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Assisted Suicide

That is precisely the situation that we have, and that situation has been clarified and developed further by the DDP; that is why we are, totally correctly, praising him in this debate. However, to think that the world is populated by people of great charity who think only of the person on the receiving end is to mislead ourselves, look foolish before our electors, and do vulnerable people harm. I disagree with the second point that my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse made; I do not believe that we are autonomous. I find it amazing that those who are clearly on the centre left should have an individualistic view about human life. We are dependent on one another, and one person's actions can affect another person. One might have a slightly different view if there had not been a whole series of reports about the horrors done to old people in hospitals and euphemistically named care homes. We tut, nod the reports through the House, and do damn all about them. We as a nation allow very nasty things to happen to many of our vulnerable constituents, and we do nothing, or very little, to prevent them. Today's debate, if I have understood it, is not really about the motion, or how it was seconded; it is about the amendment that my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford, tabled, not because hon. Members wanted to talk about euthanasia, but because they believed that the amendment would be seen as a staging post on the way to gaining that objective. Although we are now confused about what we are supposed to be debating and what we are voting on, I hope that the House will agree with what the outside world thinks the debate is about, and what I read the motion on the Order Paper as being about.