Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Elton Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, I can enter a debate like this only with extreme trepidation. I should like to say first that we are debating the Bill in outline and that it will be very different when we have finished with it in Committee, so it is important that the Committee stage should be gone through properly. The second thing I should do is declare two interests. The first is shared by many, which is that I am 84 years old. I suspect that the second is not shared by quite so many: I have had cancer since 1997. Therefore in two senses I am in the frame for the provisions of this Bill. I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Carey of Clifton, for extending their compassionate hand to me, but I have to say with the greatest courtesy, “Thank you, but no thank you”.

The reason takes us into the larger scale. I long to deal with many of the points that have been raised, but it seems to me that the great continental drift through which we are living—our tectonic plate in history—is as has been described in detail by the noble Lord, Lord Brennan. What takes control of legislation once it is out is the administration, and the context in which that happens is a peculiarly sinister one at the moment. First, as has been mentioned two or three times, we are becoming increasingly aware here in the United Kingdom of the limitations and great expense of care which, if it is to improve, will become even more expensive. The second is the limitations and huge expense, which is projected only to increase, of the National Health Service. The background to that is a recognition—which we are only now beginning to take on board in this country—of the dangers of a very rapidly increasing global population, impending shortages, and therefore strife over food and water.

An administration aware of these pressures can only think, “Not how compassionate but how convenient is this piece of legislation?”. It opens the door to a new concept of social priorities and social duties at the end of life. What I look forward to—my interest is limited because I shall not live that long—is the world in which my children and grandchildren will live, where there will be increasing pressures to regard people at a specified age, which no doubt will start very high but diminish as pressures increase, as being not very public-spirited if they go on. That is a whole new social climate, and I think that it is deeply hostile to the only thing that actually makes life in this world tolerable, which is the suffusion of love throughout society. Love is what makes the world go round; it is what makes it possible to live here and rejoice. Therefore I am in principle against the Bill, but I cannot say what the Bill will be like when we finish.

Finally, I declare another interest. It has been said three times, I think, that we need to change our concept of death. I heartily agree with that. My third declaration of interest is that I am a Christian. I regard death not as a pit but as a door; not as an end but as a beginning of something far more glorious. I tell your Lordships—those who will come to consider that in their closing days—that it is true, and wonderful, and you should seize hold of it and live more happily.