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Peers are deeply divided over a controversial bill which would allow terminally ill people to be helped to die by physicians.
Lord Joffe's bill would apply to those in England and Wales set to die within six months and suffering unbearably, but still able to make decisions.

He told the Lords patients should not have to endure unbearable pain "for the good of society as a whole".

But Lord Carlile said the bill would end with doctors giving lethal drugs.
We believe this is a very bad bill and one that would create serious problems

'I've still got so much to do'
'We were there with mum'

The Lib Dem peer said: "Everybody in your Lordships' house knows that those who are moving this bill have the clear intention of it leading to voluntary euthanasia.

"That has always been the aim and it remains the aim now."

The bill proposes that after signing a legal declaration that they wanted to die, patients could be prescribed a lethal dose of medication to take.

The bill is not likely to become law, but 90 peers are due to speak on it.

The debate highlights divisions between supporters of the right to die and those who want better palliative care.


Campaigners gathered at Westminster to protest against Lord Joffe's bill

Lady Finlay, a professor in palliative care told the house: "In letting this bill proceed, we give a message to the world that we will abandon the vulnerable and treat suffering by ending the sufferer's life.

"Let us get on with working for patients to live as well as possible until a naturally dignified death, not taken up with becoming complicit with suicide."

Lord Joffe's bill, which is having its second reading in the Lords, proposes that doctors would be able to opt out if a request was made to them.

WHAT THE TERMS MEAN
Assisted dying - a physician prescribes medication which a patient can take to end their own life
Voluntary euthanasia - the physician would actually help the patient die

The crossbench peer said: "We must find a solution to the unbearable suffering of patients whose needs cannot be met by palliative care.

"This bill provides that solution in the absence of any other."

But even if it survives an amendment tabled by Lord Carlile to halt its progress, the government would have to allow the bill debating time in the Commons in order for it to become law.

'Vulnerable at risk'

Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams is among those against the bill.

He has written a joint letter to Friday's Times newspaper with Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor and Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks.

Speaking on the BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said there was now a broad consensus against the measure which extended beyond the Church and religion.

Even with the high quality of our palliative care, some people will still want this option

Deborah Annetts
Dignity in Dying


The ethics of assisted suicide

"This comes not simply from people who are, so to speak, enslaved by clerical superstition.

"It comes from a number of people who are very close to the very hardest practical decisions on this and who still say that the cost of voting this through is disproportionately high to the benefit to certain individuals."

Cardinal Murphy O'Connor warned the Bill could lead to pressure on vulnerable people to take their own lives.

"There will come a situation where people will feel that not only I have a right to die, there will be other people who feel I have a duty to die. This is the danger when you start on this."

Disability campaigners echo these concerns, and say the real need is ensure palliative care can help people have a dignified death.

The group Care Not Killing delivered a petition signed by 100,000 people to Downing Street demanding an end to attempts to change the law.

And the Not Dead Yet campaign, bringing together disabled people opposed to the bill, was launched in a House of Lords committee room as the lords debated.

Opponents are also holding a demonstration outside Parliament.

'Clear support'

But supporters of the bill say doctors should be able to prescribe drugs so a terminally ill person suffering terrible pain could choose to end their own life.

HAVE YOUR SAY
It is unbelievably cruel to force someone to continue in terrible suffering if their life could be ended peacefully

Gareth Morgan, York, UK


Send us your comments

A YouGov survey of 1,770 people for Dignity in Dying (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society) found 76% were in favour of assisted dying as long as there were safeguards in place.

Deborah Annetts, Chief Executive of Dignity in Dying, said: "The public is being massively turned off by this week's well-funded demonstration of religious opposition against a bill they clearly support.

"Even with the high quality of our palliative care, some people will still want this option."

Robert Kenneth, from the Death with Dignity National Centre in Portland, Oregon, said similar laws in his state benefited the terminally ill.

He said patients in Oregon used the rules to "maintain control over the final days of their lives, to maintain dignity, and simply to control their end-of-life care".