Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Rea Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rea (Lab)]

My Lords, I take a rather more optimistic view of the National Health Service than the noble Baroness. I speak as a retired GP who now supports the Bill.

Assistance in ending a life is of course rejected by the official voices of the medical profession. However, there are signs of change among the membership. All noble Lords will have received the letter from Sir Terence English—former president of the Royal College of Surgeons—and 26 other distinguished doctors. They are not satisfied with the current state of the law and back the provisions of the Bill. They feel, as I do, that this is a humane Bill.

The well known phrase based on the teachings of Hippocrates, which guides the work of doctors and nurses, and often quoted in French,

“guérir quelquefois, soulager souvent, consoler toujours”—

to cure sometimes, to relieve often, to comfort always—applies particularly at the end of life. However, some people, even if their pain is largely relieved by good palliative care—the best, of course, is excellent—still clearly and logically wish to end their life because its quality is so poor, with no end in sight. Of course, depression may play a part in this, as was pointed out by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain. In some cases good medication and psychological support can sufficiently lift their pessimistic outlook, and of course efforts must be made to identify where that is the case. However, there remain others of sound mind, who are not clinically depressed and clearly and logically have decided that they have suffered enough and want to end it all.

I can understand why palliative care givers are very reluctant to accept that helping to end a life can, in a small minority of cases, be the ultimate and appropriate form of compassion. Judging by the Oregon experience, this minority amounts to 0.2% of deaths, which if applied to the UK would work out at some 1,000 deaths annually. These people would have died soon in any case, but often in pain and distress, not where and when they chose. The Bill would allow just that.

It is normal practice for your Lordships’ House to allow Private Members’ Bills to have a Second Reading. I hope the House will continue that tradition today.