Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Baroness Cavendish of Little Venice Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Cavendish of Little Venice (CB)]

My Lords, like many others in this Chamber I have been overwhelmed by the number of letters I have received from the public on this issue, not just now but over many years as a journalist. We all know that this is an issue of huge importance to the public, but we also know that there are very few votes in it and it is therefore extremely easy for the other place to ignore it.

One thing that has changed in the past six years is that there used to be a much clearer split between the medical profession and the rest, and most of us now cannot count the number of letters and submissions we have had from doctors, nurses and palliative care specialists, who, as others have said, admit that palliative care, although marvellous, is not perfect, and can fail at the end of life.

One of the other age-old splits is between the religious and the secular, but it is not quite that simple, and I welcome the remarks made by the most reverend Primate, who put his finger so eloquently on the central issue here: we all in this Chamber care about compassion and dignity.

One thing that has changed since my grandfather was a vicar in the Church of England ministering to people at the end of their lives is that medicine allows us to keep people alive in intolerable conditions for much longer than when my grandfather did that job, and people are living much longer. That is why it is right for us to look at this again and consider what compassion means in today’s society. Among the many submissions we all get from the public, there is a question that is easy to dismiss but which is important to keep in our mind, which is: why do we treat our pets with so much more care and compassion at the end than we do humans? Unless we can answer that question we should be very careful about doing nothing.

The most reverend Primate quite rightly said that compassion must not be drawn too narrowly and that we must include the whole of society when we consider this issue. I draw his attention to the many arguments that have already been made about Oregon. I, too, have studied Oregon. I, too, became much more convinced that my noble friend Lady Meacher’s stance is correct, as a result of having seen how much the legislation in Oregon gives people and their families peace of mind that they do not necessarily take advantage of.

I believe that the remarks that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, quoted from the noble Lord, Lord Field, my long-time friend for whom I have enormous respect, are really vital. For the noble Lord, Lord Field, to have changed his mind on this issue and made those remarks is really very important.

I finish with one point. The easiest thing to do when faced with complex moral issues such as this is nothing, but let us think about what doing nothing means. To do nothing in this context is to consign more people to slow, agonising deaths; to force relatives to risk a jail sentence if they help; and to leave some people going to Switzerland earlier than they wish to, if they are lucky enough to have that option, or in other cases starving themselves to death. I believe the Bill is very limited in scope but would be huge in impact, and therefore I support it.