Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

My Lords, I am a trustee of the Refugee Council, which tries to help those who get here having escaped famine, war or oppression. I am also a strong supporter of Médecins Sans Frontières, which does such wonderful work in the field of conflict, looking after the people who cannot get out, who are trapped. Nobody tells me that I have to choose between one and the other. Philosophers define a false dichotomy as a fallacy based on the exclusion of one available premise. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, knows how much I admire her campaign for improved and more palliative care. I strongly support it. I am a supporter of my local hospice; my support has roots in family experience rather similar to that described so movingly by the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell. I do not see why I have to choose between improving palliative care and helping those who, while aware of how palliative care might help them, still have a voluntary, clear, settled and informed wish to bring the curtain down and end their suffering.

Without the legal option that the Bill would provide, we are stuck with the sadness of surreptitious suicide preparations—shocking to family and friends if they succeed, all too often traumatic and tragic if they are bodged and fail. The safeguards in the Bill are stringent and the consultations it mandates might dissuade many, but where their decision is voluntary, clear, settled and informed, it should surely be determinate.

The key, as I see it, is respect for the autonomy of the individual and here I fear I have to part company with the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. I think the key is not imposing one’s views on those who do not share them. I could cite Mill, Bentham, Voltaire or Hume but I will spare the House. I will quote only Stephen Sedley in his Doran Lecture this year. He said:

“Nobody … doubts the importance and worth of palliative care, or the entitlement of individuals to hold whatever belief they choose about suffering, even if it consigns them to a lingering death. What they do not have is a right to force it on others.”


I agree. I do not think we should have the right to limit the options at life’s end so I hope the House will reject the false dichotomies and support the Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher.