The Brexit-induced coma into which Parliament has fallen will be briefly interrupted today with a debate on assisted dying. Until recently, I supported the law as it stands, and was opposed to “voluntary euthanasia”.
It was informed by personal experience. My mother, who died some years ago, spent the last months of her life in a state of confusion, punctuated by bouts of depression. Like many elderly people she worried about “being a burden”. One week she was pleading to die. But the next week she was savouring the simple pleasures of life: a walk in the park, sitting beside the river. I certainly did (and do) not want a situation where the vulnerable — the elderly, the mentally ill, people with learning difficulties — are, in any way, made to feel unwanted and suicidal.
My late wife, Olympia, suffered from terminal cancer. She experienced good palliative care and was a brave, positive woman, who wanted to live life to the full and then to end her life, as she did, at home surrounded by a loving family. She would have been appalled by the idea of assisted dying.
But these experiences do not fit every case. Today’s debate has been prompted by the case of Ann and Geoffrey Whaley, who were interviewed under police caution, after a tip-off to police that Geoffrey — who was suffering from motor neurone disease — was planning to travel to Switzerland to die at Dignitas. In the event, he was determined to go. He went, and he had his wish for a dignified death respected. Around 50 people a year go to Switzerland for this reason, and many more end their own lives by one means or another in the UK.
Yet more still die in distressing circumstances, without the option humanely and voluntarily to end their pain. The law forbids assisted dying, despite instances where a patient with an incurable, awful, disease wants to make a rational, considered, decision to have control over their own death. In such cases, a spouse may want to respect their partner’s final wishes, and to act out of love and compassion to assist them. They are forbidden from doing so by the criminal law — an injustice which the Supreme Court has now deemed of “transcendent public importance”.
There is a view that “good cases make bad law”: that assisted dying should remain a criminal offence but that the prosecuting authorities should “turn a blind eye”. That is broadly what happens now; but few law-abiding people want to spend the most difficult phase of their lives worrying about police questioning and criminal prosecution. It is inhumane to all involved.
It is time to update the law, with great care to ensure that there are safeguards to prevent abuse. There have already been innovative and robust attempts to bring it about, and it must be within the wit of Parliament to find a compassionate way through this maze. It is time for legislators to legislate.
Sir Vince Cable is leader of the Liberal Democrats
