Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

Friday 16th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elton]

Before the noble Lord sits down, I would pick up his phrase “the Westminster bubble”. That is precisely the problem: we do live in the Westminster bubble. We think that the intellectuals who lead the political papers are the whole public; they are a tiny minority of it. The general public know what suicide is, just as they know what death is. We need to choose what the Bill is about, and a great many of us believe that it is about suicide, not assisted death.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

Of course the Bill is about assisted suicide, but equally obviously, it is expressly confined to the suicide of those who are already terminally ill—those who are therefore already actually in the process of dying; that is, dying in an altogether more meaningful sense than when one says that everybody is born to die and we are all dying. That is perfectly plain already in the Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, but at the end of the day, for my part, I am entirely relaxed about this group of amendments. I urge that the House proceeds speedily to the critical issues on which the Bill should stand or fall, so that the public will in all this can be given effect. The public will not give a fig what Title is given to it.

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly agree with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, just said. We need to recognise that the amendments are not really about clarity but about conferring on the Bill the stigma which traditionally attaches to suicide. The use of the term suicide breaches the Samaritans’ guidance on language, which states that:

“Inappropriate or careless use of language can perpetuate stigma or sensationalise a death”.

The term suicide is inappropriate when discussing the rational choice of a mentally competent terminally ill patient who is seeking a peaceful and dignified death. The American Psychological Association has stated that:

“It is important to remember that the reasoning on which a terminally ill person [whose judgments are not impaired by mental disorders] bases a decision to end his or her life is fundamentally different from the reasoning a clinically depressed person uses to justify suicide”.

The amendments add nothing to what the debate should be about and distract us from discussing the mechanics of the process, which I think we should get on with.

The Bill would legalise the provision of assistance to a dying competent adult to control the time and manner of their death when that death is imminent and unavoidable. It would not legalise assistance with suicide for those who are not terminally ill, and I think that we should leave the Bill as it stands.