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Coroners and Justice Bill

In 1961, we in the United Kingdom were humane enough to remove suicide itself from the list of crimes. That prevented the possibility that people who had failed in a suicide attempt could find themselves facing a trial in court. I doubt whether anyone would want to revert to making suicide itself a crime. The Suicide Act 1961 left aiding or abetting suicide as a crime. I believe it was quite right to do that. Most people who commit or attempt suicide do so because they are suffering from severe depression or because they have been overwhelmed by some crisis in their personal lives. These people should not be helped to commit suicide; they should be helped out of their wish to kill themselves and restored to normal life. Terminal illness is not in itself a justification for assisting a victim’s suicide. Most of us will, at the end of our lives, suffer from a terminal illness, but few of us, I suspect, will commit suicide. Many people who become terminally ill will receive palliative care. For many people, and many diseases, it works, and all of us respect the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for the work that she has done in that field. However, for a small number of people and a small number of diseases—notably, motor neurone disease—palliative care is in many cases insufficient. The last weeks of the people who suffer from those diseases will be grim, painful and degrading, and I do not believe that they are acting wrongly in wanting to commit suicide to cut short a horrible ending. If they need help, I do not think that their helpers are acting wrongly in giving them that help. That is why I support the amendment. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, based his argument on respect for human life. My argument is also based on respect for human life. When someone close to the end of their life, in pain and distress, wants to die, it is no respect for their life to force them to stay alive. That is why I believe that the amendment is justified.