Contribution
My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, I was a Member of the House when we looked at the original Bill introduced by the late Lord Joffe in 2004. I have also been Leader of this House and, over the decades, I have never experienced quite the extraordinary exploitation of the procedures—one could almost say the sometimes rather relaxed procedures—of this House as on this Bill. Today, for example, I thought we were perhaps going to start again dealing with the House of Lords Act 1999. I have been through all the convolutions of Brexit, but never—I repeat “never” and, indeed, “exploitation”—have I seen the relaxed procedures of this House so negatively exploited. That is something we need to return to, and I echo the concluding remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Cashman.
I have a very big concern about the content and quality of some of the topics of the hundreds of amendments we have seen. It is about the way in which, as many noble Lords have referred to today, they have ignored the concerns of the people for whom the Bill is directed: terminally ill adults. My noble friend Lady Berger asked for examples of the way in which our lack of compassion had been demonstrated. In the interests of time, I will not go into any in particular, but I refer her to the 27 February discussion in Committee, when we spoke for some hours about the composition and the structures of the commission assessing people’s ability to take assisted dying. There was enormous emphasis on the activities of the commissioners and their convenience, et cetera, but scant regard was paid to the concerns of those people for whom this service was being offered: those who might be frail, bed-bound or concerned about their personal and emotional situation. We dealt almost exclusively with bureaucracy and administration. That, frankly, has been the tone of so much of the debate.
I am aware of the Chief Whip sitting there with his stopwatch, but I want to refer briefly to the other major and concerning omission from our discussions, which is the lack of any sort of detailed discussion about the international evidence and experience of assisted dying. I remind the House that more than 30 jurisdictions in the world have now satisfactorily introduced ways to give their citizens the choice of an assisted death. These places include our close neighbours in western Europe, major Commonwealth countries and American states, as well as the capital city of Washington and the District of Columbia. Some of those jurisdictions have voted very recently to establish new systems. In the western state of Oregon—which the Select Committee on which the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and I sat some years ago visited to establish the realities of the situation—assisted dying has been in place for nearly 30 years. I have no doubt that there have been some difficulties and some mistakes as these different places have developed their own plans—there always are when major changes in social policy are introduced on anything—but no assisted dying laws have been repealed. None of them has been challenged at that level. There has been no collapse in palliative care. Indeed, with proper choice at the end of life, palliative care has often been improved. That is certainly the case in the state of Oregon. To disregard or distort international experience, as the debates in this House have done recently, or to suggest that only the Westminster Parliament can produce a legally proper system is, in my view, a dangerous form of arrogance.
In conclusion, this is the fourth assisted dying Bill that I have taken part in and there have always been profound differences of principle, but in none of the others was there the atmosphere of unpleasant tension and antagonism at a personal level that has characterised recent sessions. Indeed, 10 years ago, when my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer introduced his similar Bill, the Times reported our proceedings extolling the serious, calm authority of the debate and congratulating the House of Lords on its deliberations as a demonstration of Parliament at its best.
I very much regret that we have today to take note that the current proceedings have greatly damaged the reputation of the House. I can only hope, like other noble Lords, that when a future assisted dying Bill returns—and it most certainly will—the issue of choice for the terminal ill will be both constitutionally and compassionately considered by this unelected second Chamber.