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Assisted Dying

My Lords, the timing of this debate is surprising, to say the least; the noble Lord should surely have awaited the DPP’s guidelines in their final form. On that subject, he should be careful in his criticism on the case of Gilderdale, in which the judge held that there was a case to answer on a charge not of assisted suicide but of attempted murder. My second point is about the impracticability of what is behind the proposal for an inquiry. The fact that a speech containing such a proposal is made by someone who is rightly regarded as a national treasure, a wonderful author speaking from the heart and using fine language, does not make him right. The fact is that the Pratchett proposals are at least as weak as the proposals made earlier by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, and heavily defeated in this House. My third point is that we have already had the inquiry. No one has mentioned the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, so far in this debate, but some of us, including myself and some who have spoken already, were on that committee. I wonder if some noble Lords who have spoken today have taken the trouble to read the report, which contains every fact on both sides of this argument. It enables the decision-makers to make up their minds—and the decision-maker is Parliament. I therefore regret the timing and the principle behind this Motion, which surely is, as the right reverend Prelate said, an attempt to ask the question so many times that eventually you get the answer you want.