Assisted Suicide

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) not only on persuading the Backbench Business Committee to make time for this debate, for which I am grateful, but on his thoughtful contribution, which set the tone for the debate. I also congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) and the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on their contributions. In my view, the debate is one of the highlights of this parliamentary term, and it is such a shame that there is unlikely to be a great deal of interest from the media, as I think that the debate shows the House at its best.

Assisted suicide is certainly a difficult issue, and I do not believe that anyone has an immediate and obvious answer to that difficulty. Personally, I am always slightly suspicious of those who believe that there is a ready answer. The issue is perhaps made more difficult by the fact that, as politicians in a democracy, it is our job to reflect public opinion, and when it comes to such issues the public far too often behave like ostriches, wanting to bury their heads and forget about it. No one wants to believe that they or those whom they love would ever be so ill that they would want to die. The truth, however, is that many of us will find ourselves in that situation.

Despite the fact that we have an increasingly ageing population, we also fail to address additional, related problems, such as the problems of pensions and long-term care, which have led to the social care crisis. Again, that is because none of us wants to believe that we will have difficulties in old age or that we will be seriously ill and need assistance. Therefore, it is not terribly surprising that we have failed to address the issue of how we ought to have a good death. Some of us will die peacefully in our sleep, but many of us will not. With advances in medicine, many of us will live with a medical condition that, even 10 years ago, we would have been unlikely to survive, and which would likely have resulted in a speedy death, so many of us are likely to live longer.

Many of us, however, are likely to live with a painful, debilitating disease that will shorten our lives. Some of us believe that that is the will of God; some of us believe that life comes from God and it is for God to take that life away; many of us believe that Pope John Paul II was an inspiration, given the dignity he showed in dealing with his Parkinson’s; and some of us—I am one of them—believe that if more hospice and palliative care was available to those coming towards the end of their lives, they would wish to live as long as they could, so long as they could remain pain-free and continue to live with dignity. I was very moved when I went to Trinity hospice, and I would consider myself fortunate, if necessary, to see out the end of my days in such a hospice.

Others, however, do not believe that such an approach is sufficient. Diane Pretty and Debbie Purdy, for example, do not wish, even with the greatest assistance, to live until the time when God, if there is a God, takes that life away; they wish to have some control over the end of their life.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Does the hon. Lady agree, however, that the essence of the Director of Public Prosecution’s advice is to give dying people the ability to live? It is precisely the knowledge that they have control over when they are able to die that allows them to live more fully and, often, for longer.

[Emily Thornberry]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, who in fact takes me to my next point, which is that no one could fail to be struck by the clearly unaffected joy of Debbie Purdy and her caring husband, Omar Puente, when they believed that there had been clarification of the stage at which they might jointly have been able to decide when she could die. The fact that they seemed to be overjoyed by that showed an essential truth in relation to them and to the decisions that they personally needed and wanted to make—and wanted the law to allow them to make.

Having rattled through the difficulties in relation to the issue, may I move on to the motion and to the amendments before the House? The motion welcomes the Director of Public Prosecution’s guidance on cases of encouraging or assisting suicide, and it is certainly my view that, as others have said, the guidelines are sensible and proportionate. The hon. Member for Croydon South rightly said that they are compassionate, and many members of the public believe that they are.

When the public saw that Diane Pretty, despite all her efforts, eventually did suffocate—exactly what she did not want, because she wanted to be able to end her life before that with assistance, if necessary—they found the DPP’s response to the case of Debbie Purdy a few years later was proportionate, and it had their broad support. The motion does not seek to change the law.

Amendment (a), in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford, would not change the law, either. It

“invites the Government to consult as to whether to put the guidance on a statutory basis.”

When looking at amendments and at quasi-legal documents, I think that the safest way to interpret them is to interpret what they say as meaning what they say, and the amendment simply asks the Government to consult on whether the DPP’s guidance should be put on a statutory basis.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

The hon. Lady is helping the debate. If the Government were forced to hold such a consultation, would it be based precisely on the DPP’s guidelines as they are, or would it open up the debate to state that some of the guidelines are wrong, that there should be not just assisted suicide but death on request, or that the situation ought to involve the chronically ill and some of the physically handicapped? Would the consultation be constricted, because if it were not, why would we hold it?

[Emily Thornberry]

The hon. Gentleman, too, anticipates what I am going to say next, because having clarified what I believe to be the purpose of amendment (a), which is to invite the Government to consult, I believe also that it would invite the public to become involved in a debate, and no one in this House, given the difficulties in relation to the issue, should be afraid of that.

There are issues related to the current guidance, but there are wider issues, too, and we should not be afraid of debating them. There are the results of the Commission on Assisted Dying, which recommended permitting a doctor to assist suicide for the terminally ill and defined who the terminally ill are, and there is the issue of whether that recommendation would assist people who suffer from locked-in syndrome, or even Debbie Purdy, who suffered from multiple sclerosis but might not have been considered terminally ill. We should not run away from debating those issues, and it is important in these circumstances that there be a debate. That is why there is some good sense in amendment (a).

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

The unofficial commission started, it might fairly be described, with a majority of commissioners who believed in some of the results that they came out with.

[Emily Thornberry]

I do not wish to apportion any motives one way or the other to people who want to be involved in the debate; it is best that we have the debate and that the public are encouraged to be involved. The DPP has, in my view, come up with very sensible guidelines on when a prosecution for assisted suicide should begin, because it is appropriate for the Crown Prosecution Service and the DPP to be informed by a wider public debate.

For the reasons that I set out at the beginning of my remarks, I believe that the public would not necessarily like to have a debate, unless they have coming up in front of them cases such as Debbie Purdy’s, which they cannot avoid, but it is our responsibility as elected representatives to listen to the public and to encourage and engender debate, and that is the good sense behind amendment (a).

[Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, but equally she should not attribute too much to the Commission on Assisted Dying, as it was a self-appointed commission that was funded mainly by a pressure group that holds a very clear view of the existing law and how it wishes to see it changed. I also point out to my hon. Friend that this House at the very beginning of this Session argued for e-petitions, and that the same House is now arguing that e-petitions should be abolished because they produce absolutely nothing other than hundreds and thousands of e-mails.

[Emily Thornberry]

I take on board the points that my hon. Friend makes, but they do not sway me from my path, which is to argue that we should encourage a real debate with and among the public, and that we should learn from their views.

Amendment (b) is clearly nothing but good sense and very important. The vast majority of the public wish to die at home, but on the whole people do not do so because they are afraid that there is insufficient support for them to die pain-free and supported there. If I may step away from being a desiccated lawyer for a moment, I must say that it was such a shame that the Health and Social Care Bill spent so little time dealing with that vital issue, and instead dealt with many other issues that the public did not want.

In a more general debate, another issue that could come up is that of giving information to members of the public who might want to know how they could kill themselves or assist others to kill themselves. Again, that is controversial, but it is important that we politicians are informed by the public’s views on the matter.

For those and other reasons I welcome this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Croydon South on having ensured that we hold it here. Let us hope that it spreads to involve people outside this place.