Lord Harper (Con)

Having listened to my noble friend Lord Moylan respond to what the Minister said, I confess to being a little confused. The Minister seemed to be saying, in her comments about some of the amendments in this group, that the problem with having a list of conditions is that you could quite often have a terminal diagnosis as the result of a group of conditions, circumstances or illnesses. In my reading, the Bill does not say that. The Bill says: “For the purposes of this Act, a person is terminally ill if … (a) the person has an inevitably progressive illness or disease”— not lots of them; one— “which cannot be reversed by treatment, and … (b) the person’s death in consequence of that illness or disease can reasonably be expected within six months”. I carefully read the amendment, which talks about a specified list of conditions. Incidentally, coming back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Markham, twice as many members of the public support that approach than a terminal illness. The Minister’s answer to my noble friend Lord Moylan seemed to be disagreeing with what is actually in the Bill, so I am now more confused than I was before she got to her feet. Can she clear that up?