Lord Alderdice
The Government has a number of lengthy bills progressing through Parliament which will fall in their entirety if they aren’t completed by Prorogation in the second week of November. A few recently introduced Bills will be ‘carried over’ but most must be done and dusted or they fall. The Coroners and Justice Bill has many good things in it, such as the modernisation of the Coronial Service, which peers on all sides of the House wish to see implemented but the Bill also contains many other contentious provisions. Those of us who wish to see an option for Requested Assisted Dying for People with terminal illnesses introduced into legislation supported Lord Falconer’s amendment at Committee stage to allow people who accompany relatives who travel overseas for an assisted death to avoid prosecution, but this has largely been addressed now by the recent guidance issued by Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions. On Monday however at Report Stage of the Bill Lord Alderdice and Lord Lester, Lib Dems who are both strong supporters of human rights legislation, have tabled an amendment to re-introduce a mechanism for assisting people with disabilities or seious illnesses to avoid prosecution if they seek help to die.
The amendment is quite different from the one Lord Alderdice tabled initially at Committee stage, a lot better worded than the earlier one. I understand what he is getting at; why indeed should people with disabilities and severe illnesses be disbarred from making a decision which the able bodied amongst us can make if we feel like it without the need for assistance? In this House we generally support strongly the rights of people with a disability to access goods, services and care and to call forth special circumstances of assistance appropriate to their individual needs. That is all the amendment seeks to do in respect of a personal wish to end one’s life, a wish the rest of us are only prevented from doing if we have a mental disorder within the meaning of the Mental Health Act, accepting for the moment that most people who wish to end their lives do indeed have a mental disorder within the meaning of the Mental Health Act and do not therefore have a ‘free and settled wish’ as it is rather unusually expressed here in the amendment. So the amendment on the face of it does press the notion of equality for people with disabilities and severe illnesses which I applaud.
However, if the amendment were to be pressed to a vote I shall probably abstain. The reason is that I believe the more pressing concern is about how we provide personalised care for people who are already dying, to provide a well regulated framework to enable assisted dying for those few terminally ill people who request it. This would be a huge step and enormous care needs to be taken with the safeguards, the regulatory and monitoring functions and the practicalities.
I fully supported the attempts made by Lord Falconer, supported by Lady Jay and many others, to add safeguards to current assisted dying practice via this Bill Coroner’s and Justice Bill at Committee stage, and regret that this was unsuccessful. In light of the Director of Public Prosecutions’ interim policy on this issue, and given that good quality end-of-life care cannot alleviate all suffering, the next logical step is for the Government to initiate an impartial commission on end-of-life decision making. This amendment would pre-empt that although I surmise that Lords Alderdice and Lester would support such a commission. So though I support the intention behind the amendment, for reasons of orderly process in making good legislation in this area I can’t give it my 100% support.
I agree with the conclusion. A matter as delicate and contentious as this cannot be dealt with right at the end of a Parliamentary Session when there is a huge rush to get legislation through before Queen’s Speech.
Assisted suicide, as various legal organisations have pointed out, requires widespread and detailed public consultation before any decisions are arrived at.
Not sure if this is off-topic – are these aspects of Coroner’s Reports included as part of the Bill ?
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/matthew-norman/matthew-norman-of-all-the-new-labour-toadies-jack-straw-must-be-the-worst-1807563.html
Secret inquests ? Have we woken up in Saudi Arabia ?
I have long agreed with assisted suicide. Such a term leaves me wondering if assisted death is preferable; death is inevitable but suicide is not.
They shoot horses, don’t they?
Baroness Murphy,
I think that the issues of assisted suicide or easily overlooked in our modern world and were never simple in any culture at any time. I agree with your concept of trying to exercise some legislative vigilance in the protocol of passage of the law and certainly assent to the concept of its gravity as an issue pointed out by Baroness D’Souza. My substantive comments may seem rural, old-fashioned, Papist and civilian and those may be valid assessments.
1.When suicide is generaly censured and decried the police will investigate almost all unnatural deaths carefully as possible forced homicides. This always declines where suicide is lawful and condoned to some degree — some skilled killers always find cover, always.
2. The more suicide is condoned the more the depressed and and pained by disposition or circumastance will prefer it to other options in a painful world.
3.Where suicide is condoned there will always be caregivers who find ways to exert great pressure to elicit death consent. This career will attract people with a talent for it. Always.
4. A society with no suffering is called a cemetary at night.
5.There are many doctors, military junior officers and family members who consider themselves life affirming Christians, Jews, Muslims or other things who have helped those in agony to die without legal cover and with few or none the wiser — in every country almost.
6. Despite all I have said I do tend to have more respect for the British idea of formal decriminilization and regulation of moral ambiguity than perhaps you or others might think. However, what has been called suicide has become the leading form of death for large segments of some societies. Suicide is not at all self limiting.
7. I do like GK Chesterton and admit to it but think his statements coloring suicide as the worst moral offense would be easy to mock if not so terribly misguided. It is clearly not the worst moral fault by a long stretch.