Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Haworth Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haworth (Lab)]

My Lords, it is exactly 10 years this week since I joined your Lordships’ House but this is the first time that I have spoken in a debate on this subject. Throughout all that time, assisted dying has remained one of the most vexed and divisive unresolved issues, but I believe that public opinion is changing.

I do not personally have a religious or principled objection to assisted dying or assisted suicide but I found myself unable to support the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, in 2006 because I had been hugely impressed by the arguments of those who opposed the Bill and who argued for better palliative care as the answer, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, whom the whole House rightly respects and admires. I was deeply worried about the slippery slope argument that a change in the law would somehow inevitably morph into something different and undesirable where an elderly person or perhaps a disabled person would find themselves increasingly pressurised into ending their life prematurely.

Down the years I have wrestled very hard with these points, and I have changed my mind. I believe that this Bill deals clearly and convincingly with these worries. It is tightly drawn. It does not permit assistance to die for anyone who is not already terminally ill. Indeed, as has been pointed out, this may be its biggest shortcoming in that it will not offer comfort to those who wish to be released from their unbearable suffering because they cannot be diagnosed as actually terminally ill. I have no ready answer to that except to say that if the public and Parliament were to want at some point in the future to modify the tightly drawn categories or relax the safeguards, there would clearly need to be fresh primary legislation. This Bill is not the thin end of the wedge.

This Bill will give reassurance and peace of mind to an admittedly small number of people who fear that their impending death will be painful and their suffering unbearable. This is a humane measure and the evidence suggests that it has widespread public support. My mailbag suggests the same. I have received many very moving letters over the past few weeks from real people, by which I mean from individuals rather than from campaigning organisations or organised lobbying, and the letters I have received have been almost all—not quite all, but about 90%—in favour of the Bill. They also appear mostly to have been written by elderly people and often refer to some previous experience of the painful and distressing death of a loved one. They express a strong desire to have the right and ability to end their own life in a manner and time of their choice.

Not every dying person wants to have palliative care, even if it is widely and freely available. If people approaching the end of their life seek that degree of ultimate personal autonomy, and provided they have mental capacity and a settled view, the law should not deny them.