Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that intervention, because expertise is not ruled out. It is the way that the commission functions that is important—that that does not allow skewing and silencing. What I was going on to point out is that one of the commissioners on the Belgian commission resigned because they felt that they were being silenced whenever they raised issues about problems in reporting, that they were unable to continue to provide ethically high standards and that their own expertise was not being respected. I would be grateful if I could just continue for a moment, because I am not trying to filibuster. I would like to make that absolutely clear, following the extremely unpleasant, vicious comments that have been made about me, both in the media and in very aggressive emails that have been sent to me. If I may continue, I would be most grateful. I am simply asking whether a commissioner with a financial interest in an assisted death business, whatever that is and however it is commissioned, is actually truly independent. There seems to be no requirement for the appointment to be scrutinised by a committee of Parliament or for a register of interest to be published. I am sure that that would happen, because that is a normal course of action in this country, but the equality impact assessment seems silent on this. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, referred to the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 in relation to appointments, so I will not repeat that, but this commissioner’s post appears, as written, to be in the gift of the Prime Minister, and there does not appear to be verified impartiality in terms of the exercise of the functions, given the great importance of this role and the problem that if it does not work well then public confidence in the system will be lost.