Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Finkelstein Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Finkelstein (Con)]

My Lords, when Harold Macmillan was asked by Rab Butler in 1961 to legalise suicide, he replied: “I do not see the point of it. It is just to please a few cranky Peers”. He said that he thought that the voters would be unimpressed if the best that the Tories could boast after 10 years in office was that people were free to go ahead and kill themselves.

Let me briefly explain why the Assisted Dying Bill is not just about a few cranky Peers and why I welcome its introduction. I thank noble Lords for many wonderful speeches, which have been a privilege to listen to, particularly those noble Lords who have been brave enough to share their stories of the deaths of relatives. The question before us is not whether there ought to be a choice about how to die. That question has been answered by medical science: there is a choice. The question is, therefore, who makes that choice: whether I am allowed to make it for myself or whether the state should make it for me. The suggestion that I may not be able to make a good choice—that I may make it for the wrong reasons or under the wrong influences—is an argument that can be used against allowing people control over almost anything important. In fact, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, made that point almost exactly.

I remember, when running for Parliament, encountering a woman who told me that she was not going to vote Conservative because she thought that William Hague had a silly voice. “If you don’t mind me saying so”, I replied, “that’s not a very good reason”. “I do mind you saying so”, she said, “because it’s my reason”. It was her reason; she was entitled to it.

Failing to legislate for assisted dying is substituting our reason—Parliament’s reason and the state’s reason—for that of the dying person on the grounds that we are of sound mind and strong, and the dying person is not. We are even doing this explicitly. We say, for instance, that people should not have this power because they might use it as a result of a fear of being a burden on their relatives. But why should that feeling be illegitimate? Not wanting to be a burden is a perfectly understandable and naturally human attitude. One might try to dissuade a relative—one certainly would in my case—but it is wrong to make that emotion illegal. The state is arguing, “If you don’t mind us saying so, that isn’t a very good reason”. I want people to be able to reply, “I do mind you saying so, because it is my reason”.

We are told that this choice is different from others because it is a matter of life and death, but it is not. The Bill is for the terminally ill, so it is not about a matter of life and death but about the manner of life and death and over that—in harmony, of course, with the rights of others—I should be able to exert control. Of course, the vulnerable should be protected. The law should not allow anybody to tell anybody else how to die. However, that is an argument for the Bill, not against it.

If the growth in abortion is a convincing argument against legalising assisted dying, it must surely be an even more convincing argument against legalising abortion. Yet very few, or a minority, in this House would hazard that we should make abortion entirely illegal. The supporters of the Bill seem to be asking for something that is very modest but also basic in a free society. We live as free people and now we want the right to die as we have lived.