Assisted Suicide

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) spoke with great emotion. Like his father, my mother died at the age of 87; it is very difficult for us to speak about these very personal matters. I know that my mother, like many elderly people, wrongly felt that she was a burden. Of course she was never a burden, but I think that many people feel like that; there might be absolutely no pressure on them, but they feel that they would make it easier for everybody if they were to ease their path out of life. We must never allow old people in this country to feel that they are a burden. That is where I come from.

My views have progressed on this matter over the time I have been in Parliament. I freely confess that when I first came here I believed that the state had the right to take life and I voted, like many of my colleagues, in 1983 to restore capital punishment. I now think I was wrong and I have come to the conclusion that the only logical and right course of action is always to proclaim life. As it happens, at the moment I am reading a history of Stalin’s Russia, and one cannot understand the attitude of a society in which life is held so cheaply. I know that we are a million miles from that but in my view the end never justifies the means. That is why I personally voted against all the recent wars—or certainly did not vote for them. I believe that life must come first and that we must proclaim life.

That does not come from my religious views; it is a matter of absolute certainty and belief and is incredibly important for society if we are to create a society of light and hope and not one in which people ultimately feel they are a burden. That is why I have consistently voted, opposed, spoken against and moved amendments on abortion and I would vote against capital punishment. I am totally opposed to euthanasia in any shape or form. Some people will say, “That’s all very well for you. At the moment you are reasonably healthy. What if you are faced with the appalling difficulties and problems that we have been talking about today?”, and my answer is that I do not know. All I know is that we must proclaim this truth, and the House of Commons should proclaim it—that anybody, however young, unborn, crippled, hopeless, diseased or idiotic, has as much right to life as anybody else, and all life is precious because the external human body is simply a mirror of the soul. If we renege on that moral certainty and if we start on a journey, it is a very dangerous journey indeed.

[Mr Winnick]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. Every life is of value and the idea that because someone may be disabled or elderly and so on their life is less valuable than other people’s is totally alien to me, as it is to him. But I gave as an example Dr Anne Turner, who was so terrified of facing a death like her husband’s, where all physical movement would have ended. Does he recognise that she had the right to decide, and she took that right, though she could not do so in Britain?

[Mr Leigh]

I recognise that point of view and that is why, although I have expressed myself so far, some would say, with too much moral certainty, I realise that we are in a moral maze here. It is not for us to lecture people on what they may or may not do at the end. That is why the guidelines are a fair compromise. I do not think anybody wants to prosecute and send to jail somebody who acts out of the depth of love and compassion when they are faced with a close relative who is suffering. Nobody wants such a person to be sent to prison if they assist their loved one out of this life.

We have a compromise, but it is not legalised euthanasia. I tabled an amendment, which was not selected. Why should it have been? I wanted to express the point of view that the House of Commons must firmly and unequivocally state, as it has done up to now, that for the absolute avoidance of doubt, it is opposed to voluntary euthanasia. There is a world of difference between the desperate situation in which a relative helps somebody out of this world, and a situation where a doctor, as part of the legal process, kills somebody. That is what so many of us on this side of the argument believe so passionately. It might be a cliché to talk in terms of slippery slopes, but it is there in Holland and in Oregon—in only about six jurisdictions throughout the world. We do not want this country to embark on this road.

I was with my best friend, a former Member of this House, Piers Merchant, as he lay dying. He was riddled with cancer, in great pain, and I was with him as he was dying. He was filled with morphine. I could see the morphine going through his body all the time. He was no doubt killed by the morphine, not by the cancer, and I respected that judgment. He was in a wonderful, caring hospice. Everybody was looking after him and everybody was loving him. At the end of the day his doctors, I suppose, killed him because the pain would have been unendurable, but that is not legalised euthanasia. That is allowing doctors to take an informed decision on the basis of what they know to be right.

[Naomi Long]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a subtle but important distinction between treatment that is administered by a doctor in order to ease pain which, as a side effect, may hasten death, and a doctor setting out to hasten death?

[Mr Leigh]

That is the point that I am trying to make, and that is the absolute principle that I hope this debate will proclaim. We want the law to recognise the appalling moral difficulties that people face. None of us in the Chamber speaking in this debate has yet embarked on that journey. We all will. That is the only thing we know with absolute certainty. There will come a moment when we are dying, in pain, and those around us have to make appallingly difficult decisions.

I want to live in a country where there is a moral assumption that although, at the end of the day, my passage into the next world might have to be eased, and the easing might be the killing of me, that decision will be taken in the final analysis by doctors who are simply trying to relieve pain, who have recognised that I am dying and who do not accept the principle that the state, the law, doctors or even relations have a right to come to an individual and say before their time is up, “Yes, you are a burden on society. Yes, you must go.” That is a moral principle, that is what the debate is about, and that is what we must abide by.