Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd Excerpts(1 day, 15 hours ago)
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Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)
My Lords, I shall be brief. I oppose the amendment. As the noble Lord, Lord Markham, said, this is a decision for the people of Wales to make—not for the people of England, who dominate this Parliament, both in the other place and here.
The problem arises because of the complexity of the devolution arrangements for Wales, and we could spend quite a lot of time—which I am sure no one wants to spend—going through it to try to understand why it has happened. In essence, it has arisen because the enabling of the Senedd to do anything is determined by criminal law; that is how the legislation has been drafted. That is not the case in Scotland: they have the freedom. That is denied to Wales because of the way that the devolution arrangements work. It cannot be right and fair for this position to remain. The noble Lord, Lord Markham, put his finger on what the solution ought to be.
We cannot adopt what has been suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. If we did so, the Senedd would have no power to do anything because of those constitutional arrangements. Therefore, the solution that has been put forward, to delete Wales from the Bill, is a non-starter; we have to do something.
This is particularly important because, as has been said, although this is partly a great moral issue and partly an issue about the NHS, it is only in incidental effects a criminal law issue. The settlement makes it a criminal law issue, but we ought to allow the moral issue and the issue in relation to the NHS to be determined in Wales. If the Bill were to be passed in its current form, and then the Welsh Government decided that they did not want to implement it, the only people who would be able to obtain assisted dying in Wales would be those who were prepared to pay for it. That cannot conceivably be right.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, and I have put down an amendment to try and resolve this. We have had it degrouped. I do not think any noble Lords have had much experience of reading the Government of Wales Act. The only experience noble Lords ought to have of doing that is if one suffers from insomnia.
In the coming period, we ought to settle down with the sponsors of the Bill and with the Government to try and work out a just solution to this problem; otherwise, I regret to say, the debate on the Floor of the House on the way in which we solve these problems will be time-consuming. It is not really the best way of dealing with such an important issue, which can be solved technically. I am sure everyone would agree with the noble Lord, Lord Markham, that it is a decision for the people of Wales and not for the people of England, who dominate this legislature. Wales should not be regarded as inferior to Scotland.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, bearing in mind that this is a Private Member’s Bill, it seems to me, as an Englishwoman, that whatever efforts are required, we should be, at the end of the day, removing Wales from it.
Strikes (Minimum Service Levels: NHS Ambulance Services and the NHS Patient Transport Service) Regulations 2023
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd Excerpts(1 year, 11 months ago)
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Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)
I thank the Minister very much and welcome the fact that, although this legislation extends to Wales and Scotland, it applies to neither of them. This is a welcome change of mind; I hope that it will be carried through in other pieces of legislation or other instruments contemplated that relate to both education and the NHS.
I want to add one further observation, if I may, in support of what the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, said. We can of course pass instruments of this kind after the Government have gone out to consult, and they can say with some force that they have had some views, but doing it that way diminishes the status of our democracy. This is the place where the debate should take place. On a contentious issue—this is very contentious—we ought to have the argument here so that people know that it is open. I very much hope that a means can be found when we get to the more contentious areas of education and staffing levels in the other aspects of the NHS—perhaps on other matters, too—so that we have a mechanism for a meaningful debate in this Chamber for the strength and the health of our democracy, which is under such pressure from some who think that their voices do not count.
Lord Rooker (Lab)
My Lords, I came in today to break the habit of a lifetime—I have been in the House for more than 20 years, half of them as a Minister—because I proposed to vote against the first two Motions. I was going to support the first two fatal amendments. I felt deprived that I did not have the opportunity to do that—I am still going to make my points, mind you.
These are steps too far. I do not think that we should pussyfoot around. We know that, earlier in the year, the Government rejected the report on the Bill from the Delegated Powers Committee. There are times when this House should not simply fall into line with this Tory Government; this is one of them. I am reminded in some ways that, very sadly, we are missing today the contribution of the late Lord Judge who, earlier this year—on more than one occasion—made it clear from those Benches that we need to use the powers available to this House when we need to be firm. There were a couple of debates on it. In my view, this is such a time.
In answer to the Lib Dem Benches, we know that the health service bosses are not independent—we know that from the pay review bodies—so it is fairly obvious what will happen. I realise about the so-called conventions but they are between Labour and the Conservatives. There is no rule in the Statutory Instruments Act 1946 about not voting against a statutory instrument in either House; it is just the convention that we do not do it. We fear now that, if we do it to them, they will do it to us. In fact, the Tories have done it more to Labour than Labour have to the Tories so I am not going to take any lectures about conventions from this Government, who have breached, systematically ignored and torn up many of the conventions that rule our constitution. I will not rely on the use of fatal amendments by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, either.
One area will suffice as an example: electoral law. I am in favour of ID cards but the identity system was deliberately designed to reduce voting. Rees-Mogg admitted when he was the Leader of the other place that they had got it wrong: they fully intended to get fewer people in polling stations. The Government have neutered the Electoral Commission as the guardian of free and fair elections and, this past month, they changed the finances of elections, all without any consultation and with no Speaker’s Conference whatever. That is part of the constitution and the conventions on the way we do things. We do not have to follow the conventions: if a thing is bad enough, vote against it.
Paragraph 41 of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee report on these regulations—this committee reports to this House, having been set up by the House to look at these issues—says:
“The Department of Health and Social Care’s … consultation document acknowledged that, during past strikes, emergency provision has been delivered through voluntary arrangements”.
So why are we doing this? Why are we picking on ambulance workers? It is not needed. If there were any evidence of flagrant abuse and the voluntary system not working, believe you me, your Lordships would know about it. That is the reality. Therefore, on this one, if anybody called the vote—although it has now been denied—I would be happy to vote against the SI.
I cannot quote much from my experience. When you lose the opportunities of the other place to be in contact with constituents and with people’s daily lives, it is different; it is different when you stop representing people simply because you are in this place. However, I will give one example from my personal experience. Four years ago this month, a few days before Christmas, I was carted really late one Saturday night from Hereford County Hospital, which had spent four years stopping me going over to the dark side, to Worcester Royal, to have my first chemotherapy as an in-patient. The weather was atrocious; the main roads were blocked. The driver of the ambulance said to me, “I’d better warn you now: it might be a bit rough—I’ve got to go down some country lanes”. We passed three upturned cars due to the weather. When I got through it all, I wrote to the chief executive and said, “You’d better put a note on the chitties of those two people who looked after me in that ambulance that night”. It was absolutely horrendous.
I now think that people like that who do this job cannot be trusted to deliver emergency services when there is a dispute—disputes deliberately created by the Government anyway for political reasons. The reality is that I am prepared to vote against this SI, above the others—I am not saying anything about the other two. We have evidence from our own committee that it is not needed, and I have my own bit of personal experience. I thought, “Why pick on the ambulance workers?” If there were an opportunity, I would vote against the SI; I may not have the opportunity, therefore I will obviously support the regret amendment. However, I much regret that I may not be able to vote for the fatal amendment.