My Lords, the Green group is operating on the lark and owl system —appropriately enough, you might say. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb attached her name to Amendment 203 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. I am going to be brief, as I am aware of the pressures. I find it very hard to see why anyone would resist Amendment 203. It is about providing appropriate structures and law to ensure that people’s views are heard and respected.
When I looked at this, I thought of the very old feminist slogan, “the personal is political”. What could be more personal or political than a person having control over the nature of their own death, being able to express their wishes and ensuring that they are heard and recorded.
It is worth saying that I was not able to take part in an earlier debate about the funding for palliative care. We should see much better investment in palliative care in the UK; we should not see volunteers rattling fundraising buckets for hospices to meet their basic needs. But that goes along with the right of individuals to be in control, knowing that they will be
heard and listened to, and their wishes acted on. That would allow them to be in a situation of much less fear.
I also want, very briefly, to offer the Green group’s support for Amendment 297. Support for assisted dying is Green Party policy. I want to reflect back to October last year, when the Private Member’s Bill was being debated. There was a very respectful, silent crowd outside, holding up signs saying “Choice, Compassion, Dignity”. I ask people considering this to make sure that those people can be heard in this House and this can be debated.
As the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said, it is not about a change in the law; it is about a guarantee of parliamentary consideration, as the courts have requested. It might surprise the noble Lord to know that I preceded him on this. I am trying to remember the details—I was not aware that any fuss had been made about this procedure, but it was either in the Agriculture Bill or the Environment Bill that I put down an amendment in this form. I would not consider myself a procedural innovator, so this is something that has been done many times before.
I want to make one final point. It is perhaps not of legal significance, but, in a way, it is a legal issue. Assisted dying is already available to people in our society—to people who have the funds, the knowledge and the remaining health to get to Dignitas, in Switzerland. This is very much an equalities issue around a right that some people have and some people do not. There is also the fact that, to be guaranteed to be fit to travel, some people are now dying before they need to because we have that inequality.