Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, I believe we are having the passionate yet deeply respectful debate that the noble Lord, Lord Winston, asked for. It will be a day that does this House credit.

My father died of prostate cancer, as did my eldest brother in August. My remaining brother has been told that he will not survive it either, and I myself was diagnosed with it earlier this year. So, for the men in the Dobbs family, this is not a matter of surmise but of profound practicality—and believe me, my Lords, it focuses the mind.

My life, my body and my character belong to no one but myself. Of course, others have an interest in my life, and my death, but I have the ultimate right to decide what happens to me; not the state, not the Church, not any court. I understand the reservations expressed, particularly by some who are disabled, but this is not a Bill that demeans the disabled, and it is not about getting rid of Granny. These claims are speculative, about the fear of what might be. If further safeguards have to be built into this Bill then, of course, we should do so.

But let us take the scales of common justice in our hands, hold them very tight and weigh a speculation against a certainty: the most reverend Primate’s understandable fear against an indisputable fact. That fact is that many—so many, far too many—people, every year, will die in appalling and unnecessary circumstances. Surely, those scales must come down in favour of this Bill. The Bill does not degrade the value of life; it honours life. It puts a higher value on life, allows life to reach its end surrounded by compassion, and with dignity.

If a time were to come when my life were made unbearable through extreme pain and humiliation, when I was stripped of all hope, I would end it if I could, no matter what the law says. It would be a law of the utmost cruelty that said that I and my loved ones must suffer in agony and without hope. Yet that is what the current law does, and that is why it must be changed.