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Assisted Dying

My Lords, where a matter has already been debated, to call for an independent inquiry looks like the old business of holding the referendum again and again until people give the right answer. Parliament is there not to bend to every media-manipulated public whim, but to take the larger and longer view. We do not see in the press the old lady who last summer told me several times that she just wanted to go to sleep and not wake up, but who eventually made a full recovery and celebrated her 63rd wedding anniversary last month and greeted her sixth great-grandchild last week. Had we been in Holland or Oregon, someone might have "compassionately" given her a paper to sign and the deed would have been done. I declare an interest: the lady in question is my mother. Last summer I sympathised with her view—her desire to die—but I shuddered at the thought of speeding her on her way. That would not have been compassion but, rather, collusion with distorted desire. The assisted suicide lobby does not have a monopoly on compassion. I believe that it distorts the notion radically. The genuinely compassionate course includes the remarkable work of palliative care, in which we in this country are field leaders, particularly through the hospice movement. We do not need a further independent inquiry.