Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Friday 16th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Popat (Con)]

My Lords, may we have the privilege of listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson?

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

Thank you, my Lords. I have two very small amendments in this group, Amendments 161 and 167, which refer to the Suicide Act 1961 (Amendment) Act 2015. They merely serve to strengthen the declaration in relation to commensurate capacity.

On the main subject of this grouping, if I supported the Bill I would use the word dying because it suggests compassion, caring and a peaceful death. If suicide was associated with the Bill it would perhaps trigger some suicide prevention measures, which would increase the safety of the Bill and give comfort to a number of people. If the final action is to be taken by the individual, not by the doctor, surely that is suicide. I offer a challenge to your Lordships’ House on terminology. For years, disabled people were called not normal— they still are. They were called deformed, spastic, cripples and handicapped. There are also nasty words around race and culture. That is not a reason not to change and move on, or not to improve the language that we use. If we are honest about what the Bill is and if we are talking about autonomy, the word to use is suicide.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I am well aware that the Committee wishes to move on, so I appeal to its forbearance to allow me to make a couple of remarks. It is 10 years and two days since I lodged formally my proposal in the Scottish Parliament, a precursor to Margo MacDonald’s Bill. My proposal was the Right to Die for the Terminally Ill Bill, and I was well aware at that point of the criticisms of those who opposed it: that I was using emotionally charged language or euphemism, or softer language than it necessarily should be. The context in the proposal referred to physician-assisted suicide. Over the 10 years I have had an interest in this, having lodged a proposal in a legislature with a distinctly different background from the legislation on suicide in England and Wales, I have come to the conclusion that the terminology and definition in this Bill is absolutely correct.

Over the last 10 years, I have been struck that those people who would wish to use the protections under such a Bill—I believe that they are protections—are the least suicidal people you could find. They are people who love life and strive to live as long as they possibly can, but their life is being robbed from them because of a terminal illness. They come to the conclusion that they wish to have control in their remaining days, whereas control is being removed from them. I agree absolutely that language and terminology are important, and that truthfulness is vital. I am slightly upset when it is alleged that some of us who are on a different side in this debate are less truthful than others. Second Reading was a profoundly important moment, when we respected each side in the debate. Having used the different terms myself, over those 10 years I have come to these conclusions.

--- Later in debate ---

The amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and the later one in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, go some way to off-setting this very pessimistic Bill. The proponents of the Bill have always argued that their intention is for it to apply to only a very small number of people. That intention will be far better realised if prognosis is set with a much smaller time limit of weeks or, okay, maybe months, but not six months. I urge your Lordships to support this amendment and others of its kind.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

My Lords, I wish to raise two brief points. The first is on the rate of diagnostic error, which has already been mentioned. The Royal College of Pathologists gave evidence to the Select Committee looking at the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, which heard that diagnostic errors are common. The report says:

“The Royal College of Pathologists drew attention to ‘a 30% error rate in the medically-certified cause of death’, with ‘significant errors (i.e. misdiagnosis of a terminal illness resulting in inappropriate treatment) in about 5% of cases’”.

Secondly, I wish to raise a point of clarification with my noble friend Lady Meacher. She does not appear to be in her place, but it is a question that applies probably equally to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. My noble friend talked about autonomy at the point that somebody chooses the right to end their own life. To me, that suggests that the drugs or medication would be in the person’s possession and in their home, as it is in Oregon. I should like some clarification on whether the Bill is suggesting that the person would have the drugs available to them in their home. For me, it is important to understand the timeline of how the decision-making process will take place and whether there would be a tiered approach. An awful lot of people who write to me assume that, if the Bill becomes law and they are able to choose the time that they end their life, it will be in their own home and with their friends and family around them, not in a medical facility, and that they will not have to go through a huge series of hoops in those final moments. It is really important for me to understand whether these drugs that will kill people will be in a person’s possession in their home.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, has spoken movingly from her own experience and, indeed, her expertise. I am sure I am not alone in respecting her greatly for that and for ensuring that this House hears the views of people in the disabled community who are worried that this is a thin end of a wedge.

I suffer from a life-limiting illness. In most cases, it is not terminal but it is degenerative if it is not got under control. To answer one of the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, I, too, have the risk of catching a very serious infection because my immune system is compromised by the medication I am on. I would not expect anything short-term such as that to be considered by my medical practitioners—or even by myself, as happened to me at Christmas—as being part of the longer-term degeneration of a terminal condition. It would be worrying if we believed that the Bill was giving that thought some traction. The timescale for approval reflection within the Bill means that in the case of a temporary or short-term illness, any medical practitioner would be likely to advise someone that they should not be making a decision at that time because it would not necessarily mean that the rapid progress of the disease itself was an issue.

I want to make some very specific points on some of the amendments in this group. First, I am concerned about the impracticality of Amendment 13. Often when someone discovers that they are in the terminal stages of an illness, they will move to be with family; they are therefore likely to move GP. My mother, who died just before Christmas, had three GPs in the last stage of her life. She was at home. She then moved into a nursing home. She then had to move to another nursing home for more supportive care. She might have had four GPs had she moved to a hospice. Should Amendment 13 go through, I am concerned that that would have ruled her out from being able to make a decision, should she have desired it. I understand the intentions of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, in raising this, but the practicalities for many at the end of their lives mean that I think it is unworkable.

On Amendment 20, I hear everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, says but my counter to that is that a patient will listen to advice and a doctor will give them a wide range of advice on the likely progression of their disease and, indeed, any comorbidities. This is also moving into the area of Amendment 21. The evidence of where assisted dying happens, particularly in America, is that the time between somebody starting to get the initial advice and going through the process and, having concluded that, then deciding that the time is right to take their life is the exact reason why we need six months and not six weeks. A patient should reflect and make sure that what they are doing is right for them and at the right time. Often people who support the principle of assisted dying are worried about those last few weeks and want to have the safety net of the decision having been made by the professionals in their back pocket, so to speak, so that should their life become intolerable they do not have to start the process at that point. That is why either three months or six weeks will mean that a patient will not get the timescale they need to consider appropriately with their family, friends and medical practitioner whether this is the right thing for them.

I am perplexed by Amendments 22 and 45, which imply that treatment that delays the progression of a terminal condition would be considered an available treatment for a dying person and would therefore exclude them from having an assisted death if they rejected such a treatment. If I have read this right, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, is arguing that it changes the fundamental right of a patient to refuse treatment because that treatment might increase the length of their life, even if the quality of that life were to be intolerable. For example, one reason that many people say that they would like assisted dying is that they do not want to go through another round of chemotherapy on a new drug, perhaps for the fourth or fifth time, and live with the very difficult consequences of that treatment. That is exactly what the Bill is about: patients coming to an informed decision about when they wish to end their life, even if another treatment is available, when medical practitioners have said that their condition is terminal.