Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support the Bill but, in doing so, I recognise that all noble Lords care deeply about compassion and dignity. The personal testimonies we have all read in the letters and emails we have received, and indeed the speeches we have heard today, have been truly heart-wrenching—and I trust that my noble friend Lord McKenzie’s pension providers will be well and truly confounded.

Yes, of course we need more investment in palliative care, in hospices and hospices at home, but I submit that we also need the Bill. Dignity in Dying—of which I am a supporter—published a report, Last Resort, which tells the stories of dying people who take their own lives in the absence of an assisted dying law. We must accept that if we do not provide people with safeguarded choice, they will continue to turn to rope, oncoming vehicles, shotguns, suffocation, starvation, drowning and overdoses of imported or stockpiled drugs. The current blanket ban on assisted dying does not eradicate demand for choice at the end of life; it simply forces people to take matters into their own hands in loneliness and in fear.

In February, I asked a Parliamentary Question on the number of terminally ill people who take their own life by suicide. The ONS is currently undertaking research on this point, and I hope that it will be made public in the coming months. We know too little about the numbers of dying people who take their own lives, but we know the deep and long-lasting effects that such deaths have on their loved ones and on wider society.

We talk about these deaths as suicide—that is how they are currently recorded—but it is clear from listening to bereaved family members that these are not people who wished to end their own lives but people who are taking drastic and often violent steps to control an inevitable and imminent death. Families mentioned time and again that their loved ones were not suicidal. One said: “In his notes to me Dad suggested I say, ‘He chose to end his own life ... it’s a decision full of power and autonomy, authority ... it’s a show of strength and resilience and power.’”

Dignity in Dying’s report found that being forced to plan a lonely death, taking care to prevent loved ones being incriminated, causes dying people significant anxiety and reduces their quality of life. A coroner in Victoria, Australia, speaking of terminally ill people who had committed suicide said:

“The people we are talking about … have made an absolute clear decision. They are determined. The only assistance that could be offered is to meet their wishes, not to prolong their life.”


Language matters. YouGov polling shows that 73% of UK adults appreciate that there is a difference between a terminally ill adult seeking assistance to end their life and suicide. There is growing evidence from mental health experts that the wish for greater choice at the end of life is different from what motivates a person to die by suicide. They stress the need for two important issues—assisted dying and suicide prevention —not to be conflated.

Traditional strategies of preventing suicides are ill-suited to being applied to assisted dying requests. We must address both assisted dying and suicide prevention in an evidence-based manner. In places where assisted dying is legal, dying people have explained how knowing they now have the legal option of controlling the manner and timing of their deaths has meant they no longer need to take matters into their own hands. To turn a blind eye to the fact that dying people will seek ways to control the end of their lives, regardless of what the law says, would be a failure of our duty to legislate in the best interests of society.

I believe we owe our fellow citizens whose suffering is intolerable the ability to live without fear until they are able within the law to choose a peaceful death with dignity. I trust that in due course a courageous and compassionate Government will allow government time for a Bill with a free vote on this most important of human issues.