Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Stone of Blackheath Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stone of Blackheath (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not like conflict; through this aversion, I am able to suggest win-win solutions that do not present themselves, normally, to those on opposite sides of an argument in the various other arenas in which I work. So, with your permission, I would like to spend two minutes on a suggestion that seems to me to allow, in this instance, personal choices for those like me who would want assisted dying, but also allows appropriate safeguards for those who do not wish to have that option.

I have never been frightened to die; it is the manner of my death that sometimes troubles me. Were I to be diagnosed with a terminal illness and be told that I had six months, or less, to live, I want the choice to control the manner and timing of my death. I would like to be given the choice to spend my last days with my family and friends to see them individually and collectively. Wanting to see me end my pain and relieve them and me of a burden is not a pressure, it is love. In the last minutes, having put myself, as I am able to with meditation, into a state of mindfulness, perhaps with some Bach in the background, being allowed, with medical assistance, to drift off at a time of my choosing would be a good death. I would not want to be sedated into obscurity for days on end. While I do not want that, I appreciate that others may.

The word “choice” is key here. If people with religious conviction or medical professionals opposed to assisted dying do not want this option, they could simply choose not to partake. For my part, I am reassured by the safeguards in the Bill that two doctors, plus other relevant care professionals, would assess me against the eligibility criteria and then, if I qualified, I could choose when and how I took the medication, if I took it at all.

This Bill should go through to the Committee stage to be looked at in detail, clause by clause. Those who, should they become terminally ill, do not want to have an assisted death could perhaps consider what amendments would reassure them. This would allow me and the majority of the British public who want to have a choice to have it. I am president of HealthTalkOnline, which was co-founded by the late Dr Ann McPherson, who was a saint. It helps inform patients living with more than 80 different illnesses and conditions about choices they can make to manage their lives. We have collected thousands of on-screen interviews with patients, conducted over 10 years across 10 countries, and posted them on our website. Ann was a GP and campaigner on issues including patient choice, covered by HealthTalkOnline, young people’s healthcare—she wrote The Diary of a Teenage Health Freak—and assisted dying. In the months leading up to her death from pancreatic cancer, Ann developed immunity to the effects of morphine, could barely move and was unable to eat solids. Ann’s wonderful daughter Beth, herself a GP, has written of her mother’s death:

“She expressed beyond doubt a wish to be put out of her misery. Yet there was nothing her doctors or loved ones could do to achieve her wishes without breaking the law. She received fantastic care ... but still she died a slow, painful and undignified death … Even when heavily sedated she was still not comfortable ... In those circumstances, to deny her the right to choose her own method and time of death was nothing short of cruel”.

Assisted dying will not cause people to die—their terminal illnesses are going to be what kills them—but a law which enables assisted dying would stop people living the end of their life in fear of a terrible death. I sympathise with people who, for whatever reason, choose to accept a death like this, but we must allow this Bill to progress so that other dying people can have the choice denied to my friend Dr Ann McPherson.