Lord Harper (Con)

I am grateful for that intervention; it is a very good point. The importance of it is emphasised by one of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Birt, made in his opening remarks: that many people do not seek to make decisions on these matters until quite late in the process. If you were facing considerable pain as a result of your medical situation, not only might you not think about assisted suicide early on but, if it not available in your area, you may not have sought high-quality palliative care early enough. Again, that needs to be available at pace, as well as the choice of assisted suicide. The second reason why I think these amendments are important is this. I do not know whether I am the only noble Lord to have thought this, but it does seem odd that what we are, or the noble Lord is, proposing here is a personalised service, I presume funded by the taxpayer—the noble Lord nods his assent—which would support somebody in a very personal, individual way to seek one particular outcome. But as far as I am aware, unless something happens in the National Health Service that I am not aware of, we do not offer a personal navigator to help somebody with their journey through seeking medical treatment that will actually help them live and live well, and it just seems to me a slightly odd sense of priorities that we are proposing to put in place a service that is only available to help somebody die.