was passing around the streets of London.

I believe that, with knife crime falling, a custodial sentence for a second offence of carrying these weapons makes much better sense than for a first offence. The reason for that is it provides people with a chance. A sentencer now sentencing someone for a first offence can give them a very simple message which is very easy to understand—“Don’t do this again or you will go to jail”. Normally, I am in favour of leaving judges and magistrates free to exercise their judgment but this crime has an additional catastrophe attached to it. It ruins the life not only of the person who is seriously injured or killed but also the life of the offender in those circumstances.

I had to talk to the families of people who had been murdered in these circumstances. We have not heard enough from those who oppose the clause or, with respect, from the noble Lord, Lord Deben, about the victims of knife crime. Knife crime can change lives catastrophically. One of the awful things about that period when teenagers were killing each other in London was how often there was only one knife wound. A single blow had caused these deaths, as if these young people had no idea that that action would kill someone. It seems to me sensible to pass a message to stop the thing happening that will then allow someone to be murdered. One cannot murder someone very easily if one does not have a knife or a gun. I strongly oppose the proposal.