Assisted Suicide

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Cathain (Con)]

My Lords, the DPP guidelines published in 2010 were hailed as a victory by the assisted dying lobby. These guidelines made it clear that encouraging or assisting the suicide of another is a criminal offence. Since then that lobby has subjected the policy to all kinds of criticisms. While trying to look at the criticisms dispassionately, I fear that I have come to the conclusion that those in favour of assisted dying saw the policy as a stepping stone to a law licensing assisted suicide.

The guidelines spell out that every case has to be considered in the round and on its own merits. I fear that the euthanasia advocates want to go further than that and seek to fetter this discretion of prosecutors. It seems to me that ultimately it wants a fundamental shift in the law, a shift that would move us away from deterrence and protection. I am increasingly concerned that we may be drifting into a position of seeing suicide in terms of a happy release from suffering and regarding assisted suicide as invariably altruistic.

I just wish that all could see how this would cause uncertainly, fear and jeopardy to great numbers of vulnerable people. The Royal College of General Practitioners recently consulted on this and 77% of GPs opposed changing the law, saying that it would be,

“detrimental to the doctor-patient relationship”,

and could result in patients being coerced into a decision to die. I wish that we would stop talking about killing those diagnosed with terminal illnesses. Sometimes those illnesses are not terminal. We should talk instead about increasing the availability of palliative care and improving the treatment of depression, which would help us all to live our declining years and end of life with dignity, love and care.