Lord Empey (UUP)

My Lords, to some extent this group of amendments goes to the core of a lot of the potential downsides of this Bill because, whether we like it or not, it is going to be a source of coercion. If we go back a few weeks to the issue that was drawn to our attention by the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, concerning the role and the purpose of the National Health Service, clearly, that would need to be changed because we are talking here about a mechanism for ending life rather than a service that does its best to preserve life. To anybody who has had to spend a lot of time around hospitals—be it as a consumer of, or a relative of a consumer of, NHS services; or if you have had any role in government, even at regional level, dealing with health services—it is inconceivable that looking at the balance sheet is not going to be an issue for a clinician and a trust. That is the nature of the beast if you are the finance director of a trust and it is over budget, as they nearly all are. In Canada, we see that some people are boasting about the money they have saved by providing assisted deaths. I do not believe for one moment that that factor can be airbrushed out of this equation as far as this legislation is concerned. While I do not necessarily accept or agree with every amendment in this group, it draws our attention to the principles at stake. It is in those circumstances that we have got into the habit in this debate of euphemisms. We call one thing by a certain name, but we know it actually means something else. In that regard, I draw the attention of the Committee to a debate on assisted dying that took place during the last iteration of this Bill, proposed by Lady Meacher, on 22 October 2021. This is the point I want to try to get across. Incidentally, that Bill had 13 clauses and 10 pages, compared to the 59 clauses and 51 pages we are looking at today. After Lady Meacher proposed her Bill at Second Reading, the noble Lord, Lord Winston, who I think is not in his place, spoke. He said that the Bill should refer to “euthanasia” rather than “assisted dying” as the Bill’s title did not represent what was intended. He went on to provide the Greek definition of what the word “euthanasia” means. These amendments go to the core of a couple of issues. The first is the rationale behind the National Health Service in the first place, and how it would be changed and turned if it is carrying out a service which is anything but—