Lord Empey (UUP)

My Lords, I think everybody must have been affected by the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson. She made very sobering revelations about her experience, which is very broad and much to be admired. This group of amendments brings into sharp focus the sheer scale of the complexity of bringing assisted suicide into the NHS context. We have heard pleas from the movers of some of the amendments that specific provision be considered because of the needs of those with complex communication difficulties, including hearing, language and cultural challenges. I will draw the House’s attention to other matters that have not been addressed in the context of a busy hospital with overworked staff. In addressing other groups of amendments, I said that many people seem to view the operation of the current NHS through rose-tinted glasses. Hospitals these days are not as they are portrayed in the TV series “Heartbeat” or “Call the Midwife”, which are set in the 1960s. Gone are the days when consultants had time to come round for friendly chats at their leisure with patients and family. Parliament and Governments have demanded that targets be met because of increasing demand and a relentless growth in our population. Meeting targets means throughput, and throughput means patients going in and out as quickly as possible. I struggle to see how the Bill, if enacted, can be safely implemented in current hospital settings. In a busy NHS ward, consultants doing their ward rounds in the mornings have only a few minutes, maybe once or twice a week, to assess a patient and give instructions to registrars and nurses as to what treatment is to be applied. Introducing complex processes involving safety, providing the means by which patients can take their lives with poisonous substances, and co-ordinating all the relevant personnel at the right time to oversee this, will be a mammoth task in our overstretched NHS. Let us look at some of the realities to which this group of amendments draws attention. We have discussed language. I was astonished to learn that, in London alone, 300 languages are spoken. Some 1.7 million Londoners do not have English as their first language, and 300,000 or more do not speak English at all. That is equivalent to the population of a city such as Cardiff or Glasgow.