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Euthanasia by the Back Door

EUTHANASIA BY THE BACK DOOR

I spent two full Parliamentary days this week debating a Bill which may not on the face of it sound very exciting – the Coroners and Justice Bill. I had particularly strong views on Military Inquests (because of the obvious Wiltshire connection), on the disgraceful proposal that many inquests could be heard in private and without a jury, on which I am glad to say that Jack Straw eventually bowed to pressure; on the simply outrageous Clause 152, which would have allowed Government departments to transfer vast swathes of personal information from one to another without so much as a by-your-leave, (and doubtless losing much of it along the way), on which again Mr Straw saw the writing on the wall from HM Opposition and dropped it.

I also very much welcomed the clauses in the bill designed to outlaw the sick internet websites that promote or encourage suicides, of which there have been at least two here in North Wiltshire. But that thoroughly decent effort by the Government has been hijacked by the vociferous pro-euthanasia lobby who are at least trying to make “assisted dying” in Switzerland legal. Well if those who believe in euthanasia (and I most passionately do not) want to make “assisted suicide” legal, then they should bring in a bill to that effect and let us have a thorough debate about it in Parliament, and I hope consign it to the dustbin of history. But bringing it in by the back-door in this way is disgraceful and spineless.

Permitting relations to assist people to go to Switzerland to commit suicide may of course be permissible for certain compassionate reasons; and I wholly accept the DPP’s decision not to prosecute the people who have done so. But making it explicitly legal to do so would open the door to all sorts of far less justifiable cases.  Consider, for example, the grandparent of a family hard hit by the economic recession who is seriously ill and needs care in his or her dying days. How easy it would be for the elderly relative to feel pressure from the easy availability of “physician-assisted suicide” take the view that they would be better off out of the way. And what a burden to place on the doctors’ shoulders.

The handful of people who go to Switzerland to commit suicide – and it is a handful, around 1 in every 30,000 of Britons who have died in the last 5 years – are not typical of terminally or chronically ill sufferers as a whole.  The Swiss suicides tend to be highly resolute and self-confident individuals who know their own minds and will not be deflected by anything from doing what they want.  Those who work, day in and day out, with seriously ill people will tell you that it is far from typical. The overwhelming majority of seriously ill people are frightened and vulnerable; they want good care and reassurance. They are also prone to depressive moods and to feelings of guilt at the burden that their illness may be imposing on others.  It is this silent but vulnerable majority, not the self-reliant minority for whom Dignity in Dying is vociferously campaigning, that the law protects – from themselves as much as from others.

What should not happen is that a Bill designed, among other things; to tighten the law to control sick internet websites should be hijacked by activists to give us euthanasia by the back door. I will continue to oppose it through all of its stages.

ID Cards & Data Sharing

Passports, ID cards, databases, central control and record keeping. First it was the bureaucratic shambles of passports issued to cows to combat BSE (which recently very nearly ruined the livelihood of a farmer in Brinkworth); now it is compulsory electronic ear tags for sheep which could do untold damage, especially to our upland farmers. Then it was horses - compulsory passports for all for fear that veterinary medicines might land up in the food chain, ignoring the fact that we don’t eat horses in England, and that no breaches have been found amongst those few we do slaughter for export. A vast and expensive bureaucracy (which incidentally has not worked since fewer than 50% of all horses have passports!) for no purpose whatsoever.  And since owners are unlikely to take the trouble to remove their horses from the database when they die, a few years from now we will have a database stuffed full of dead horses!

It was animals first. Now it’s our turn. A local surgery is annually demanding written details of each patient –smoking, eating, drinking habits, weight etc etc. Fair enough, you might think, if it’s to the benefit of the patient. But it has actually got nothing to do with doctoring, and everything to do with centrally collected statistics about our nation’s health. Apparently unless surgeries collect this data, and unless by that means they prove some kind of improvement in health locally, then they will lose part of their central government funding! Well quite frankly, I hope that patients will tell them to get lost. Or do as one blond-haired young man did when a policeman - for no reason other than bureaucracy - enquired about his racial origin told him defiantly that despite appearances he was in fact Afro-Caribbean! Or as one ultra-busy friend of mine told some interfering busybody of a questionnaire who asked what he did in his spare time, “I play with Tinkerbell and the fairies at the bottom of my garden.” That will have thrown some faceless data inputter into total confusion!

Now a database is demanding information about our intentions at least two weeks before we leave these shores, apparently with a view, amongst other things, to collecting unpaid parking charges! And if we let them get away with it, the Government will spend £16 Billion on unwanted and unnecessary ID cards. You won’t have to carry it, just show it at a police station within 48 hours of being stopped. Well only law abiding citizens will do so, rather than the illegal immigrants, benefits swindlers and criminals they are actually designed to catch! And anyhow the tax credits system, Child Support Agency, Immigration authorities and Passport Office to name but a few recent Government IT projects leave me with little confidence that it would be anything other than a complete shambles. Every time any one of the 65 million of us changed name, got born or died, changed address or other details, the great computer in the sky would have to register that fact.

Well I’ve struck a bit of a blow against all this. Clause 152 of the Coroner‘s Bill, on whose committee I am currently serving would have allowed all Government departments to share the data they hold on you and me amongst themselves at will. (No doubt losing most of it along the way.) I am delighted to say that under pressure HMG have now agreed to drop it. Which will leave me with more time to play with Tinkerbell and the fairies at the bottom of my garden.

Calm Before The Storm

There’s a very strange mood around Parliament at the moment. Despite the huge crises facing us Nationally and Internationally, everything feels eerily quiet. The Government have hardly any “business” going through- in other words precious few bills; the public and press seem stunned by the sheer size of the numbers involved in the bank bail-out (I have to admit that I have never seen a trillion written down and would be hard pressed to tell you how many noughts it has!); and several one-off events seem to have diverted our attention from the big issues of the day.

Gordon Brown made a genuinely most touching tribute to Ivan Cameron last Wednesday, and the normal bear-pit of Prime Minister’s Questions was suspended as a result. It is at moments like that when the House is at its best- all parties come together in a kind of common humanity. The Prime Minister was close to tears, he having suffered a similar terrible bereavement to David Cameron’s. All of our hearts go out to David and Samantha. It is hard to imagine the agony of losing a child as they have done.

Then the focus of attention shifted to Sir Fred Goodwin, and his admittedly outrageous £693,000 pension. However the real scandal is not just pensions and bonuses in the City of London, but the pension payable to the steward of the entire economy for the last twelve years, namely Mr Brown himself. And what about the Government Minister who signed Fred Goodwin’s pension off? Was that incompetence or foolishness? At all events, we seem to have allowed our indignation at pensions and bonuses to divert our attention away from those countless zeroes which make up a trillion, and the appalling debt which will hang over us for generations to come. One almost wonders whether Mr Brown may have fallen on the Fred Goodwin pension scandal as a way of diverting attention away from his own ruination of the economy. Remember that Government spin-doctor who talked of a “good day to bury bad news.” Fred the Shred seems to have had the same beneficial effect for Gordon Brown.

Life goes on for me in the sense of the Coroners Bill which has dominated my week –especially military coroners and internet assisted suicide, and I was glad to be in Parliament on Friday to support Cheryl Gillan’s Autism bill and to force it through despite Labour’s opposition.

I hope that normal hostilities will resume this week. The economy is ruined. The bodies of five young men repatriated through Wootton Bassett remind us that the World remains a terrible place.  Was it not in the run-up to the Second World War that we experienced a curious period of eerie peacefulness. The calm before the storm. I have a notion that we are seeing something similar right now.

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