Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, if we were considering a Bill to extend palliative care far and wide, I suspect we would encounter no dissent in your Lordships’ House, as has already been suggested. Palliative care experts, for whom I have the greatest respect, say that nobody should die in agony these days. But we know that they do: we have had many letters from families and from doctors.

I realised, when my parents died, that I was grateful that I was able to say to the ward sister—and my father had very advanced dementia—“Please don’t overly combat pneumonia, ‘the old man’s friend’, if it happens”. In fact, he was given a gentle release by slipping into a coma. It is true that some people can almost drown, but that should not happen. However, I was grateful for this natural end, even if our decision could be said to have hastened it. This, today, is a different matter, but I personally see the extension of a moral imperative: in a sense, we were not taking every opportunity to ward off death.

Until cases like Shipman meant that death was more closely scrutinised, doctors felt, I suspect, more able to help patients on their final journey. Some probably still do, and I wish that were more often the case. I live on a farm. Observing the agonising death of a neighbour, my farming partner said to me, “We would be prosecuted if we allowed an animal to suffer like that.” We would be prosecuted, but I am afraid that we allow human beings to suffer like that. It is a pretty appalling comment on where we are.

I want to see us, as a society, embrace death. I believe that this Bill will help us to do that, safe in the knowledge that in the end there will be a choice. As everybody has said, that is what this is all about. For my part, I desire that choice. I do not recognise that we are asking judges or doctors to carry out euthanasia, although I am prepared to be corrected by greater experts on the law. We are asking that patients be given the means to make that choice for themselves. This is a choice that, I think, many of us would ultimately like.