Health and Care Bill

Debate between Lord Winston and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Lords Hansard _ Part 1 & Report stage
Wednesday 16th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, it would be perfectly possible for someone in the House of Commons to raise this issue and deal with it there. What concerns me—I pick up what the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Howarth, said—is that this seems to be a constitutional issue. I am not going to say a word about the rights and wrongs of assisted suicide or assisted dying. However, I shall just read a few words of the amendment. It asks us to agree that the

“Secretary of State must, within the period of 12 months … lay before Parliament”


not just the possibility of a Private Member’s Bill being given time, which was what was suggested earlier, but a draft Bill. That is telling the Government what legislation they have to pass. This is a matter that transcends issues of compassion or whether one is on one side of the argument or the other, because what we in the Lords are telling the Commons is that they have to support us telling the Government to put forward a Bill with which they may not agree. But they do not have any choice if this amendment is passed. That Bill has to,

“permit terminally ill, mentally competent adults legally to end their own lives”.

The amendment is not asking the Government to please give time—I could understand that. It is telling, not asking, the Government to put forward a draft Bill in support of one side of the argument. Whichever side I was on, I would feel absolutely impelled to resist this amendment.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I have repeatedly opposed assisted dying and it is well known that I feel, and have felt, strongly about it. I also feel that this is quite a different situation. I do not want to argue my case here, but serious issues are raised by the amendment. I am not persuaded that voting for it would make a difference, because the Commons can still consider what we have said this evening. However, it is clear—I completely agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer—that we as a Parliament have to discuss this issue.

I remember, when I first came into this House 27 years ago, in the Prince’s Chamber there was a notice recording an Act of 1620, I think—under Charles I—that argued that we should not use intemperate language in the Chamber. In this situation, I believe this is inevitably important. I regret very much that the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, spoke in the terms he did. I do not think it is helpful to the argument. I think it probably destroys his argument to some extent. What the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, says is a very different matter—and I regard the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, as a friend. Above all, it seems that as a Parliament we have to discuss this, and this is something burgeoning in the public. Therefore, it is a duty to discuss this in Parliament. If we happen to introduce this Bill, which the Commons can then consider, whether it is passed at this stage or not, that would be utterly justifiable, and I support this amendment.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Winston and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 8th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I wonder whether I could tell your Lordships’ House a story, which follows on entirely from what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has said. I was chancellor of the University of the West of England and took a group of professors to China. We went to prestigious universities and to some that were less so. I met the deputy Minister of Education. Everybody in China was with us; we were about to do all sorts of work. However, an assessment came out that showed that, according to the Times, we were below the 50 number. China said that it would not work with any of us and so we retreated. That is exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has said in relation to those who might be bronze. It really will not do. We had already been working with China in the various universities, including the University of Peking and the University of Tsinghua in Beijing, but because of our rating, which came out after we left, we no longer did business with them.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

I, too, support this group of amendments. Rather bizarrely, just as this debate started—it is not because he knew that I was sitting in the Chamber or would be talking about higher education—I had an email from Professor Colin Lawson of the Royal College of Music to tell me that the Royal College of Music has just been rated second in the world for music education. He says, “Notwithstanding my disdain for these rankings, this is something I am very pleased with”.

There is a real issue here. To follow up on what the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said, it is utterly ridiculous to suggest that you can assess arts teaching by this kind of approach of rankings. Music is interpreted in all sorts of ways. Just as art colleges are rather similar—I believe that drama colleges are as well—all sorts of endeavours such as this cannot be rated in the way that the Government propose. This is extremely dangerous, particularly for the conservatoire, which attracts a large proportion of its students from Asia and depends very much on them.

Perhaps I may briefly declare an interest. I am professor of science and society at Imperial College. The reason I was not involved so much in Committee is that I had been teaching in schools on behalf of the university in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Lincoln and Avon in the same week as the Committee stage and trying to get back to London in time on the train service, which is rather difficult. We teach practical science in the reach-out lab and have had PhD students coming through assessing the teaching. It is very clear that it is one thing to be able to assess learning, but teaching assessment is extremely complex. None of the ways in which we are doing this at the moment is nearly adequate. It is a major problem, because if we get it wrong the risk of damage in these cases is massive.

I shall give just one example, because I recognise that this is the Report stage. Some years ago, on two occasions, I ran a free communications course for students at Imperial College. The courses lasted for one and two days, students signed up on a first come, first served basis, and they were massively oversubscribed because undergraduates wanted to learn how they could communicate their science better. What was really interesting—I do not say this in my favour—was that the British and EU students almost universally gave us a rating of nine or 10 on the assessment of the course afterwards. The Chinese and other Asian students were not giving us anything like that rating: they gave us four, five or six, averaging about five. The reason for this, when we did a questionnaire with them, was that, unlike the British students, they said, “This is not going to get me a job anywhere; this is not going to be of any value to me commercially”. Yet, of course, in terms of the education of a student, it is vital.

I beg the Government to think about this rating system extremely carefully. If we get this wrong, we will damage not only the very top universities but other universities that are coming up at present. That would be a disaster for the United Kingdom and for our education.

Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Winston and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Friday 7th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

If I may be anecdotal, as other noble Lords have been, my mother died of multiple sclerosis in her early sixties. There was a point at which I, as a young lawyer, realised that she no longer had, in my view, the capacity to make decisions. However, that was at a very late stage of her illness.

If the doctor is not satisfied because someone is a drug addict or has been an alcoholic or has, for instance, a high degree of anorexia as a young person and is saying that they want to die, those are points at which a doctor should be saying, “I’m not quite certain whether he or she has capacity”. That is why I suggest in my amendment that, unless they are satisfied, they should pass it on to someone who has the expertise, who would then, as a psychiatrist, look at whether the person actually has the capacity. Okay, we are talking about someone with three to six months to live but, if they do not have the capacity to make this incredibly important decision, they should not be allowed to do so. That is how I would see it, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit.

[Lord Winston]

I thank the noble and learned Baroness for giving way, but would she not agree that sometimes people who have capacity and say that they wish to die, as indeed my mother did, may then change their mind some months later, quite unexpectedly?

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

Yes, that seems to me to present one of the problems with the Bill.