Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Baroness Greengross Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Greengross (CB)]

My Lords, I have worked with and for older people for more than 40 years and spent six as an equality and human rights commissioner. I have been very fortunate in having conversations with many hundreds of older people. In this day and age, fortunately most people who die are older people. What they really want is to remain being treated as adults, not as lesser individuals. I want to know why a small number of people who become incapacitated lose the right to the freedom of choice that most of us have when we come close to death.

I would like to be clear that the Bill is not a case of giving someone a new right. It is just the opposite. Without it, at its most basic, we are going to deny certain people who are terminally ill and have become disabled the right that every other adult has in this country: the right to terminate their life. If people are worried that there may be, in some few cases, undue pressure brought to bear on some people to end their lives, my view is that this happens a long time before the Bill would be considered. However, if there are worries, I share them. I do not want anybody to be abused, to be forced to think they must die. Our real goal is to ensure that sufficient safeguards that make people feel easier with the Bill are put in place in Committee; it is not to deny a few people the rights that everyone else in this country enjoys. I do not want it on my conscience that I have denied somebody who has become physically incapacitated and cannot endure their suffering any longer, but is unable to terminate their life without some help, the right that everyone else enjoys.

I do not deny that palliative care has become extraordinarily effective in many instances—in fact, most instances—where people have access to it. More and more people are going to put their faith in it. That is right. However, if people have had enough of suffering, for whatever reason, they should surely have the right to that choice. The Bill is not about a small number of malevolent people trying to pressurise those who are vulnerable; it is about a small number of people, near to death, sometimes dying in agony.

As I said, there is much work to be done in Committee to ensure that any further proper safeguards are put in place. I want that; I am sure all noble Lords do. The sooner we get started, the sooner we can once again hold our heads up high in the fight for true compassion and against any discrimination.