Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean Excerpts

Friday 16th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s helpful reply and for the intervention of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton. I will consider this extremely carefully. I personally think that it would be appropriate and simplest if we were to have a provision in this Bill rather than having to set in train a completely new statutory instrument, with all the separate procedures that that would involve. I should be grateful if Members of the House, after reflecting on this short debate, would get in touch with me if they have a particular view on the options that are now presented to us. For the moment, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)]

The noble Lord mentioned that legal aid should also be available to members of the family and my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer made the same point. Would he take that view if members of the family were opposed to the wish of the person seeking assisted suicide? For example, if parents of a young person of 18 or 19 wanted to intervene, would his amendment cover the position of such parents?

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I am grateful for that intervention. I think my answer is this. I speak with the experience in the early part of my career of having had a lot to do with family matters and of acting for a coroner. The sad fact is that applications under the Bill when it is enacted could be highly contested, especially in circumstances where a close relative believes that undue pressure is being brought on the person making the application and is convinced that the application needs proper airing before a judge. I know that doctors will give their opinions, but sometimes the facts are complicated. Members of the family will not be able to approach doctors to say, “For goodness’ sake, do you not know blah blah blah?”. One needs to make arrangements for legal aid in such cases. I am utterly convinced that it would be scandalous if we allowed this to go forward without making arrangements for people who cannot afford legal advice. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Dobbs]

Not at all. Of course it is for the individual to make the ultimate decision, but he is not on his own. It is not what is happening right now, when people with these conditions are killing themselves by suffocating themselves with plastic bags. That is suicide; it is not suicide when you are surrounded by all those who are there to give you help in that final matter. There is another point that I would like to make.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, is that not taken into account by the use of the word “assisted”? No one is trying to pretend that this is something without other people there, but the word “assisted” implies that there are other participants around. The noble Lord, in deliberately ignoring one of the words in “assisted suicide”, is in danger, as has been said, of being misleading in what he is saying.

[Lord Dobbs]

Far from deliberately ignoring the word, I would like to turn to another point that I think will answer the noble Baroness’s question precisely. If we insist on using the word “suicide”, as required by the amendment, we could end up with entirely unintended and counterproductive consequences. When the Bill becomes law—as I believe eventually it will—if it legalises suicide rather than assisted dying, might that not tend to make all forms of suicide more acceptable? It would become the thin end of the wedge, the slippery slope, by making suicide in general more acceptable. That is not what I want. “Suicide” is the wrong terminology because this is a different matter from the other types of death that come under the determination of suicide.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Empey]

Those are things that we have to probe in Committee. That is what Committee is for. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has many worthy objectives. If the proposal that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has just enunciated works, and if the professionals who know their business feel that it is more helpful, that is terrific. That is exactly what this Committee is for. I therefore commend what she said.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, I wanted to make exactly the same point as that made by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. I will not repeat it, but I ask my noble and learned friend to consider carefully the point that she just made about the actual timing of giving any drugs that would terminate life.

I wanted to make one other small point about something that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said earlier about thinking that doctors were overoptimistic about survival rates. My own experience of this, which the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, referred to at the beginning of this debate, was exactly the reverse of that. Right at the beginning of a very late diagnosis of leukaemia, my husband was told that there was only a 20% survival rate for that form of leukaemia and he was unlikely to be in that 20% because of the late diagnosis. Five years later, he received a letter, having gone through the dark hours of the night wanting to end his life in very much the way that the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, alluded to in others but has obviously steadfastly and gallantly resisted herself. The letter said that, in fact, the survival rate had not been 20%, as he had been advised, but 47%—more than double what the survival rate was meant to be.

I simply make the point that terminal illness is hard to define, whatever we put into legislation. The fact is that medical science is moving fast, particularly in the treatment of cancer. These definitions are enormously difficult and I would ask noble Lords to reflect on the fact that survival rates can be very much higher after a relatively short period of time.