Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble and learned friend for introducing the Bill and the whole House for the way in which it has debated this issue.

In November 1990, my father, aged 77, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia. He was terminally ill, but the doctors thought that they could prolong his life for some months with chemotherapy. He died before the chemotherapy began. Less than 14 months later, my husband, aged 38, was also diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia, which was well advanced and very aggressive. He was given less than two months to live. Again, the doctors sought to prolong his life with chemotherapy.

My father was elderly; he died without pain, and at peace. In contrast, my husband was relatively young, but suffered almost unbelievable pain, and was in acute mental anguish. I was called into the hospital in the early hours one morning. My husband’s pain was overwhelming. The only way to administer morphine was to spray it down his throat. When at last he could speak, he told me that he wanted to stop the pain and mental torment. He said that he wanted to go gently, and asked me to accept that.

I relate those experiences because they illustrate two fundamental flaws in my noble and learned friend’s Bill. My father and husband were both given little time to live, and suffered from exactly the same terminal illness. One, suffering little pain, and at peace, who very much wanted to survive a few extra months, died within days. The other, suffering constant and appalling pain, and very much not at peace, longed for release.

My noble and learned friend’s Bill tries to define a terminal illness but fails to do so, because such a definition is impossible. It was impossible in the 1990s, given the advances in medical science; now, 20 years later, any definition becomes less and less plausible. What was thought to be terminal last year may be treatable this year, and that is no basis to end a life.

My second concern is the following. Several years ago, when we debated the Bill in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, one of my noble friends—a supporter of assisted dying—told me that the Bill was aimed not at young people with terminal illnesses, such as my husband, but at those who had largely lived their lives. However, of course, the Bill does not distinguish between one adult and another. The same provisions must apply to those aged 18, 38 or 80, as they do in the Bill. Yet so often it is the young who despair, particularly young men, as the suicide statistics tell us—suicide being the greatest cause of death among young men in this country. Those young men cannot face the tragedy of a life not to be lived, and opt for the release that is offered them. I fear not only for the elderly under my noble and learned friend’s Bill, but for the young.

I cannot know what would have happened in my own family. I do not know what the outcome would have been if my noble and learned friend’s Bill had been on the statute book. However, I am profoundly grateful that it was not. I know that my husband longed for release, and that today my son still has a father, and I still have a husband.