Member

My final point is about the general point of insurance. I did not labour it in my initial remarks, because I plan to cover it later when we get to the certification piece. I want to flag it, however, because the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, referenced his Amendment 719 which is co-signed by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. I do not think that is the right way of approaching it, because the danger is that people might start to be not truthful and not straightforward about somebody’s cause of death. If you have an underlying terminal illness but you choose to have assisted suicide, it is the assisted suicide that is your cause of death. It is important to maintain that as the cause of death, for the reason that was set out by the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, and other noble Lords: the ability to make an accurate diagnosis is very unclear, particularly in the window where you would qualify under this legislation. It is, therefore, dangerous to start putting inaccurate causes of death on death certificates for policy reasons. I do not think it is the right solution. The better solution would be to recognise on the death certificate that someone had had an assisted suicide, but to make it clear where there was an illness that was covered under the Fatal Accidents Act and that the chain of causation was not broken. I shall reflect on that further, but I think that would be a better solution.