Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Winston and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Friday 7th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

If I may be anecdotal, as other noble Lords have been, my mother died of multiple sclerosis in her early sixties. There was a point at which I, as a young lawyer, realised that she no longer had, in my view, the capacity to make decisions. However, that was at a very late stage of her illness.

If the doctor is not satisfied because someone is a drug addict or has been an alcoholic or has, for instance, a high degree of anorexia as a young person and is saying that they want to die, those are points at which a doctor should be saying, “I’m not quite certain whether he or she has capacity”. That is why I suggest in my amendment that, unless they are satisfied, they should pass it on to someone who has the expertise, who would then, as a psychiatrist, look at whether the person actually has the capacity. Okay, we are talking about someone with three to six months to live but, if they do not have the capacity to make this incredibly important decision, they should not be allowed to do so. That is how I would see it, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit.

[Lord Winston]

I thank the noble and learned Baroness for giving way, but would she not agree that sometimes people who have capacity and say that they wish to die, as indeed my mother did, may then change their mind some months later, quite unexpectedly?

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

Yes, that seems to me to present one of the problems with the Bill.