My Lords, I will not detain the House, but I would like to say a couple of things. It gives me great pleasure to see my friend and colleague present to listen to the compliments paid to him today for having steered the Bill through the other place. It strikes me that so many contributors today have personal experience of the subject; it shows that, as I said, millions of people and their families up and down the country will find that this Bill affects them, I hope for the better.
It would be remiss of me not to thank noble Lords for some of the compliments I have been paid. I take it as a great compliment to hear from some of the legal experts in front of me that I have introduced a Bill—incidentally, the first time I have ever done so—in a “comprehensive way”, unless of course that is a hidden way of saying that I took too long to do so.
The points made by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, are very important. It is a great comfort to a donor to know that they have arrangements in place and I think the new procedures will assist. The noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, mentioned the issues raised by Compassion in Dying—as we know, they apply not so much to this Bill, which falls in a different area—which has been in touch with me. In fact, I spoke to Compassion in Dying this morning before this debate. I fully understand the way in which she raised these issues and know very well the reasons why they matter to people. I hope that
one of the effects of this Bill reaching the statute book, which I hope it does, will be to further advance the causes she raised. I also thank my noble friend on the Front Bench for the support that he has given the Bill on behalf of the Official Opposition and the Minister for covering some of the points raised to the satisfaction, I think, of all concerned.
The last thing I will say is that this has been a fairly short but consensual debate. It has seen Parliament as it is supposed to be: a working environment, or a workshop, designed to try to bring about changes in people’s lives for the better. When you consider some of the attacks made on Parliament and the parliamentary process, you could do worse than look at a short debate such as this and see that it is possible to make real change in a consensual way—and I will leave it there.