Member

Amendments 57, 314 and 343, also tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, seek to limit assisted dying to those who are primarily seeking to avoid physical pain. Noble Lords may wish to note that these amendments might make it difficult to determine the nature and level of pain required to become eligible for an assisted death. It is also unclear who would be responsible for making that determination. To justify differential treatment between different categories of terminally ill people, there would be a need to justify this difference in treatment between a person with extreme mental suffering as a consequence of their terminal illness and a person suffering as a consequence of physical pain. These amendments would require further consequential amendments to make them workable and consistent throughout the Bill, not least because, on their own, they would create different assessment criteria for doctors and the panels to use.