Assisted Dying Law

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I should declare that my daughter is an end-of-life nurse at the Marie Curie hospice in Belfast and my wife is a volunteer fundraiser for that organisation.

We will each have experience of a friend or dear loved one facing the end of life. Each of us can recount circumstances, some of which will be peaceful, some less so, some shocking and some sudden. In the midst of life we are in death. We do not continue on here—this is not our permanent resting place—and that is a shock to some people. I agree with the hon. Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans) that we should have a national conversation, because people wish to exclude discussion about faith and non-faith in the midst of this. Palliative care should also be part of that discussion.

Ninety per cent. of us who walked into the building today probably did not realise that we walked under a portrait of Moses carrying the ten commandments. The top one says, “Thou shalt not kill”. We are debating at what point we shall kill. The House debates it many times. Should we kill in the womb? Should we kill at the end of life? When should we do it? We have to take those tough, critical decisions, and sometimes the House gets it wrong. We should not get it wrong on this occasion.

We should not set a position on when is the right time to kill someone who is sick. We should be asking the positive, strong question: how much palliative care and support can we give people at the greatest point of need? What question does the House face? It should be about what we do to give hope, not what we do to continue with the heartache. We parliamentarians should be prepared to offer hope to people, not to say, as others have said, “You’re now a burden. It’s time to shuffle off this mortal coil.” We should be giving hope to people.

We should also not be discouraging those involved in palliative care—the doctors and nurses who train so hard to give their all. My father, my brother-in-law and my father-in-law have been in these circumstances, and I have known the people who were around them, caring for them. To be able to work with and talk to those people afterwards gives us emotional support. Therefore, in that conversation—“What is life? Where does it end and when should it end?”—we need those people to take us through that journey and not to give up. We should not be giving up on life. We should not be asking Parliament to create a law that says, “Now is the time to tell people it’s time to get off.” We should be supporting people to the very end, giving them palliative care and putting the money and resources into making that happen.

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[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) on securing this important debate and on her excellent contribution, which eloquently summed up the issues on both sides of the argument.

When Parliament voted on this issue in 2015, I was a new MP and was invited to various debates on the subject. A local bishop invited me to a parish church to talk to the congregation about assisted dying. He knew I was in favour of it, as I still am today. We debated the issues and were asked questions about what we proposed. I was surprised, as was the bishop, that the vote at the end showed that 80% of the people there were in favour of assisted dying. There were only about 20 people present, so it is not a representative sample.

That concurs with the public view. According to the Dignity in Dying survey, 84% of the public are in favour of assisted dying. Therefore, it is perhaps surprising that in 2015 some 75% of parliamentarians were against it. We have to be careful when we are that far out of step with the general public, as we have seen before with the Brexit debate. I was one of 22 Members on the Conservative side of the fence who voted in favour of assisted dying, and I think the Minister also voted for it. It is great to see so many new Members speaking today and sitting in the Chamber. I have a feeling that may mean that the balance of opinion may have changed in recent months.

During the election campaign I lost my mother. Her final hours were difficult, particularly when she was having some fluid taken off her lungs. It was difficult for us as relatives and for other people on the ward, as she was on an open ward and she had to have a number of surgical treatments to clear the fluid off her lungs. It was very distressing. I simply do not see why someone should have to go through that in the final hours of their life. I contrast this to the way we treat family dogs, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) said in his excellent speech. Our dog, Ben, was put down. He was perfectly healthy apart from a hip problem, but that meant we had to put him down. My wife, four children and I gathered around him as a family, and he had a very peaceful end to his life.

[Ian Paisley]

Would what the hon. Gentleman is describing take place if more resources were put into palliative care? If that happened, precedence would be given to the care, expectation, love and compassion that Members so desperately want to see, not just for themselves but for their loved ones and their families.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

That is a good point. I am not against more resources for palliative care, but I am in favour of choice. I think people should have the choice. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), who is doing much work in this area, made a brilliant speech in the 2015 debate on assisted dying. In his phrase, we should have “the dominion over” our bodies.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Philp)]

It is, as always, a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) on securing the debate on such an important and profound topic so early in the new Parliament, and on the sincerity and compassion of her speech, which I know everybody here will have listened to very carefully indeed.

Whatever one’s personal view on this issue, there is no question but that Members on both sides of the argument hold strong and powerful views, which we heard expressed today with great sincerity and compassion. I thank everybody who took part in the debate. I particularly thank the new Members, who spoke with such thoughtfulness and conviction, as well as the more experienced Members, who offered their views as well, which are equally important. The debate has been an example of Parliament at its best, as we weighed up these deep and profound questions—weighing up, on one side of the argument, the sanctity of life, against, on the other side, the principle of personal choice. Few topics are deeper or more profound than those.

It may be worth my laying out the legal background to the question before us, which has not really been touched on; it is probably worth reminding ourselves of the current legal landscape. The current law on assisted suicide in England and Wales is governed by section 2 of the Suicide Act 1961, which gives a blanket criminalisation of the offence, including by “encouraging or assisting” suicide. There are no exemptions from that in statute. In Northern Ireland, there are similar statutory provisions. In Scotland, there is no statutory criminalisation of assisted suicide, but it is prosecuted as a culpable homicide, so the effect in Scottish law is, broadly speaking, the same. The law as it currently stands across all parts of the United Kingdom is that assisting or even encouraging somebody to commit suicide is a criminal offence.

The application of the law, and prosecutions for anyone suspected of assisting or encouraging suicide, is subject to prosecution policy—whether the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales, or the Procurator Fiscal Service in Scotland, decide to prosecute. In making a prosecution decision, with this offence as with any other, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Director of Public Prosecutions apply two tests. One is an evidential test: is there evidence that the offence has been committed? Secondly, there is a public interest test: does it serve the public interest to pursue a prosecution?

[Ian Paisley]

Is it not the case that there are about 150 of those type of cases, but that only three are actually being prosecuted for the sinister motive that could lie behind some of them?

[Chris Philp]

I was about to come on to precisely the figures that the hon. Gentleman refers to. Before I do, it is worth reminding the House of the current prosecution policy. It was set out substantively in February 2010 and revised somewhat in 2014. Clause 43 of those Crown Prosecution Service guidelines sets out a number of conditions that will make it more likely that a prosecution serves the public interest.

However, clause 45 lays out six conditions that will make a prosecution less likely, including: first, that the person who has died reached a voluntary, clear and settled decision; secondly, that the accused was motivated by compassion; thirdly, that the nature of the assistance or encouragement was minor; fourthly, that the accused had tried to dissuade the person dying from pursuing that course of action; and fifthly, that the matter had been properly reported to the police. If those conditions are met, the Director of Public Prosecutions would be less likely to bring a prosecution—not completely unlikely, but less likely. The judgment as to whether a prosecution serves the public interest is an independent question for the Crown Prosecution Service, or the Procurator Fiscal Service in Scotland.