Assisted Dying: Legislation

Baroness Murphy Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

My Lords, I support the stance of the noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, and the introduction of a very limited Bill to enable those with terminal illness to have help to die at a time of their choosing. For me, it is a moral issue and a matter of simple humanity that we should respect the diversity of patients’ wishes in the last months of life, just as we are beholden by law to respect their wishes at other times. It seems to me that we can talk endlessly about safeguards; next week, in another, similar debate, we will be able to explore mental capacity, mental illness, the prediction of six months’ duration and undue pressures. I will be happy to talk about all those things in the future. We should base our decisions on research evidence of outcomes from other jurisdictions that have already bitten this bullet and have 16 years’ worth of good information about what happens when you take a chance. All those predictions of cataclysm and slippery slope have proved to be completely false. I hope very much that we will support the wish of the noble Earl, Lord Glasgow.