Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Deben Excerpts

Friday 16th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister. I am sorry I have not got a loud voice. I may be a little slow. This is not because I want to hold up the Bill, I just have things to say.

We have been told time and again that disabled people with life-limiting conditions—and I use that term advisedly because we do not recognise the terms “terminal illness” and “months” or “weeks to live”; but more about that later, under a suitable amendment—have nothing to fear from the Bill. We are told that it is necessary only to help a few desperate individuals to end their lives when they have weeks or months to live, and that, if enacted, it will not touch anyone who does not want it. I do not believe that and, it seems, neither do the authors of the Bill. Why else would they elect to name it the Assisted Dying Bill instead of the assisted suicide Bill? If it is truly concerned only with personal autonomy and choice, surely that should be celebrated and clear.

By avoiding the term “assisted suicide”, the Bill circumvents the framework of measures in place to review, monitor and prevent other forms of suicide. It seeks to exclude deaths under the Bill from the general requirement for a coroner’s inquest to be conducted where suicide is considered a possible cause of death. It contains a provision for publication of annual statistics of “assisted deaths” separate from the established arrangements for collecting and publishing statistics on deaths by suicide. It provides for a death under the Bill to be recorded by the registrar as an “assisted death”.

I have a question for the Minister. This Government, like their predecessors, have a major cross-departmental suicide prevention strategy. It seeks,

“a reduction in the suicide rate in the general population in England”,

and defines suicide as,

“a deliberate act that intentionally ends one’s life”.

In the light of this definition, will the Minister inform us whether, if the Bill were to become law, he anticipates a rise in the suicide rate, and would he expect the suicide prevention strategy to contain measures to reduce the numbers in this group intentionally ending their own lives?

We all, in this House and outside, understand the word “suicide”. It centres on the individual. The act of suicide is the responsibility of the person who commits it, and no other. It is impossible to commit suicide without first consenting to do so. The same does not apply to the word “dying”.

Assisted dying is practised in Belgium, the Netherlands and elsewhere. Whatever the initial intentions were, decisions to end life in those places are now not taken only by the individual. It is not an autonomous act. The slippery slope is oiled by the vague euphemism of “assisted dying”. Disabled and terminally people are rightly frightened that the Bill, as currently named, puts them at risk. The purpose of the amendment is to provide some safeguards through the use of plain language. “Assisted suicide” makes it clear that only the individual may instigate and control the process leading to an early, state-sanctioned death. I urge noble Lords to support this argument.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, there is a deep reason why so serious a Bill should be particularly careful about the language it uses. One of the problems we have today is that people use language in order to establish not the truth but a slight version of the truth that they wish to pass off. I hope the House will excuse me if I use what may appear to be a flippant example but I think it sums it up.

In the register of interests, I declare that I am the chairman of the Association of Professional Financial Advisers. The Financial Services Authority decided to call the changes that it wanted in the industry, “treating customers fairly”. This was done to suggest that anybody who did not agree with every fact in the policy would be treating customers unfairly. It was designed to have a particular effect.