My Lords, I will make a brief intervention. First, I rise to challenge the view that all bishops and religious leaders are against assisted dying. I changed my mind some seven years ago.
Secondly, we are discussing the Health and Care Bill. It so happened that this week I received a letter from two doctors—husband and wife—from Colchester. I will read a part of it because they asked me to
intervene on their behalf. Their experience comes from within the National Health Service; they worked in the NHS all their careers. One of them says:
“I visited P a little more than two weeks before he died. Alone with me, he explained that he was beyond misery, from the pain of his condition and from the effects that drugs were having. The time had come, the patient asked, to request something that would allow him to slip away. The look of disbelief and horror as I explained that I could not do this haunts me still.”
The doctor goes on to say:
“The Health Service which has done everything it could to involve the patient in their care and comply with the patient's wishes waits until they are at their most vulnerable and incapacitated, to impose a course diametrically opposed to the wishes of the patient.”
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The same doctor goes on to offer a personal story. His own father, an eminent scientist, had developed an aggressive cancer with distressing side-effects. He loathed what he was going through. The indignity of it was abhorrent. He struggled to the local railway station and walked under a train. The doctor recounts:
“Sadly, it was a slow train, and he took several hours to die. Still conscious, he had to argue with the ambulance crew not to treat his injuries so that he could achieve his desired outcome.”
I offer these stories, which come from recently retired doctors. They believe the time has come for a change in the law to allow rational human beings to slip away in peace. I changed my mind on this issue some seven years ago, and I know that I am out of step with my church, but I believe that those of us who take this approach are on the right side of history. Therefore, I support the amendment in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord Baker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher.