Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)

My Lords, I join with the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, and my noble friend Lord Katz in thanking the staff for staying for so long this evening. I also congratulate the Committee on what was a very high-quality debate at the very end. We did incredibly well to have such a high-quality debate in the last hour or two at 6 pm. Thirdly, this is not in any way to denigrate the debate; it has been threaded through the whole of these Committee stages. Indeed, we had a quite similar debate last week, which the noble Lord, Lord Harper, referred to. I will make three specific points about the amendment. There is a group of amendments, but at the heart of the lead amendment is that you should be entitled to an assisted death only where your motivation is “because of the terminal illness”. My noble friend Lord Katz adverted to this, but it is almost impossible to see that that has any real meaning in the context of a person who is, in fact, terminally ill. If any of us became terminally ill, it is almost impossible to imagine that the terminal illness would not have an effect on any decision that we would take, in particular a decision on whether we wanted an assisted death. The noble Lord, Lord Moore, touched on this. I do not know that I would put it in exactly the same way, but, to “Why do you want an assisted death?” they might say, “Well, obviously, I am terminally ill, and I have other factors as well”. So I am not sure that the amendment has any real impact. Secondly, there is an underlying issue. I ask the noble Lord to let me finish—then, by all means, he can come at me at the end. Secondly, there is an underlying issue. The noble Baroness, Lady Cass, said that perhaps breathlessness and pain should be the only justification, because that is all that doctors could properly measure. Again, that indicates a significant disagreement between us about the principle of the Bill. I do not shy away from saying that the principle of the Bill is that, once you are diagnosed with a terminal illness, then, subject to the stringent safeguards being satisfied, you should have the option of deciding for yourself how you die. If you go down the route that my noble friend Lady Berger, in her amendment, wishes us to go down, this, in my respectful submission, would be an impossible task.