Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)

The noble Lord has got that wrong. I was saying that, for example, the medical profession could easily recognise that HIV/AIDS is fatal. It would have recognised that at a particular time and that would be a medical diagnosis. The effect of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, would be that you cannot rely on HIV/AIDS as a basis for saying that you have an inevitably progressive illness or disease that cannot be reversed by treatment, which was the position for a long time, unless the state has put it into a list of regulations. I am saying that it should be the doctor’s determination of whether theTo go on with the questions that have been raised, the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, asked what the paragraph under Clause 2(4) means. It means that the fact that you have a disability or a mental disorder that cannot justify a terminal illness does not mean that you cannot nevertheless qualify because you do have a terminal illness that satisfies the requirement of Clause 2(1). On the question of congenital disorder and Amendment 105, if the position is that you are suffering from a progressive illness or disease that is likely to end your life within six months, I think that you should be entitled to an assisted death. My noble friend Lord Shamash referred to such a condition in relation to his cousin; I am not in favour of excluding a particular category in relation to that. Everybody in the House has enormous respect for the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, and I completely accept the proposition that those of us who are not disabled have to listen very carefully to those who are. It is true that, in the other place, Marie Tidball, who is a Member of Parliament, supported the Bill and was in particular influenced by the fact that amendments were made to it that ensured that a disability group would monitor the performance of the Bill. However, I completely accept the proposition that the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, makes that we have to listen as hard as we can because it is not part of our experience. That proposition applies not just to this Bill but to a whole range of Bills. On two further points, first, a number of noble Lords made the point about developments in medicine. It is true that medicine develops all the time; one needs to keep up with those developments and the doctors making the diagnosis have to have those in mind. But the fact that there are going to be developments in the future does not prevent the position from being that at a particular moment in time—HIV/AIDS is the obvious example—because those developments have not yet occurred, those diseases are going to be fatal. The fact that something may occur in the future does not prevent the judgment from having to be made. Finally, on Amendments 97 and 98, proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, for understandable reasons she proposes effectively a shift in the wording to be much more respectful of disabled people. I can see no reason why we should not make that amendment.