"I will be equivalently concise. It is important to connect Amendment 657, which specifies that assisted dying
“is not to be regarded as medical treatment”,
with our debate on the broader conscience protections that the Bill needs to include. The reason is not just that regarding assisted dying as a …..." Lord Stevens of Birmingham - View Speech
"I thank the noble and learned Lord for giving away. One answer would be to simply put in the Bill that this is not a treatment, in which case all the other consequences would not arise. The question, just to clarify, is: is he saying that assisted dying is deemed …..." Lord Stevens of Birmingham - View Speech
"To clarify, I think Clause 31(8)(b) prevents a hospice as an employer restricting its employees from participating in assisted dying if they do it somewhere else. Is the noble and learned Lord saying that he is willing to change that?..." Lord Stevens of Birmingham - View Speech
"I think the noble and learned Lord has just made a very important point. To clarify: he is saying that Clause 31(8)(b) would not apply in hospices; in other words, as drafted, the Bill would prevent a hospice as an employer from restricting doctors who were working for that hospice …..." Lord Stevens of Birmingham - View Speech
"I think what follows from that is that the noble and learned Lord is accepting the position that hospices will not be in a position to restrict their employees from participating in assisted dying, if they are doing that somewhere other than in the hospice...." Lord Stevens of Birmingham - View Speech
"Perhaps the noble and learned Lord will clarify the answer he gave on Scotland. I think he is saying that even though the Scottish Parliament has decided that assisted dying should not be lawful in Scotland, a Scottish hospice could nevertheless not prevent its employees doing something that would be …..." Lord Stevens of Birmingham - View Speech
"Most of the amendments in this group relate to Wales, but some of them also relate to Scotland. Notwithstanding the noble Lord’s sensation of Groundhog Day, there has been an important development since we met last Friday, which is that the Scottish Parliament, by a decisive majority of 69 to …..." Lord Stevens of Birmingham - View Speech
"The noble Baroness brings me neatly on to the second point I was going to make, which is that the lack of safeguards in Scotland precisely demonstrates the constitutional and practical difficulty of trying to legislate in Scotland while a number of those key safeguards are reserved matters to Westminster. …..." Lord Stevens of Birmingham - View Speech