Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)

My Lords, I was not able to be here this morning; many noble Lords will know that I spend much of the mornings, most days, in a care home—very often two or three times a day. My husband is being brilliantly looked after in one of the most brilliant care homes. I should have got their names this morning and I could have given them all a shout-out, but I will simply say that Bridgeside Lodge is one of the most amazing places for looking after people. I must say to the noble Lord who moved this: I do not know whether he spends as much time in care homes as I do, but they do everything possible to keep their residents alive, well, well fed, replenished and amused, and to give them a quality of life that I think would be appreciated by everyone. But, of course, a lot of people in care homes are very ill, and some of them will be exactly the sort of people who may well need this. It is a bit condescending to think that all those people are vulnerable. Most people in the care home do not know what I do. They think that I am a doctor sometimes, because I am known as Dr Hayter—I have a PhD, but I am not a doctor. But one of them discovered the other day and grabbed hold of me and said, “You won’t let them stop it, will you?” This was a very senior medical physicist, a professor of physics at UCL. I will give a shout-out to him by name: Andrew Todd-Pokropek. These are people in care homes with capacity who know exactly what they are doing and are urging me and others in your Lordships’ House to get this Bill through. Some of them will know that they are exactly the sort of people who may well want to make use of it, although not now. The idea that the doctors looking after them, who are specialists in geriatric care, are somehow incompetent and that we should somehow need an extra layer of safeguards, is not living in the real world. So many people at the end of their lives will be in care homes, hospitals or hospices, and the idea that we would almost exclude them from the normal way of this Bill seems to me extraordinary. I hope that the noble Lord and others will think very carefully before saying that the exact cohort who are already ill should somehow be excluded from the normal trail of this Bill, because that would really be inappropriate. I urge him to withdraw his amendment and think very carefully before he pushes it again.