Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, when talking about this euthanasia Bill, the first thing we have to say is that the present law stands as a huge dam holding back thousands of unintended consequences. What possible unintended consequences could there be? We cannot ignore Canada’s euthanasia legislation, which has resulted in 1,373 people having euthanasia, with the reason for their untimely death given that they were lonely. Is that the hallmark of a civilised society? Some dismiss that as just a small crack in the dam, but small cracks in a dam often result in the whole dam giving way.

Another crack in the dam holding back the flood of unintended consequences would be the pressure put on clinicians to change the nature of their roles. A group of young palliative care doctors recently issued a statement in which they said:

“The overwhelming majority of palliative care doctors do not want the introduction of assisted dying and will not participate if it is brought in.”


I have personally worked with hospices for most of my professional life and have been involved in setting up two new ones, one in London and one in Uganda. No one needs to die in agony. Perhaps I could give an example from the many cases that I dealt with. I was consulted by a lady of 25 with a very painful cancer of the throat that was causing respiratory distress. I relieved all her symptoms with a large dose of intravenous heroin, which gave her immediate relief and several weeks of pain-free life quite without distress.

What guarantees are there that the conscience clause will function as it is supposed to? What guarantee is there that a healthcare worker will not be dismissed if he or she refuses to take any part in the procedure? What guarantee do we have to prevent a court rewriting the law at a later date, as occurred in similar conscience clauses such as the Doogan case, which resulted in an invaluable midwife losing her job? Parliament believes that it writes and passes laws, not the courts. We cannot clap and cheer the NHS on Monday and then on Tuesday tell doctors that we are going to ignore their views and tell them to end their lives of their patients. Studies in the Netherlands have shown that there is a significant incidence of emotional distress, both in doctors who receive a request for euthanasia and in those who perform the procedure.

We hear a lot about the right to commit suicide and autonomy, but let us be clear: the Bill is not about that. It is about the right to tell someone else—a doctor or a dispensing pharmacist—to end a patient’s life. That is not about autonomy. It turns us as doctors into takers of life, and that is not what we were called to do. “Care” and “kill” are not interchangeable words. We must ensure that the great dam that holds back the flood of unintended consequences is kept in good repair.