Assisted Dying

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Monday 13th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, suicide—thankfully—is legal, but many people need help and support to ensure that it is both pain-free and risk-free and to have a trusted friend at one’s side at that hour of need. That means being able to get such support, safe in the knowledge that one’s chosen friend will neither be interrogated by the police nor face prosecution. For this reason, I would like to see the DPP’s approach given wider endorsement. I am concerned that the present law affects people unequally, given that going to Dignitas costs about £5,000 and is only available to the well-off and those fit enough to travel, and there is no safe way of having assisted death at home without risk of prosecution for loved ones, which is an unfair burden for the dying person to contemplate. I would favour a law to allow people to be helped to die if they meet safeguards and eligibility criteria, are terminally ill and mentally competent. Of course I want to see greater access to high-quality end-of-life care, but part of that comes from knowing that they will be free from suffering.

I finish with the words of the Reverend Dr John Cameron, who said that,

“the time has come … to look again at the law, because modern medicine is preventing nature from taking its merciful course”.