“WE NEED to remind ourselves that every person is of immeasurable value and cannot be diminished by illness, disability, or care costs,” the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, told the House of Lords on Friday when it was considering amendments to the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill.
The Bishop, now also Archbishop-designate of Canterbury, said that “however many amendments there are to this Bill, the Bill will never be safe.”
She spoke in favour of a group of amendments relating to the motivations of people seeking an assisted death. The reasons that patients chose an assisted death should be recorded, she said, for the better direction of funding for alternative services. There was, for instance, currently no mechanism to prevent someone’s seeking an assisted death because they were pain owing to a lack of access to palliative care, she said.
“I hope that all of us would believe that, if someone wants to live, then somebody in that stage of life should have access to palliative care and the social-care support they need.”
Bishop Mullally also spoke in support of an amendment that would require the Government to provide psychological assessment and support for patients requesting an assisted death, along with their family.
The Bishops of Southwark, Lichfield, Chester, Chelmsford and Manchester were present during her speech, but none of them was called to speak on Friday
The only bishop to have supported the Bill in Lords is the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey (News, 1 November 2024).
The Committee Stage began last Friday, and is scheduled for two further days of debate on 5 December and 12 December.
No serving bishops were called to speak in last week’s debate, although several had registering their intention to contribute.
The former Archbishop of York Lord Sentamu made a contribution that, as he himself said, was “very brief”. It was on the wording of one of the hundreds of amendments that have been put forward, and referred to a patient’s mental “capacity” to ask for an assisted death.
“The word ‘ability’ would probably come much nearer to the understanding of an ordinary person wanting to make a decision about ending their life medically,” Lord Sentamu suggested.
The Committee Stage follows a series of House of Lords Select Committee hearings on the Bill this autumn. The Bishop of Newcastle, Dr Helen-Ann Hartley, was part of the committee, which heard from expert witnesses.