Liberals for a day

"A parliament of more liberal instincts."

That was the view of Chris Mason, the BBC’s political editor, commenting on the second reading of the assisted dying bill which was backed by 330 MPs with 275 against.

The irony of that statement, three days after that very same parliament voted overwhelmingly to deny future generations of adults the right to buy tobacco legally, obviously escaped him, and others.

The hypocrisy, though, of MPs who talked about “choice” in relation to dying whilst voting to hike the age of sale of tobacco until no-one can legally purchase a product that can offer comfort in difficult and painful times, was astounding.

To be honest, I found many of the speeches yesterday hard to listen to. We were told the debate represented parliament “at its best” but what I heard was a lot of preening and unctuous self-congratulation.

What is clear is that some legislation is driven more by emotion than hard fact.

Prior to introducing live coverage of the second reading, Five Live presenter Adrian Chiles mentioned that doctors of his acquaintance were complaining that the debate about assisted dying had been unduly influenced by anecdotal evidence. (I think that’s what he said.)

Lo and behold, what did we get yesterday? One anecdote after another - sometimes personal to the MP, sometimes personal to a constituent.

This was not a battle of ideas, more a battle between who could tell the most hair-raising story of pain and suffering, bullying and abuse.

It reminded me that the smoking debate is similarly influenced by individual stories of death and disease that are said to be caused by smoking.

Sometimes the same people are trotted out year after year to tell their personal stories, which are then regurgitated by campaigners and politicians.

I don’t doubt their authenticity, or the sincerity of the individuals telling their tales, but how representative are they of smokers as a whole?

Unlike yesterday’s debate on assisted dying, the alternative (and equally anecdotal) argument that many people enjoy or take comfort from smoking is rarely if ever given the time of day, especially in parliament.

There was at least some element of balance in yesterday’s debate, but - again - how representative are many of the stories we heard?

In truth, listening to several hours of the second reading would have made many people extremely fearful of old age and death. It certainly gave me the heebie-jeebies and I think I’m fairly relaxed about the prospect.

Of course, there are people who endure an unnecessarily gruelling and painful death, and I do think we should do a lot more to help them, whether that’s through better palliative care (a subject that came up again and again yesterday), assisted dying, or both.

However, I don’t believe that’s most people’s experience and we are in danger of turning death into a nightmarish monster.

A further irony is that the current obsession with longevity is creating a society in which more people are living longer, and that in turn raises the risk that we will eventually succumb to something - cancer or dementia, for example - that is potentially far worse than a sudden, fatal, heart attack at an earlier age.

Incidentally, I concluded my previous post about the assisted dying bill by writing:

According to my mother [whose father was a GP], it wasn’t uncommon … for doctors to ‘help’ terminally ill patients who were in severe pain die by discreetly administering a fatal dose of morphine to end their suffering.

Today few if any GPs would risk prosecution, so decisions that were once made by individual doctors will now be made by a committee of people representing the state, and those decisions could take months, prolonging someone’s suffering, and for what purpose?

The principle of assisted dying is not, however, unreasonable. It’s humane. It’s just a pity the state has to intervene in an area where qualified doctors once exercised their common sense and compassion.

Listening to the second reading yesterday, I heard a familiar voice - that of Julian Lewis, Conservative MP for New Forest East and someone I once worked for.

In my opinion, the key to this dreadfully difficult conundrum - about end of life care, pain and the possibility of assisted dying - lies, or should lie, in the ability of medical personnel to administer effective pain relief even if it shortens the patient’s remaining time. In my view, there should be no bar on the use of painkilling medication, if that is the only way to ease human suffering, even if it leads to a speedier death—hence the frequent references to putting dying people “on an appropriate pathway.”

It was therefore most alarming to me to read a very important paragraph in a letter sent to me in favour of changing the law and voting for the Bill by my constituent, the distinguished broadcaster Dame Esther Rantzen, in which she explains that doctors no longer feel able to follow this humane course of action since the atrocious Harold Shipman case, which was briefly alluded to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis). If there has been such a change in regulations, as Dame Esther believes, it is imperative that that should be reversed. That is something positive that could come out of the imminent debate.

Julian voted against the Bill, but his comment above reflected my own view that things were better when doctors could use their own judgement in these matters without fear of prosecution.

Quite how we get back to those days, given the threat of litigation, I don’t know, but it’s something we need to explore.