Baroness Lawlor (Con)

My Lords, up to the age of 25, people often struggle to grasp that death is irreversible. They understand in notional terms the point that death ends a person’s life on earth, but they do not really grasp the sense—both those who accept and those who deny the afterlife know this—that life as we know it ends. Somebody who has not been mentioned is Professor Leah Somerville, a Harvard academic who specialises in psychology and is the director of the Affective Neuroscience and Development Lab. An article on her research says: “Adolescents do about as well as adults on cognition tests, for instance. But if they’re feeling strong emotions, those scores can plummet. The problem seems to be that teenagers have not yet developed a strong brain system that keeps emotions under control”. I have suggested the age of 21, not 25, as the lower limit. I regard this as a compromise, and I proposed it at the outset. As I say, the medical evidence points to 25; I am happy to support that. In conclusion, opponents might say that the seven-year gap between the age at which a person is thought to be an adult for legal purposes and the age at which they become eligible for assisted suicide is simply too long, but no young person should be presented with the option of taking their own life—certainly not those who have been diagnosed as having a terminal illness. They are not physically, psychologically or emotionally developed to the maturity needed to make a judgment devoid of emotion. Although my moderate amendment places the age of eligibility at 21—I stress that it is a compromise—I would be prepared to support other noble Lords on the age of 25.