Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Baroness Hooper Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hooper (Con)]

My Lords, it is not death but the manner of dying that concerns most people. However, of the many moving letters and messages that I, and I know others, have received about the Bill, no one asked me to support it—on the contrary. In listening to the well-reasoned arguments and some very brave personal accounts for and against that have been advanced today, it is clear that there is at least one thing on which we can all agree: this is a very complex and difficult issue for which there are no easy answers.

Many moral, theological and legal avenues have been broached in the course of this debate. I would like to explore them further, but time, of course, does not allow. I will make just one point. Inevitably, the personal examples that have been advanced today have concentrated on older people. Of course, looking around your Lordships’ House, this Second Reading debate has encouraged many of the older Members—including me—some of whom we have not seen during the long period of lockdown, so it is good to see them here and contributing to the debate today.

Seriously, I understand this concentration on older people at the end of their natural lives and on the pain and suffering they may have to endure, but my concern is that giving a certain category of people the right to end their lives legally could influence others of other generations, whatever the presumed safeguards that I fully appreciate the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has tried to build into the Bill. To put it simply, we are all aware, I am sure, of the increasing number of young people—especially young men, it seems—who are committing suicide. This Bill, however unintentionally, could give them a feeling of legitimacy and justification in taking their young lives for reasons that may be imagined. This, in my opinion, would be an unintended consequence too far. For this reason, and for the many reasons advanced by others, perhaps encapsulated best, for me, in the early stages of the debate by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, I oppose the Bill.