Member

Amendment 88 in my name identifies another side of the question about voluntarily stopping eating and drinking. It is a somewhat complex point, but if noble Lords will bear with me, I think they will see that it does raise a number of serious questions about whether the safeguards are watertight. Voluntarily stopping eating and drinking, to be clear, is a separate issue from anorexia; anorexia is about not eating because of severe mental illness, whereas voluntarily stopping eating and drinking is a wholly deliberate decision to stop eating to hasten death. It is sometimes used as a way to become eligible for assisted suicide. Campaigners in the US promote it as a way to meet the eligibility criteria for terminal illness laws, like the one proposed here.