Baroness Andrews (Lab)

My Lords, this is a very difficult day for this House. It is a profound day, and that has been reflected in extraordinary speeches, but it is a devastating day for people who invested hope that this House would follow the democratic lead of the other place and improve and vote for this Bill. I am grateful to follow the noble Lord, Lord Moore of Etchingham, because there is one thing on which I want to take issue with him. On 27 March, he said there was “a big moral gulf” in this House between the two sides. I could not disagree more. We disagree on many aspects of the Bill—for example, I disagree with my dear friend, the noble Lord, Lord Deben, that it should have been a government Bill; I think there would have been an outcry if it had been a government Bill—but we are not divided on morality. We find different ways to approach grace. I am particularly glad that we have the most reverend Primate with us today and have listened to her words of reconciliation, because that is what this House has always been about. Noble Lords will forgive me for a bit of history, but I was the responding Minister on the first Bill on assisted dying in this House in 2005. I remember very well what the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said—several people who are still in this House were there. It was the first time we had ever debated it. What marked that debate in 2005 was a generosity of spirit and a gentleness of approach that took every single view of this House into respectful consideration. That was true of the two other Bills we had in 2014 and 2016. We have never had a debate in this House that has been contested, where views have been challenged for the reasons that they have been held. This Bill has been different in so many ways. The tone of our debate has been pretty awful at times. We have not paid the respect we should have paid to what we have heard—and we have all learned a lot. I also disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Deben, because I think this Bill is the best Bill we have ever had, not least because it has embedded legislation that has become tried and tested over the years—the Mental Capacity Act, for example. We have listened to the patient voice. We know more about patient safety than we did 20 years ago. We have the experience of many other countries. When I stood at that Dispatch Box, hardly any of the medical colleges supported that Bill. They were sceptical and some were hostile. Public opinion was very ambivalent; it has moved. Medical opinion has moved to a position of more neutrality.