Member

I cannot remember which professor it was who spoke to the Commons Select Committee about this, but they suggested that, as it stands in clinical practice, if somebody suddenly said in hospital or to their GP, “I’m not going to take my insulin any more”, people would immediately try to understand why they were trying to accelerate their death in this way. In this Bill, the standard Mental Capacity Act 2005 is the test—simply whether they are in the right mind to make this decision. People might disagree with that decision, but there is no further attempt to understand it, as would happen in regular clinical practice.