Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Baroness Jay of Paddington Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jay of Paddington (Lab)]

My Lords, this is the fourth Assisted Dying Bill that I have supported in your Lordships’ House; with each one, my conviction that this is a necessary reform gets even stronger. Today, my commitment is made more passionate by one particular personal experience: the assisted death of my closest American friend, someone I used to call my sister. She had been diagnosed with terminal illness, with terminal lung disease, and she wanted to be remembered as someone full of life, which she certainly was, rather than as a debilitated cancer patient.

Her son wrote a powerful account of how she chose to end life for the Washington Post, and I quote him:

“On a Sunday evening in July 2018, my 81-year-old mother raised a small red glass to her lips. In it was a mixture of water, grape juice and a fatal dose of a medically prescribed drug … She was sitting up in a hospital bed in her Washington DC home, bathed in warm early evening light, and chatting and passing time with me, my sister and all her grandchildren … Finally, there was nothing more to say. Surrounded by family, she seemed composed and unafraid, ready to shed the anxiety, pain and humiliations that come with terminal lung cancer. Without the slightest hesitation, she drained the glass and lay back on her pillows. Within a minute, her features softened and her eyes closed. She fell into a heavy sleep, her breath audible. It wasn’t long before her breathing slowed, and then stopped.”


Some time later I went to Washington to speak at her memorial, held at a chapel attached to Washington National Cathedral. It was a traditional service led by an episcopalian minister. The circumstances of her death were clearly acknowledged and understood. Afterwards the large congregation gathered in the chapterhouse where we exchanged memories over tea and sandwiches. Nothing about that occasion was clandestine or fearful. It was a familiar ritual, the kind of comforting rite of passage that we have all experienced, this one sanctioned by the law and accepted by society and made possible by the District of Columbia Death with Dignity Act, passed in 2016.

The DC law is very similar to the one that the noble Baroness has proposed today. After three previous Bills and, frankly, decades of discussion, it is time that we acted to make this kind of civilised, gentle choice at the end of life available in our capital city and indeed throughout the United Kingdom.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Jay of Paddington Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jay of Paddington (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord on his special suit and the two noble Baronesses who will make their maiden speeches.

This past year has certainly thrown up a whole range of important issues for both Parliament and government to confront. I am privileged to be a member of your Lordships’ Select Committee looking at life after Covid and some of the long-term problems that we have to deal with, not necessarily through legislation. Noble Lords will be aware of our recently published report on the pandemic and the internet, which concluded that internet use over the past year had accelerated by a decade the changes in that world and exposed alarming inequalities in the digital society. It also exposed a lot of the problems with online life that have already been referred to in this debate.

One perhaps less immediately obvious topic on which the Select Committee has received powerful written evidence but has not discussed concerns the sensitive questions about how we care for the dying and our choices at the end of life. The tragedy of the daily death tolls reported on the evening news and the extraordinarily sad stories about bereavement in lockdown seem to have crystallised and stimulated a new interest—a determination that we must make changes for the better. These issues bring together the legal, ethical and medical dilemmas that we in this House have often debated.

However, I am convinced that there is now an appetite for a more open, evidence-based approach. Somehow, the pandemic has enabled us to talk about death in a way that reduces superstition and taboos. The organisation Compassion in Dying reports that calls to its information helpline have increased by almost 50% in the past year and that the number of people making so-called living wills—that is, refusing treatment in certain circumstances —has soared by 160%.

We are all, of course, acutely aware that the coronavirus has put unprecedented burdens on our healthcare professionals and their resources. At the beginning of the pandemic, there were disturbing stories about inappropriate rationing of intensive care and “do not resuscitate” decisions being made without proper consultation. That was troubling but it prompted open and honest discussion which has, in turn, produced useful developments led by the Care Quality Commission. It reported earlier this year and there is now, for example, a new ministerial oversight group established to improve the use of “do not resuscitate” decisions.

In our new post-pandemic world, we must also respect those people who want neither resuscitation nor intervention but whose preferred choice at the end of life may be a medically assisted death—still, of course, illegal here. Over the past year, the situation in which those who want to exercise that choice are forced to travel to Switzerland has become even more intolerable. Outsourcing this emotionally and practically difficult option to another country has always been regrettable and unethical. Today, Covid restrictions have made it almost impossible. We must now look again at our own law and its cruel blanket ban, which has led to an increasing number of reports of desperate suicides by dying people.

It is therefore extremely helpful that the Health Secretary has now asked the ONS to look at those reports and examine the statistics on suicide among the terminally ill. Mr Hancock has committed himself to ensuring that, in general, good factual evidence is available for future parliamentary debate on assisted dying. In this House, we will have that opportunity when the Private Member’s Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, on this subject is introduced. She is speaking almost next in this debate and I look forward to her contribution and, most importantly, to her Bill. Noble Lords will remember that five years ago, we supported the proposal of my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer on assisted dying and I very much hope that we will support this similar Bill. The pandemic experience has created the circumstances for safe, compassionate legislation to give dying people the right to choose the death they want for themselves.