Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)

My Lords, the amendments in this group seek to establish a higher bar for reaching eligibility by requiring that informed consent be demonstrably shown. There are also amendments in the group tabled by my noble friend Lady Lawlor that seek to ensure that the patient has been made to understand the physiological effects of the drugs used. I will deal with each of these points, but fairly briefly, given the time. Demonstrable consent is primarily a question of workability. It is the view of everybody, so far as I have heard, that a person must consent to receive assistance. The Bill allows assistance only if the person themselves takes the final step, which is in itself an important safeguard. But these amendments pose important questions for the Minister. What work have the Government done to date on establishing a process to ensure that all those receiving assistance under the provisions of the Bill will in fact have consented? What checks will there be on the service providing this assistance? How will Ministers and others respond to complaints or allegations of malpractice in relation to a person’s consent? All those questions touch on the key point: the practical day-to-day implementation of the Bill and ensuring that its provisions are complied with. Most of the speeches in this group have dealt with the second issue—the amendment from my noble friend Lady Lawlor. It stands to reason that a person in receipt of assistance should be given all the information they need to ensure that they are making an informed choice. Certainly, that would seem to include the physiological effects of the drug they will take. When patients receive any drug or have any medical treatment, a doctor will explain the proper dosage and how it will affect them, and they will also advise on potential side effects. One would assume that the same level of explanation would be provided by doctors in this case, but I am interested to hear whether the Minister and/or the noble and learned Lord the promoter of the Bill will confirm that in due course. My noble friend Lady Berridge threw me something of a curveball when she asked what the duty on a doctor is. That is a detailed question and, given the time, I will not give a very detailed answer, but it is notable that—this is an important point because it shows how things have changed over the years—if you go back, quite a long way, to the Hippocratic Corpus in the fourth to fifth centuries BCE, it advises physicians to reveal nothing to the patient of their present or, indeed, future condition, “for many patients through this cause have taken a turn for the worse”.