Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)

That is disappointing, because the Committee, I think, would greatly welcome recognition from the noble and learned Lord that some of the things that we are trying to put down are seeking to improve the Bill. Perhaps we could work further on them. On poverty, unfortunately, the SR1 does not happen automatically; there is no automatic trigger. The point of that amendment was that one wants to make sure that a person who may be in real financial straits and who has never known that there may be benefits for which they are eligible has someone ask them, “Are you finding things particularly difficult? Do you know that there are some benefits that might help improve your quality of life?”, irrespective of whether they do or do not wish to proceed. It is not to stop them; it is to make sure that they can access what they need. The Ontario coroner’s review reports that there are people who, because of financial stringencies, have sought an assisted death—and been approved for one—but then dropped that request when there has been fundraising and donors have come forward to bail them out of their difficult circumstances. Saying that there are no such cases is really difficult. As I understand it, it is our duty to society to try to narrow the gaps on poverty and not just accept that, if you are in poverty, you may want to take this decision. There were some expressions of slight horror, I think, at the way in which the noble and learned Lord expressed his dismissal of poverty. There is one final thing that I want to clarify; I feel, professionally, that I must. The noble Lord, Lord Markham, has referred on a few occasions to his mother being “helped on her way”. I am sure that the doctor was not giving the noble Lord’s mother a massive and lethal overdose of drugs, which is what would happen under this Bill. They may well have been giving her a little more analgesia or some other medication in order for her to be comfortable. That is routine clinical practice when people are dying. At that point, we as clinicians will say to the family, “Look, they don’t seem comfortable and they really are near the end”, and we will give a bit more analgesia—possibly an anxiolytic as well—which will allow the person to gently let go of life and die. We know that pain is a potent driver of respiration and that people cannot let go of life until they are comfortable and out of pain. Sometimes it is a small dose; sometimes it is a larger dose. That is not what we are talking about in this Bill. It is important that the people out there who are listening to this debate do not think that we are going around shortening life by giving people the dose of analgesia or the anxiolytic that they need at the end of their life. I am not going to go through all the other comments that have been made because of time—this has been a long and very informed debate—except to request that the equality impact assessment be looked at again. Although it may not be the opinion of the noble and learned Lord that it is inadequate, we have heard substantially from people who know equality impact assessments well that they are unhappy with it. I do not see the harm in it being revisited and retabled for us so that we can have an up-to-date version. Perhaps the same should go for the impact assessment, since there are concerns that the numbers in it may be inappropriately low. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.