Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Rowe-Beddoe Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rowe-Beddoe (CB)]

My Lords, I wonder how many noble Lords have seen a poster on the wall of Westminster Underground Station commending legislation on assisted suicide. The poster bears words typical of the sleight of hand that some campaigning for this legislation have used. It says, “No more will die, but fewer will suffer”. Let us look at that statement for a moment. It is telling us that, if we agree to change the law and supply terminally ill people with lethal drugs so that they can end their lives, no more people will die as a result. That is self-evident, I suppose—but the same argument will surely be used to justify supplying lethal drugs to anyone else, because we are all going to die sooner or later. If we die by suicide, in the words of the poster, “No more will die”. It is a very dangerous statement.

A fundamental issue here is not how many people are going to die, for as many of us will die as are alive. That is clear. A fundamental issue is how many deaths by suicide we are prepared to assist. As a society, we go to considerable lengths to discourage and prevent suicide deaths, and rightly so. But the noble and learned Lord’s Bill, whatever its good intentions, stands this on its head. It is saying, in effect, that there are some people whose suicides we should actually assist. This difficulty cannot be explained away simply by redesignating assisted suicide as assisted dying; it is assisted suicide, and the face of the Bill should so reflect. The package should accurately describe the contents. I was pleased to hear as the debate went on how more Peers were using the word suicide rather than dying.

Although the Bill will not result in more deaths—it could not do that even if it wished—it will clearly increase the number of suicides. Oregon and Washington have already gone down that road, and we see a steadily up trend in deaths from assisted suicide, in Oregon’s case punctuated by occasional dips while in Washington the rise has been steep and relentless. The death rate from this source has more than tripled in four years. In 2012 there were 4,800 suicides in England and Wales. Taking Oregon’s current death rate from assisted suicide, referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, some 1,200 assisted suicide deaths can be expected here annually. Would these be additional suicides or would there be an overlap between the two? There is no hard evidence, obviously, but the number of suicide deaths to be expected from this Bill is significant enough, I suggest, to make us stop and think, and think again.

Let us therefore reflect on the deeply moving and most eloquent contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, and the vitally important nursing voice that was given us by the noble Lord, Lord MacKenzie of Culkein. Let us also remember the slippery slope mentioned by so many of your Lordships today, and which the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, more accurately renamed a slow-moving glacier. Let us recall the 1960s for a moment, which saw, inter alia, abortion legislation with all its safeguards. Today, you cannot find them; they are unrecognisable.

Let me say a final word, as a former deputy-chairman of the United Kingdom Statistics Authority—I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Moser is not in his place. I am aware that responses to polls are heavily dependent on the drafting of the questions.