Assisted Dying (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Lucy Allan and John Pugh

Friday 11th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I am unpersuaded by the promoter of the Bill. I agonise over this issue, because death and the manner of our death should trouble us all. I do not entirely trust my own instincts on this, so I took the trouble of going to my local hospice, Queenscourt hospice, to hear from staff there what their advice was on this Bill. After all, they see death on a regular basis—daily, hourly, weekly. They oppose this Bill strongly, emphatically and definitely, and endorse the stance I shall be taking.

The thing we must recognise is that we all have a terminal disease called life. None of us get out of here alive, and some of us are nearer the door than others. It is hard to imagine how we would feel if the exact timing or manner of our death became more clear. We must admit that there are, perhaps rarely, bad deaths and troubling deaths, although, as anyone in medical practice will tell us, they are decreasing and are far less in evidence than they used to be. But the weakness of the Bill is that it provides no real solutions to the issues that concern most people and it creates a raft of other problems we do not currently have.

It is a misnomer to refer to the Bill as proposing assisted dying. Dying is legally assisted in a range of ways every day—physically, emotionally and spiritually, and specifically by the hospice movement. The Bill is about assisted suicide. My intervention on the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) was not trivial, because the language is crucial here. If we are to understand the moral facts and look reality in the face, we have to call things by their proper name. I am reminded of the Americans in Vietnam referring to dead civilians as “collateral damage”. We are talking about assisted suicide, and there is no essential right for people to demand of the state that it assists them with their suicide. In fact, it is the policy of Governments to reduce the number of suicides, and normally it is our moral duty to discourage suicide.

[Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that anyone who has any knowledge of suicide sees it as a desperate and tragic act, committed by somebody in extreme emotional distress? It is usually committed alone, leaving families and loved ones devastated. The desire of a dying person for a peaceful death is so different from what I have just described, and anyone who has any knowledge of suicide would share that view. I believe the hon. Gentleman’s argument to be null and void on that point about suicide.

[John Pugh]

The default position is to discourage people from committing suicide, because suicide is most frequently the action of desperate people who are not getting the help they require. I believe that is acknowledged by the sponsors of the Bill, because they are suggesting that assisted suicide should take place only in special, carefully defined circumstances. Their Bill would put in place a series of provisions, which we have all read, to explain how we can be sure that these conditions actually apply. They are talking about this being a relatively limited exception and it is seemingly tightly drawn.

Let me make some huge, bold assumptions that I would not naturally make. Let me assume that these provisions, although not so far fully defined, would work perfectly, without abuse or uncertainty, and that this Bill is all that its sponsors want or are contriving. Therefore, this will not be like what happens in Switzerland, Belgium or Holland, and people will still have to go to Switzerland if they feel that their life is intolerable, unless they are likely to die anyway within six months. People may also still die undignified and unfortunate deaths, regardless of their prior wishes, if they cannot display current mental capacity. Those would be the consequences of the Bill. Paradoxically, the more likely it is that someone’s end would be undignified, the less likely it is that they will be judged to have the capacity to comply with the legislation. In reality, what this Bill permits is for a strictly limited number of people to have their suicides assisted, regardless of whether their anticipated end is painless or pain-free, dignified or not. That is what the proposals actually amount to.