Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Baroness Bull Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, in the three short years in which I have had the privilege to sit in your Lordships’ House, this Chamber has debated many once-in-a-lifetime issues, and yet, in that time, no topic has provoked this level of public engagement. All noble Lords will have the same mail bag and, while others may have heard more of one view than the other, mine came equally from those for and against. They all shared passionate and well-argued articulations of their different positions, from either side of an ethical, medical, religious or ideological divide. They all began with the same request: please attend and speak in this debate. And so I rise briefly today to make my own plea for the space in the middle; the space in which radically different views can be safely expressed and respectfully heard. This week, preserving that space feels more important than ever.

The rise of political polarisation in large democracies is well documented. But here in the UK, we are becoming riven by polarisation based on issues, with groups coalescing not around political ideologies but around social, environmental or cultural concerns: climate, vaccinations and, perhaps, the one we debate today. When those positions become a core part of our identity, dialogue across the divide becomes ever harder. Research suggests that bringing the public closer to political and cultural debates will help guard against further polarisation, but it comes with a warning that much depends on how those debates are conducted and that leaders have a duty to cool things down rather than raise temperatures higher.

Today we debate a question to which there is no right or wrong answer. It is a question the House has debated before and one it may well debate again, as future generations attempt, like us, to take a balanced view. We will all have concerns about this Bill: some will be concerned to dismiss it, some to get its provisions absolutely right, and some to identify where they stand on this most challenging issue. But to stifle debate would be to engage in the kind of cancel culture that we will, I am sure, decry when we come to discuss free speech in universities or online.

I share the hope of the most reverend Primate that there will be no votes today to close down this Bill before it runs its legitimate course or, to quote the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, to “kill it by misdescription”. To do so would go against the strongly expressed desire of all those people, for and against, who put pen to paper to ask that their voices be heard.