Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Elder Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elder (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to make a couple of points. One is a sort of technical point about Second Reading and where we are with the Bill. The other is a much more personal point, as others have done before me.

On the technical point, I very much hope that the Bill will get a Second Reading today. Comments were being passed on our mail. It seems to be very well targeted, as other people seem to have had an entirely different experience. At least 80% of the mail that I have had is in approval of the Bill. I do not quite know what is happening out there but I think that the writing of letters is quite a sophisticated process. However, we may be in danger of not having got across to people what the process in this House is about.

If the Bill gets a Second Reading, the House is about to rise for two and a half months and there will be few sitting Fridays between then and the House rising for the general election. The chances of this Bill going through Committee, Report and Third Reading, even before it gets to the Commons and assuming that it is passed here, means that in reality any Bill based on this draft is a very long time away. An awful lot of the people who are writing in, at least from some of the letters that I have been getting, somehow think that this is going to solve a short-term problem which they have in their family and which they are worried about. It is not going to do that. We should try to be clear that this is the very start of what is bound to be a long and complicated process, even if it is supported.

Having said that, my main point draws on personal experience, as so many others have. Twenty-five years ago, I was dying of heart failure and I remember it very vividly. I was too exhausted to speak or to listen to people speaking. I had to take three hours in a darkened room to recover from anything. I was hoping that I would get a transplant, which indeed I did—and here I am. However, I have always reflected on that period and thought, “Well, I wasn’t in pain but I knew that I was very time-limited”. If I had been in pain and there was a realistic prospect of continuing to live like that for another three or six months, what choices would I have wanted to consider? The fact of the matter is that I do not know what I would have done, to be honest. But I like to think that I would have had the choice, so that it would have been up to me as an individual to say, “I am sorry, but enough is enough. I want to finish it”. I would have wanted to be empowered in that way.

I am reflecting on a condition which would have given me no chance of long-term survival. In these circumstances, it is entirely sensible to look at empowerment of the individual. I think that is what the Bill does. I hope that it will be considered in detail in Committee and that we make real progress on it. I also hope that we are realistic about how long it will take but, at the end of the day, we have an opportunity here. The House of Lords is many things. People ask what we do but this is exactly the kind of debate which this House has but which is very difficult to have in another place. If we manage to get some coherent legislation through which is rational, compassionate and humane, we will have done a very good service to public life in this country.