Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Friday 7th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neuberger (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, to which I have put my name, and to add to that of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. I agree with almost everything that has been said but, if responsibility is given to the Family Division in some way or other, there might be reason for a ticket system, as happens in serious sex or murder cases. That way, the judges within the Family Division who are going to hear these cases very quickly will have had training in how to look at them and, where necessary, examine the medical evidence in detail. A ticket system and specific training for members of the Family Division in this area would be an improvement on simply saying that it was available to everybody. I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)]

My Lords, we have heard from three lawyers. I am not a lawyer—I have to confess that I have not read even paragraph 205 of Lord Wilson’s judgment—but I feel obliged to stand up and say that I think we are missing the point, as I see it, of the Bill of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer.

This is not about medical decisions or judicial decisions; it is about compassion for people nearing the end of their lives. These people have decided that they have had enough. The thought of having to go through a legal process—even if, as we have heard, it has been curtailed as far as possible—and incurring legal bills is the last thing that they want to deal with, if they have complied with the law that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, is suggesting and have actually come to a reasoned decision that they have gone on long enough and the time has come for them to die. We ought not to prolong that procedure for any longer than we have to. I do not think that lawyers have the final view on all that is right.

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, my noble friend is assuming that every one of these cases is of someone who had voluntarily made all those decisions. We are here concerned that there will be some cases—from my long experience as a Member of Parliament, rather more than some people think—in which that is not so, and somebody has to protect them against being thought to have made that decision when in fact they have not done so.

[Baroness Wheatcroft]

My Lords, there may indeed be one or two occasions on which that is the case. However, we are looking for at least two medical opinions here, both of which will regard the sanity of the individual. If that individual decides, in full knowledge of what is going on within the family, that that is the decision they want to take, then, on balance, I suspect that we should let them.

[Baroness Mallalieu (Lab)]

My Lords, I have put my name to the amendment. I support the Pannick version of judicial intervention for the reasons already given with great care by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. I also listened with care to almost all of the 129 speeches at Second Reading on 18 July in this House. There is a need to address two major reservations expressed by a number of noble Lords, which I accept have validity.

In essence, those reservations relate to two undeniable traits of human behaviour which we must accept exist and which no Bill of Parliament or amendment can extinguish. The first is selfishness. I see the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, was trying to speak and I hope that he will shortly. He referred in his Second Reading speech to “the vultures”: relatives or friends who might have a financial or other interest in the death of a dying person and be tempted to put pressure on that person to end their life, to bring forward the date of the realisation of their expectations or, perhaps, to save care fees—albeit that, under the Bill, they would only have to wait a maximum of six months in any event.

Secondly, there is selflessness: those who feel guilty about the expense, trouble, time, worry and distress which they are causing those whom they love, and who may be tempted to shorten the process—not because they truly wish it—not for themselves, but for others. There are, of course, subdivisions: the relatives who cannot bear to see mother suffer, and so on. I accept that those are genuine concerns and they are the reasons why I primarily support the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick.

Although neither selfishness nor selflessness can be eliminated, through judicial oversight it can be guarded against, possibly even better than it is at present. The medical condition of the applicant can be assessed by a medical expert and by a wholly independent, experienced judge—although there are crooked lawyers and experts of every kind, our judiciary is still, thankfully, totally respected—who by training and expertise is qualified to judge pressure, coercion and genuine or false wishes, and to examine or evaluate evidence as to whether somebody has capacity, is acting voluntarily and has a clear understanding and a settled wish to end his or her own life. I want someone like that to have the ultimate say on the decision.

However, it is not a question of a decision being made by a doctor or by a judge; I want the decision to be that of the person who is facing death. We have got to get back to that. Judges, especially in the Family Division, are dealing with judgments of that kind—about what people really want, whatever they say, and about pressure and coercion—day in and day out. I will of course listen carefully to the amendments in the next group that have been tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and others on judicial oversight. However, on the basis of what we have heard already from the noble Lord, they appear to present a bureaucratic, legalistic obstacle race which is bound to be both lengthy and costly to the applicant. One of the objects of the Bill is, I hope, to leave behind the absurd anomaly we have at present whereby, if you are rich enough, you can go to Zurich, but if you are not you have no choice but to endure possibly totally unnecessary suffering at the end of your life.