Assisted Dying

Lord Turnbull Excerpts

Monday 13th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Turnbull]

My Lords, despite the advances made by the DPP’s guidance, the new status quo still leaves the dying and their families with three unsatisfactory choices: to soldier on with their suffering; to accept assistance but still with risk of prosecution; or to pay up and travel to Switzerland to die away from home and family.

Parliament should no longer hide behind an official, however enlightened. Any change will face opposition, not just from faith groups and the palliative care sector but also from what might be called the slippery-slopers, who have already concluded that a satisfactory framework can never be found. We should not accept this defeatism; the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, was denied a Second Reading, thereby preventing the issues from being explored. With the expertise that we have in this House in medicine, ethics and the law, a robust framework of safeguards must surely be attainable.