Member

If we are talking about informed consent and approval of lethal drugs, we need to know: will there be a commitment to undertake proper research to ensure that patients have accurate information about how the lethal drugs that they want will work, what side effects may occur and what they must do to self-administer? If they opt not for oral ingestion but to use some device, as has been suggested, we also need to know that the work has been done to make sure that the device will maintain deep sedation while they die, rather than risk them reawakening. Will the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, state the drugs processes in more detail in the Bill? I am sure that he will say that the types of drugs used are bound to change over time, as they will, but that does mean that we should not state in the Bill what may happen.