Contribution
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 44, so ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, and I thank her for tabling it. Today is an especially important day for me, because it marks exactly 30 years to the day since I had emergency neurosurgery in a desperate attempt to save my life following a terminal diagnosis of only six months. My neurosurgeon could not give me odds on survival, never mind recovery, so the outcome was definitely not a done deal.
The need for this amendment underlines why it is so important that no one assumes that this appallingly drafted Bill is a done deal, either. We keep being told by the Bill’s supporters that it is about people who are already dying. If that is the case, I assume that the amendment will meet with their enthusiastic support, given that it would make incontrovertibly clear in the Bill that a person’s motivation for seeking an assisted death is their terminal illness. Otherwise, as last Friday’s debate showed, we could be in the extremely dangerous situation of other motivations coming into play, such as feeling like a burden; living with a mental disorder, including depression; or living with a disability other than the terminal illness.
In her powerful speech of 12 December, the noble Baroness, Lady Gray of Tottenham, said:
“We do not live in a society where everyone is equally able to make decisions without being constrained by external influences, whether that is in the form of other people or simply follows from one’s own life circumstances”.—[Official Report, 12/12/25; col. 495.]
How right she was.
There was a time when I imagine the noble and learned Lord would have agreed with her, given that own his commission ruled that it was essential to ensure that a decision was not influenced by
“self-imposed pressures that could result from”
people
“feeling themselves to be a burden”.
It is worth asking the question of what has changed in that time. Well, the pressures on the NHS have increased, access to GPs has massively decreased and house prices have rocketed, making owning a home a distant dream for many young people and, thus, making the inheritance from granny even more valuable. Meanwhile, social care costs have gone through the roof, thereby devaluing granny’s legacy—and, of course, as your Lordships’ House highlighted only two days ago, the insidious impact of social media has had an alarming effect on society and, many would argue, on some of its values.
So will the noble and learned Lord agree in his closing remarks that, taken together, these factors only serve to make the case even more compelling for there being a specific requirement in the Bill that the sole reason people can seek an assisted death is their terminal illness? If he does not, let him say so. To his credit, in 2012, he was clear about the danger of someone feeling a burden, and I admire his honesty and clarity then. Will he take the opportunity today to be equally honest and clear and confirm that, in changing his mind, he has moved from viewing burden as a pressure to be safeguarded against to instead viewing it as a legitimate basis of a rational choice to be facilitated? Let me say to the noble and learned Lord that I may not agree with him, but I would applaud his determination to address the question directly.
The question posed by this amendment cannot be dodged, because it goes to the heart of the Bill. Indeed, failing to accept the amendment makes sense only if there is an ulterior motive in rejecting it. I would be grateful if the noble and learned Lord, when he comes to reply, could give the Committee a categorical assurance that there is absolutely no intention by the drafters and promoters of the Bill that anyone should ever be able to cite the Bill as the grounds for saying at a later stage, “On what logical basis would we deny that same choice—assisted dying—to people with depression or those who are chronically ill, for example?” Indeed, would the noble and learned Lord not agree that accepting this amendment would actually help him, at least in part, to dispel the fears of those who suspect that, if autonomy rather than motivation is the metric that really matters here, the Bill would contain the seeds for removing barriers to a Canada-style assisted-dying free-for-all in years to come? After all, if motivation is irrelevant, how could it not?
In conclusion, the noble Baroness does the Committee a great service, because her simple amendment hits the nail on the head. It also indirectly exposes a battle that is under way for the soul of her great party. Its values, not least its commitment to disability rights, for which I have so much respect, cannot simply be suspended for the duration of this Bill. There are hard choices to be made here and now. I hope very much that the noble and learned Lord will recognise the significance of this amendment and choose to accept it.