Baroness Lawlor (Con)

My Lords, I will speak in favour of my Amendment 110B, which would disapply Section 3(2) of the Mental Capacity Act, which, in effect, allows a person to be regarded as able to make a decision for himself “if he is able to understand an explanation of it given to him in a way that is appropriate to his circumstances (using simple language, visual aids or any other means)”. The amendment would also disapply—as would Amendment 107 from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt—Section 3(3) of that Act, which allows for the fact that “a person … able to retain the information relevant to a decision for a short period only does not prevent him from being regarded as able to make the decision”, as was so ably addressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Berger. I will focus on what is additional in my amendment. In seeking to disapply Section 3(2), I bear in mind the aims of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, which is designed to empower people to make decisions about their life, including their healthcare and treatment. I stress that there is a world of difference between deciding against a course of continued, often physically difficult and stressful, treatment and deliberately deciding to take a lethal substance to commit certain and sometimes brutal suicide. To deliberately choose to inflict self-harm and suicide is a very serious matter. It requires a person to know and understand the difficult and complex components of such a decision; the physiological effects of taking a lethal substance; the consequences of death or, as we have heard, the potential survival with excruciating pain; the finality of such an irreversible decision; the questions that it raises for your family and friends; the implications for your children, grandchildren and siblings; the example and precedent that it sets for young and old alike; and the moral consequences for our society as a whole. Indeed, one consequence will be to chip away the foundations of the support that we rightly give to suicide prevention and people who are suffering from a terminal illness who want palliative support. These are complex questions, as is each of the implications raised. Giving a downsized simplistic version of the information that is judged to be appropriate to someone’s circumstances might simplify the information to the extent that he may indeed appear to understand the information because he is given an explanation of it in a way that is appropriate to his circumstances. But that should in no way be taken to mean that the person is judged to have capacity for so momentous a decision as taking their own life.