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Assisted Dying

My Lords, when one contemplates issues of this kind, it is important not to be swept along by a tide of uninformed public opinion, stimulated by selective reporting of very difficult cases. It is important that our response to the lot of those who suffer from terminal illness or progressive disability is not to contemplate assisted dying as the final or only solution. If you have lived in close proximity to suicide or life-limiting illness, you will know that these matters are not simple. There is huge grief and emotional pain; those are not the foundations on which we should build. The protection and preservation of life is the most fundamental and important duty of the state under the law. To live with life-limiting illness is to live with uncertainty. Today the law protects individuals from mercy killing—for that, ultimately, is what assisted suicide is. They know that if someone determines that their life is no longer of value and takes steps to end that life, the law will intervene. They know, at least, that there is no pressure to die to protect the financial and other interests of those around them, to alleviate their pain or to set them free from their responsibilities. What pressure there would be on those people if they knew that someone who might not want to commit suicide might nevertheless feel constrained to move for it, and their carer or lover had the option of killing. The BMA, like the many organisations referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, does not want a change in the law. Let us seek, rather, to maximise the processes and funding for the care of those whose lives are in some way constrained and limited. Life is sacred. We, as legislators, have a profound duty to protect it.