Palliative Care Bill [HL]

My Lords, the noble Lord, who was a supporter of the Bill of my noble friend Lord Joffe in favour of assisted suicide, and who has represented the Voluntary Euthanasia Society on occasion in the courts, has expressed his views on other occasions. Members of your Lordships’ House may measure them against what he has said today. We have no right to tell a physician that they must judge a person’s life as lacking worth and that it should, for this reason, be ended. In such a regime, the doctor is merely an automaton or hired gun. In the last analysis, if a doctor is to do the killing and be answerable in law, he needs to have considerable reason to justify doing so. If we adopt that approach, our hospices will become charnel houses. To die with dignity, we do not need doctors to kill us. Our best defence against a descent into such a murky world remains our excellent hospice movement and an internationally respected medical profession that is committed to the highest possible standards. The Bill seeks to achieve the constant improvement of palliative care, and I am very pleased to support it.