Member

Let us go back to the conceptual principle behind the Bill. I agree with my noble friend Lord Pannick that this is not a health Bill or a Bill about the provision of palliative services. It is a Bill about allowing a citizen to help another citizen to die. This is about life and death, and it is about the law. I, too, am delighted to see the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Prentis, back in the House, because she is a very fine lawyer and has been a Law Officer. She and my noble friend Lord Pannick know—and I happen to know, because I am a lawyer and was a Welsh MP—that if a citizen today helps another citizen to die, the decision that would be made would depend on a change in the criminal law of the United Kingdom, which is a reserved matter.