Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Viscount Craigavon Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Craigavon (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly support the Bill before us, as I had its predecessors, and, as has been said, public support on this is somewhat more than 80% in favour of such a measure, even among faith communities. It goes without saying that one supports palliative care and its extension, but within its limitations. The many repetitive emails against this Bill—the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, has just referred to the “tsunami” of emails—that some of us have received appear to be embedded in assumptions that are simply not tenable. One is not against personal email lobbying, but if it is done on such a circular and commercial scale, with clear copying and pasting of the same wording and references, that would seem to be counterproductive, as well as slightly devaluing the case. I hope that we can be spared that in Committee and in the later stages of the Bill. One learns that simple repetition and copying does not make truth.

One false background presumption is that improving palliative care can somehow sweep up all the difficult cases and instances that might emerge and that, if we tried hard enough and provided enough increased funding, all such problems would be resolved. That is a get-out and does not and cannot deal with some really distressing and protracted cruel deaths that are presently inevitable, stark examples of which have been given today. For some, that goes over also to mental anguish and dignity, on which some of us are entitled to place importance.

We are trying to leave behind any paternalistic past where some doctors who knew better than you did what was good for you would patronise you. I believe that the Bill can offer genuine choice; those who deny choice or claim that it can never be genuine are espousing a form of fatalism that we must simply suffer until nature’s end, regardless of the distress or pain which, unfortunately, some claim, particularly religions, is elevating and good for us. I hope that that is what we are leaving behind, as have many millions in the rest of the world—maybe 200 million—who have changed their laws, such as the states in Australia and the USA and in the whole of Canada, New Zealand and other civilised nations. That is the direction that we will and should inevitably be following, and I hope that we will all shortly be able to join the right side of history.