Lord Truscott (Non-Afl)

My Lords, I am not a medical expert nor a lawyer, but I am a trained historian, so I can say that the international precedents for assisted dying or assisted suicide are not good. When William Beveridge set out his report on the future welfare state, the idea was to support life from the cradle to the grave. And when Nye Bevan established the NHS in 1948, it was with the goal to preserve life and improve health outcomes for all. Assisted dying simply had no place in the founding principles of the NHS. For 2,500 years, the Hippocratic oath has been a foundational code of medical ethics, and the principle “do no harm” has been a central tenet for all those years. Many doctors and medical professionals are uneasy about crossing that line, and so they should be, as the trust between doctor and patient is at the core of the patient-doctor relationship. The societal impact of changing the relationship between doctor and patient will be profound and may well lead to fear and mistrust, as noble Lords have heard. The person before you may not be there simply to care for you but to actively end your life. Dying a painful death—which affects about 5% of people but is not a ground for assisted death under the Bill—underlines the key point that more resources should be put into our Cinderella palliative care and research services. While one in 20 may die a painful death, terrible as that is, in the Netherlands, where assisted dying is well established, one in four deaths are now assisted suicides, showing that a painful end is not the main reason for people to seek a state-enabled suicide. Noble Lords with legal training will be aware that, despite the Government’s statement that the Bill is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 2 of the ECHR protects the right to life. It does so by placing two obligations on the state: the positive obligation to protect the right to life by law and the negative obligation not to intentionally deprive the individual of life. My second major concern about the Bill is the issue of coercion. Despite it being mentioned throughout the Bill and being made a criminal offence under Clause 34, it is almost impossible to prove and police, as noble Lords have indicated. According to the Home Office’s own figures, 50% of coercive cases are dropped through lack of evidence and only 5% result in conviction. Internationally, as research from the excellent House of Lords Library has shown, known and proven cases of coercion in jurisdictions which allow assisted dying are few and far between. Subtle coercion is well-nigh impossible to prove. In any event, the most common reason for people choosing assisted dying elsewhere is the fear of becoming a burden to others, a form of self-coercion, not the fear of a painful death. At a time when the UK is about to see the biggest transfer of wealth in its history, with £7 trillion moving between generations by 2050, primarily from baby boomers, this is not the time to pass this assisted suicide Bill. Nor should we as a society normalise suicide, as has been mentioned. Studies show that assisted suicide laws have led to a substantial increase in total suicide rates, including unassisted suicides, and the most affected group by this legislative change is women. The Bill as drafted has simply too many flaws, in my view, and unintended consequences, as your Lordships have heard at length. It should be rejected.