Contribution
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Harper; when he was a Minister, we had many interesting discussions, although they were possibly not as collaborative as those with my noble friend Lady Campbell. This group talks about motivation and I am sure we are going to be told that these people have terminal conditions and they are dying anyway. We have to understand, however, that there may be a number of other motivations that are part of this.
The noble Lord, Lord Harper, as a non-disabled person—I assume—highlighted many of the reasons why disabled people are very worried about this Bill. We look at what happens in other jurisdictions around the world, including Oregon, Washington, Belgium and Holland. Australia is one of the newer jurisdictions, having recently changed the law, and it has surprisingly high figures on the number of people who request assisted dying because they feel they are a burden. In western Australia in 2022-23, 35.3% of people who requested an assisted death did so because they felt they were a burden. In 2023-24, that figure was 32.2%.
We have to understand that, unfortunately, in the UK currently, the health and social care system is broken for many people. The fact that a person might not be able to get good social care, a job or access to work could add layer on layer to a reason why someone might request an assisted death.
I am told that it is not for disabled people, and I am not suggesting we draw up a list of every single condition of people who would qualify or not. I have spoken many times in the Chamber about how people assumed I would want to change the law because someone with my condition would probably rather be dead than alive. My condition is spina bifida. I assume that I would not be eligible for an assisted death because of that, but, if I got a pressure sore, I would very easily and quickly fit it into that six-month diagnosis.
I have lost many friends through pressure sores, one of whom I was in school with. She also had spina bifida and had a pressure sore on the base of her spine, and one problem with it developing so rapidly was that she did not feel it: she was paralysed and did not realise she had it. It was discovered by the smell. As soon as it was discovered, a number of people around suddenly started talking very differently about that young woman’s life: about how, basically, she would be better off dead, because it was never going to heal.
This is why disabled people are so fearful. If the law changes, it does not matter whether there is one doctor or two in the assessment process—which I do not believe is anywhere near strong enough currently. There will always be ableist doctors out there who would very quickly think and agree that we would be better off not being around.
Let us look at other jurisdictions and the number of people there who choose to end their lives. When I talk to people outside, they assume we are talking about cancer and leukaemia, not lots of other conditions. But in Belgium, for example, the official figures from last year show that 54% of people who requested an assisted death had cancer; 26.8%, however, had polypathology. Now, I am not a medic, so that sounds like an interesting combination of conditions. Actually, though, what is included in those figures is being tired of life.
This comes back to the debate we had in the previous group about the equality impact assessment. That is based on the first 10 years of Oregon, where the numbers were very low because there was no social media and people did not know about it. This provides more evidence of why the Government need to reconsider looking at the impact assessment to actually understand the numbers that might be involved. The noble Lord, Lord Harper, is absolutely right: we need to be honest about what we are doing here, not wrapping it up in euphemisms and easy soundbites. I have said consistently that, when you do an interview about the Bill, it is not easy to lay down every single reason in four minutes as to why a number of people have many concerns with the Bill.