Assisted Dying (No. 2) Bill

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Friday 11th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rob Marris]

No, I must make some progress. I am sorry.

The European Association of Palliative Care says there is no correlation between the quantity and quality of palliative care in any jurisdiction and whether or not that jurisdiction has legislation like or similar to the Bill. The legislation I am proposing today, as many Members will know, is broadly based on the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, which came into effect in 1997. It has been in operation for 18 years. My Bill has the additional safeguard of judicial oversight.

When the Act was passed in 1994, the Oregon Hospice Association was strongly opposed to it. It has reversed its position, and it now recognises—in my view correctly, although I am not an expert—that assisted dying is one of the choices that ought to be available to dying people. In Oregon, 90% of people who have an assisted death—0.25% of those who die each year—are enrolled in hospice care, and Oregon is ranked among the best states in the United States of America for palliative care provision.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Would the hon. Gentleman care to comment on the Wagner case? Mrs Wagner was encouraged to take assisted suicide, rather than chemotherapy, on the grounds of cost. It worries many of us that market forces and family pressures will promote ever more assisted suicides.

[Rob Marris]

I will take a detour for the hon. Gentleman, because there are urban myths. Barbara Wagner was a 65-year-old lifelong smoker with lung cancer, who was insured—this is America—under the state plan. Her doctor prescribed medication that cost $4,000 a month which had an 8% chance of extending her life by four to six months. Her insurance health plan did not cover treatment where there was less than a 5% chance that the patient would be alive after five years. When she told her health plan provider that she would not be paying for the treatment, it informed her that one of the other options was the Oregon Act. It should not have done that, and it has since revised its notification process.

I am told that depression is often present among those who have a terminal illness. That is not surprising; if I had a terminal illness, I think I would get depressed. It is up to the two doctors to determine whether depression has driven someone to make this choice, or whether it is a free choice, and if those doctors have doubts, they can refer the patient, as part of the process, for an independent psychiatric evaluation.

Another concern is that patients will feel that they are a burden on their loved ones or the health service and so wish to exercise this option. I hope that patients do not feel that, but I cannot guarantee it. It is patronising and wrong to say that someone should be denied the choice because one factor in their decision making is that they would feel that they are a burden. They should have the choice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) has read us a very moving letter, and I think the whole tone of the debate does the House credit. This is an extraordinarily difficult issue, and we are all going to face this awful journey—I use “awful” in the old-fashioned sense of the word. We are frightened of dying, although perhaps for religious people it is not so much of death but of dying, and we have to respect each other’s opinions.

When my good friend Father Philip Bailey of Holy Rood Catholic church was dying—he had kidney failure—he was sent to Scunthorpe hospital, which offered him very painful and very intrusive treatment to try to enable him to live a few weeks or days longer. He, a Catholic priest, chose not to take it. I was with my best friend Piers Merchant, a former Member, when he was dying of cancer. His body was filled with morphine, which probably killed him in the end. It was not designed to kill him, however, but to relieve his suffering. My friend Father Philip Bailey took that choice as well.

My view is that we do not need an assisted suicide or an assisted dying Bill; we need a movement for natural dying. We have to come to terms with death as a society and recognise that it is a journey we are all going to take. We have to promote the hospice movement and palliative care, put much more resources into them and be honest with people that increasingly intrusive, difficult, painful operations and medications may not be the way. In that sense, I think we can resolve this issue and emerge with credit from what I regard as a moral maze.

I have one important issue to mention. I suppose people would expect me to do so, but it really has to be underlined. As we embark on the Bill and reflect on what it will mean if it becomes an Act, many of us feel that history will repeat itself. For all the controls that we are told will be there—I am not sure that the High Court’s consideration on paper for a couple of weeks or a couple of doctors in a dying clinic signing for it are much of a control, particularly when most doctors are opposed to it—more and more people will take this route, and as they become ill this general question will increasingly be put to them, “Do you want to end your life now? It is the law; you have the right to do it.” That contrasts with what happens now, where the whole emphasis is on trying to let people die naturally.

What sort of society do we want to create? Do we want to create one in which we solve our problems by killing? I admit that my religious belief informs my view, and people could ask what right I have to impose my religious beliefs—seen in opposition to abortion or capital punishment or to war or to assisted dying or death—on them. I would at least ask them this question: “What sort of society do we want to create when we feel that we can solve problems by hastening death rather than promoting life?” What sort of society are we creating if we say that we value people who are healthy, fit, beautiful and young more than we value people who are poor, old, crippled, ill and dying? We feel that in those people there is an eternal soul waiting there—a beautiful soul that needs to be nurtured. Even if people do not share this religious belief, surely they can come to the conclusion—even as humanists with a humane point of view—that we must promote a society that respects the old, the ill and the dying and gives them every chance of life.