Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)

My Lords, I shall speak to two amendments in this group, Amendments 701 and 703. The noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, raised some very valid points in the earlier group on local variation. The method that my noble friend Lady Finlay has raised seeks to address some of the issues that many of us have with the Bill, in terms of having a centralised process. We need to find a way to avoid doctor shopping. The reality is that medical issues, legal issues, social issues and economic issues are not separate; they all intertwine with each other. What my noble friend has suggested is a clearer process and fills some of the gap, because there are problems with reporting in the Bill as it stands and there needs to be strict data collection. The commissioner cannot report what the commissioner does not know, and Parliament can regulate only through reporting requirements. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, spoke about palliative care professionals. They are one of the groups that have consistently raised concerns about this Bill. We had an interesting debate about whether we should have a service separate from the NHS. It would be my preference to have something unconnected. That does not mean that doctors caring for patients cannot communicate and still provide care for somebody who wants to enter this process, but we have to think about the possibility that there may be some doctors who, for various conscientious reasons of objection, may not want to have this conversation with a doctor. My amendments are looking at clinical trials for the drugs and the regulation of approved substances. I would be interested in the noble and learned Lord’s opinion. I recognise why a clinical trial for these drugs would be very difficult, but there may be cases where people who want to request assisted suicide would be willing to have an enhanced level of study to understand how these drugs work on a patient. It is important that we understand what drugs are going to be used. In different jurisdictions around the world, there are very different combinations, often referred to as a cocktail. In effect, the patient is being given a massive overdose, because we do not know enough about how these drugs work.