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Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill: Select Committee Report

My Lords, I think that His Holiness Pope Benedict rather makes the right point when he warns against the dictatorship of relativism. I warn the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, that he may be mistaken if he tries to corral those who do not care for his Bill as being just a few religious persons and the leadership of the Churches. I have one very close friend—I wish that I had asked his permission to quote him today—who I can describe only as a High Church atheist, so passionate is his disbelief in God, who feels exactly the same as many people who do not care for the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Joffe. That brings me to my third point, which is the need not to destroy our trust in the medical profession, for patient autonomy can oh so quickly give way to medical and to state power. I trust my medical advisers, at least at present. I think that they will never harm me and that they will do their best, although, of course, everyone is fallible and mistakes can be made. However, that trust comes about not because of my belief that doctors have some superior moral quality but because of their tradition of doing no harm, held by those of faith and of no faith. In the face of that, and with great respect to the Select Committee, I would have wished that the committee, which quite properly considered the conscientious objections of doctors and nurses, had addressed the conscientious objections of patients and the rights of patients to know about the attitudes of their doctors. That is an oversight. Should the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, reach the statute book in some form, we would de facto have to make provision for patients who wished to know what kind of doctor was going to treat them: a doctor who cared to preserve life and a doctor who, in shorthand—or in ““headline terms””, to borrow the excellent phrase of the noble Baroness, Lady Jay—was really a ““vet”” doctor prepared to take part in the end of life. There would need to be separate training, and separate registers of the two classes of doctors would have to be made public. The Select Committee might have usefully considered a little more the pragmatic and conscientious feelings of patients themselves as well as those of doctors. Fourthly, should a Bill like that of the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, ever see the light of the statute book, it surely cries out for a sunset clause after five years, or whenever. If there was ever such a case, it is this Bill. Finally, I admire no one more than the long-running Minister who will reply to the debate at about midnight. I have a couple of questions for him, as I have sensed a certain amount of news management in the air from sources quite close to sources that are close to government saying that, should a Bill like that of the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, come forward, the Government are minded to give it government time. I should like the Minister to say specifically what the Government’s intentions are in this matter. I am hopeful that he will answer that question. If his answer is that the Government intend to give the Bill time, I ask him and his colleagues to pause, first, because I think that it would cause amazement among the public that a government led by the right honourable gentleman the Prime Minister—this particular Prime Minister—should go down that route and, secondly—I hasten to add that I myself make no accusations in this regard—that it will raise fears among many that extending government time for this Bill means that the Government wish to save money on the National Health Service in future months and years if it becomes law. I do not know that that is the case and I am not suggesting that it is, but those arguments will run. The Minister can set those arguments to lie now or later in his winding-up speech, if he wishes.