Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Parekh Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and think that it represents a step in the right direction. Like all Bills, it has its limitations, but I am convinced that these can be rectified within the framework of the Bill itself.

We have had many communications in relation to the Bill and many of them have been very critical of it. They indicate or suggest that the Bill would put pressure on people to give up their lives, that it would devalue human life, that it would create an unacceptable culture in which human life may not continue to be prized as highly as it is now, that there are alternative ways of dealing with human suffering than suicide, and so on. I am convinced that these objections can be met. Many of them are highly exaggerated and some of them involve looking at the whole subject through the prism of the Holocaust. I do not think that this Bill contains anything even remotely similar to the Holocaust.

The point I want to make—and in two and a half minutes that is all I can do—is a very simple one. When people talk about assisted dying, what are they talking about? They are not saying simply that dying should be made peaceful and suffering relieved. They are saying that death presents people with terror and a paralysing fear that one is going to disappear without a trace to God knows where. The death of death has been the preoccupation of human beings for a long time. I think in that context the question human beings have been asking is: “Is death the end of life or can death be turned into an event in life such that I can regulate it? If I plan my funeral can I not also plan my life and my death?” That is what it is about. It is not just about relieving pain. It is about asking oneself how one can regulate one’s process of dying and death.

In that kind of context, some of the assumptions the objectors make turn out to be irrelevant. If one looks at many of the letters that we have received, they say, for example, that life should not be ended because it is given by God. Many of us may not share that view. Others say that life is not given by human beings, that it is a natural process and it should be allowed to run its natural course. Why should it run its natural course? What happens to human beings? What about their agency and their freedom? For all those reasons, I think the assumption that life should be allowed to run on is invalid. If that is invalid, then the question arises: does my right to life include the right to be allowed to continue to live until life comes to a natural end? Is no attempt to be made to terminate, for example, the life of an individual who has been in a coma for months or years? I think there is some degree of sentimentalism involved. I suggest that we face this question honestly and objectively.