Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Elton and Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood

Friday 16th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elton]

Before the noble Lord sits down, I would pick up his phrase “the Westminster bubble”. That is precisely the problem: we do live in the Westminster bubble. We think that the intellectuals who lead the political papers are the whole public; they are a tiny minority of it. The general public know what suicide is, just as they know what death is. We need to choose what the Bill is about, and a great many of us believe that it is about suicide, not assisted death.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

Of course the Bill is about assisted suicide, but equally obviously, it is expressly confined to the suicide of those who are already terminally ill—those who are therefore already actually in the process of dying; that is, dying in an altogether more meaningful sense than when one says that everybody is born to die and we are all dying. That is perfectly plain already in the Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, but at the end of the day, for my part, I am entirely relaxed about this group of amendments. I urge that the House proceeds speedily to the critical issues on which the Bill should stand or fall, so that the public will in all this can be given effect. The public will not give a fig what Title is given to it.

Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Debate between Lord Elton and Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood

Monday 17th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood]

My Lords, when I came into the Chamber this afternoon, it never occurred to me that there might be something original to be said. Having listened, however, to all the speeches thus far, it seems to me that it is original to point out that the very purpose of this Bill—its underlying objective—is inclusivity; it is sameness; it is to eliminate, so far as possible, any differentiation in regard and in treatment of same-sex couples from heterosexual couples. It is to give same-sex couples the exact same status, benefits, comfort, joys, estimation, reputation—call it what one will—of marriage. The Bill is so called and the Explanatory Notes make that plain. With the greatest respect to those who move and support these amendments, they are calculated, if not indeed designed, essentially to undermine that core purpose of the legislation.

In truth, this is a root-and-branch attack on the Bill, almost in the same way as was advanced at Second Reading. I, too, regret I was unable to speak at Second Reading—I was in fact celebrating my own golden wedding. I am happy to say that my noble and learned friend Lord Lloyd of Berwick was among those who joined me in the celebration. He says today that to talk of civil unions, instead of using the language of marriage would be, and I think I quote him accurately, “to give the gay community what it so obviously desires”. With the best will in the world, it would not. They have civil partnerships. It is absurd to suggest, I would argue, that civil partnerships and civil unions are distinct.

[Lord Elton]

I think that there is a misunderstanding between us about the difference between being equal and being the same. If you have two different things and put them together, you do not arrive at a larger quantity of the thing that was originally there; you arrive at something new. If you add one part of hydrogen to two parts of oxygen, you finish up with water.

Whatever you say in the law, there are two different categories here; what we are trying to do, in all charity, is to bring them together and bring some sort of reconciliation and mutual recognition of understanding, which is being made exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, by the way this thing has been introduced into Parliament and into public life. However, the fact remains that when you have one part hydrogen and two parts oxygen, you finish up with water and not hydrogen.