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Assisted Dying

Unlike the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris), I believe that the empire of the law should have some limits. It may be perverse for a legislator to say this, but I do not think that a change in the law would be the right way forward in this regard, although I very much understand the suffering involved in the individual cases to which he and the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) referred in their speeches. When my father was dying 18 years ago, I had a role, as his next of kin, to work with a long-standing family doctor to ensure that he had enough morphine—he was terminally ill with cancer—to ward off pain. To an extent, his life might have gone on a few days or weeks longer than it would have otherwise. That seemed to be the common-sense approach to the situation. This may seem rather hypocritical, but I think that, at times, we should perhaps turn a blind eye to what are often desperately difficult circumstances. We must recognise that, as a compensation and blame culture becomes more prevalent around the world and in this country, medical professionals in particular will become increasingly reluctant to do the right thing if there are laws in place that may be seen to provide safeguards but simply regulate their lives more strongly. I have fears about an assisted dying, or euthanasia, regime putting pressure on elderly people who do not have an immediately life-threatening condition. In essence, the right to die could morph into a duty to die. I believe that I can refer to the recent high-profile case of the 23-year-old rugby player, Daniel James, who was taken by his parents to Switzerland. It was a dreadful case. One of the most disquieting aspects was that, when the story came into the public domain some months after his death in Switzerland, his parents referred to his having been a second-class citizen, given the injuries that he had sustained. Those injuries were serious and may not have come through even under the Joffe safeguards. They massively affected quality of life but were not life-threatening. It was envisaged that Daniel James could well have lived for some decades to come. What was worrying was the notion of his in any way having a second-class life or being a second-class citizen. Saying that some lives are more valuable than others is dangerous.