Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, it is an honour to follow all those who have taken part in this most distinguished debate; it is really the House at its best.

First, let us consider the backdrop to the debate today. Anyone, whether or not in the closing stages of their life, is perfectly at liberty to attempt or commit suicide. They can do so howsoever they choose—by taking pills, jumping under a bus or painfully starving themselves to death. The Bill applies only to those in the final stages of their lives, expected to die within the next six months, and those who have a voluntary, clear, informed and settled wish to die, but it necessarily invites comparison between two categories that satisfy that definition. First, those who are physically capable of ending their own lives do not need the Bill; they can proceed. Secondly—and it is to these the Bill is directed—there are those who are so totally disabled, so pitiable and with such a low quality of life, that they need help to achieve early death. It would be quite illogical to deny those in this second category the assistance they need, leaving them alone and utterly powerless, when they understandably want to accelerate death.

Moreover, the Bill would not only provide this necessary help but, as an added advantage, would afford those in this limited category safeguards to protect them against the suggested risk of their being wrongly influenced to end their lives—grasping relatives and simply feeling a burden on all. One needs to point out that these safeguards are available to no one else; no other putative suicide, no one else contemplating suicide, has any such protection. It would be paradoxical and remarkable to refuse those in this most pitiable category the help they need and, with it, the protections they alone would get.

In short, I argue that when in 1961, 60 years ago, suicide was accepted as a lawful right in the interests of dignity and so forth, it became illogical to deny those with the very lowest quality of life and the strongest justification for wanting to accelerate death the power to achieve it. I suggest that both reason and pity—compassion—demand that we finally pass this Bill.