Lord Harper (Con)

My Lords, I will speak briefly to put on the record one useful piece of information, which is very relevant to the debates that we have had. Somebody previously referred to the welcome cancer plan that the Government published, and I thought it worth sharing with the Committee that there was an important and relevant piece of information in the plan that your Lordships might wish to be aware of. I think the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, referred to the Government’s plan for palliative care. When we spoke about it, I think just last week, the expectation was that that plan would be published this autumn—I hope the Minister can confirm that I have got that right. The cancer plan makes it clear: “Next year, we will publish a Modern Service Framework on Palliative and End of Life Care to address these challenges”. Without being explicit about it, the palliative care plan has now slipped into 2027, with no indication of when in 2027. Given my experience of these things, it could easily be the end of 2027. We are being asked to consider the Bill when the Government are not even going to publish their palliative care plan until some time next year—and it has already slipped twice in a few months. I draw two lessons from that. First, if we do not have high-quality, universally available palliative care then we are not giving people a genuine choice. As my noble friend Lord Shinkwin said, expectations in society will push people inevitably towards assisted suicide, whether they really want it or not. The second thing that says to me is that palliative care is not really a priority for the Government. If you cannot even produce the plan to improve palliative care, which was originally going to happen this year, until some time next year, with no specific date attached to it, heaven knows what your priority will be when actually delivering the services that people require. My sense is that, if the plan will not come out until next year, we will not see improved services even in this Parliament. In that case, there is no meaningful choice. On that basis, we should not proceed with this Bill.