Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)

I will come to that question when I go through the points. The purpose of Clause 1(1)(c)—namely, that to qualify you have to be ordinarily resident in England and Wales and have been so resident for at least 12 months—is, as noble Lords have said, to avoid people coming here specifically for the purpose of having an assisted death. It therefore would not be adequate to say that people should be ordinarily resident at the moment they apply, because they would have come specifically for that period. Hence you need a period, and 12 months is taken as a reasonable period in relation to that. The phrase “ordinarily resident” appears right throughout the statute book in a whole range of settings and reflects the policy choice made by regulations or statutes. It says, “We want to give this right to people who permanently live in this country”, using the word “permanently” not in a legal sense but in an ordinary sense. In applying that phrase, the courts have not generally had any real difficulty as to what it means. It is a reflection of this Parliament saying that we want to give particular rights to the people who live here, and sometimes we say, as we are suggesting here, that we do not care what their citizenship status is—if they live here permanently, they get that right. For example, in relation to the National Health Service we say that if people live here permanently, they get that right. With the greatest respect to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the cases have made it pretty clear that you can be ordinarily resident here but have temporary absences abroad—for example, if you go to work as a diplomat abroad, serve in the Armed Forces or take a job that takes you away for two months. The big case is somebody whose family lived here and who went to be educated in India for a period of time, who is still held to be ordinarily resident here. With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, Lord Mackinlay, I do not think that adopting the phrase “ordinarily resident” gives rise either to injustice or to legal difficulties. I will deal with the points made by individual Peers. I am very sympathetic to the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, as I made clear in my intervention. I do not think she was putting in the word “permanently” other than to probe the question of those who live on the Isle of Man or Jersey and get all their medical treatment habitually in England. When the doctor in England says, “I will help you go home to the Isle of Man to get an assisted death”, assuming that it becomes legal in the Isle of Man, the doctor there will be committing a criminal offence under the Bill unless there is an amendment. The BMA has proposed an amendment that, if you help somebody go home for an assisted death—home being, say, the Isle of Man or Jersey—and it is legal there, that should not be a criminal offence. I talked to the BMA about that. We need to work together to see whether we can get an amendment that satisfies the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has made. I would welcome her input in relation to this.