Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)

My Lords, first, I asked noble Lords to wait until I had completed. Secondly, I apologise to the House if I cough and my voice gives up in the process—so be it. Thirdly, if these amendments were all written into the Bill, which is what I am trying to do, the noble and learned Lord would see that the eligibility criteria would remain as he has put them in the Bill. Let me summarise. A person wanting to seek an assisted death would be signposted to the panel for their area. The panel would give them accurate information and, if they wished to apply, they would be helped to ask for their clinical record to be available to the panel to assess all information. Normally, two panel members would meet the person, without pressure, listen to them, assess capacity and, if they agreed, advise the panel, who would decide whether to issue a licence to end life. The navigator would then make sure that lethal drugs were available to the person at the time of the person’s choosing, collect them from the designated pharmacy and deliver and oversee the whole process, documenting it carefully. If the person changed their mind, unused drugs would be removed by the navigator. If the person died, the navigator would verify, not certify, death and ensure that all who needed to be informed were duly and sensitively informed of the death. But throughout the initial information-seeking and assessment, the period of reflection and the assisted death being arranged, the person’s health and social care would continue in parallel—it would not be diverted away from its core role in care. Let me illustrate. Thirty-six years ago, a GP referred a distraught young man whose prognosis, as estimated by the GP, a surgeon and an oncologist, was about three months. The GP said, “He is the most clear-cut case for euthanasia I have ever seen”. The man was in total pain and desperate for lethal drugs, and, with his youngest child only six weeks old, his care was challenging, particularly in the first fortnight. Eleven years after that visit, and after many periods of complex care, David phoned me. His beautiful young wife was dying of advanced cancer. By then a wheelchair user, he and his three children were with her in the hospice as she died.