Assisted Suicide

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I wish to make three points. First, as the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) said earlier, I believe that the people who have pushed forward today’s debate are, in essence, introducing a Trojan horse. I respect the genuine feeling that many have on the issue, but my worry is that whatever the intention of some Members, this will ratchet towards euthanasia.

Secondly, there is a risk of abuse because of the serious abuse that exists in Oregon and the Netherlands, where assisted dying is legal and, dare I say it, in historical examples of state-sanctioned euthanasia, such as in Nazi Germany. Thirdly, I would argue that this is the wrong debate. In terms of resources and philosophically, surely we should put everything into helping people to live, not helping people to die.

My fear is that this is a Trojan horse motion. I accept that the motion simply welcomes the DPP’s advice, and that the Director of Public Prosecutions said in February:

“The policy does not change the law on assisted suicide”,

but he also admitted that there had been changes to the policy. As my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) said, Parliament has never voted on these measures, even though they de facto amend the Suicide Act 1961. There is a risk that the guidance will tilt the legal balance towards euthanasia, not least because it clarifies how people can deliberately avoid prosecution.

[Bob Stewart]

I do not understand how they would amend the Suicide Act. It is my understanding that it has not been amended.

[Robert Halfon]

My argument is that the guidelines are too flexible, and that Parliament has not made a decision about the matter. As I said, Parliament has had no say in designing the DPP’s guidance, and that is not how law should be made in Britain. We are simply being asked to rubber-stamp what the DPP has said. This matters because there is a risk of abuse—it could become a lawyer’s charter—and because of the kind of country it would make us.

Sadly, there is a real example in history of how the move to assisted dying has led to something much worse. In 1920, the eminent German medics, Binding and Hoche, argued strenuously that doctors should be protected against prosecution for assisted dying. Their research was popularised during the Weimar era, and by 1932 created the intellectual climate that allowed Prussia to remove support for the disabled and terminally ill. In 1939, we know that Hitler issued orders that doctors be commissioned to grant a mercy death to patients who were judged to be incurably sick. A small step perhaps; each step along this path was a small step. Two years later we know that 70,000 patients from Germany’s hospitals had been killed. We know that in 1941, the gas chambers were moved from the hospitals where they had been used for euthanasia to the death camps of Auschwitz and Treblinka. Nurses, doctors and technicians followed the equipment. That is why I am worried about a conveyor belt. Of course, we live in a benign country, and we think that such things would never happen, but it is precisely because we are a benign country that we have to put in every safeguard to ensure that it does never happen.

I argue that the DPP’s guidance can become a lawyer’s charter. Who will define “compassion” in the DPP’s guidance? What is “minor encouragement”? How will we know the victim’s story if only the suspect can give evidence. Moves towards assisted dying would seriously damage our national character. As the National Review reported, a 1991 Dutch survey showed that 2% of all deaths in the Netherlands were caused by deliberate euthanasia, but 10% were from euthanasia by neglect, omission or other forms of poor care.

This is the wrong debate. We should be supporting palliative care, and I am proud to be very involved with my local hospice, St Clare’s. We should remember that about 40% of hospice in-patients return home and 66% of hospice at-home patients die in their own homes.

As a society, we are beginning to devalue human life, whether it is on television, in computer games or in other forms. I accept that we give people choice, but we are not talking about going to a supermarket and choosing a brand of chocolate. Harold Shipman was mentioned earlier, and he got away with what he did because human beings became digits on a computer: form filling. I wonder whether he would have got away with what he did if we did not devalue human life in the way we do.