The bishops have no right to restrict our right to die

The religious dogma on show this week is a good reason to demand root and branch reform of the House of Lords

Polly Toynbee
Friday October 14, 2005
The Guardian


The political power of religion paraded itself in full gaiters this week. It was a useful reminder of how strong the pull of the established church still is, shored up by the other faiths on most of the great moral issues of the day. The religious are vastly overrepresented in the Commons, compared with the few worshippers in the real world. In the Lords the might of the bishops and all faiths who sail with them is formidable.

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This week's debate on Lord Joffe's bill on assisted dying for the terminally ill turned into a remarkable battle between the forces of the enlightenment and a barely disguised medievalism. Who rules here? God or man? How loud the voice of religion sounded in this, the world's most secular nation. So much religious thinking still permeates every aspect of public life as, somehow or other, the religious occupy disproportionate positions of power wherever you look - from prime minister and half the cabinet to the head of the BBC. (Maybe God does look after his own.)

The tone of the Lords debate was set in a joint letter from leaders of the nine major faiths, beginning: "We the undersigned, hold all human life to be sacred." It was thunderingly reiterated alongside the Bishop of Oxford's refrain - we are not autonomous beings. Extraordinary how many religious speakers repeated this odd mantra. How many, too, compared the right to die with abortion: abortion had murdered millions of "pre-born children" and this was also a slippery slope to mass slaughter. (It was a grim warning that the abortion debate will resurface shortly.)

Lord Joffe rightly said: "Much of the passionate opposition to this bill is based on religious beliefs." Yet opinion polls show overwhelming support for the right to die in both Catholic and Protestant pews alike. Trying to disguise the true religious nature of the opposition, God got very few name checks, and even bishops cloaked their beliefs under temporal objections. But Baroness O'Cathain gave the game away when she blurted out: "I have been advised not to mention the Christian faith. I regard that as almost unbelievable."

Atheists did mention God. What was the creator's view of the sanctity of human life in the tsunami and the ruins of Kashmir or New Orleans? Lord Gilmore mocked the Archbishop of Canterbury's saccharine view that everyone was wanted and that every life was valued to the very end; he (Lord Gilmore, that is) would hit anyone who said that while leaving him suffering in agony on his deathbed. As for the sanctity of life: "It is evidently not known or followed by Messrs Bush and Blair, who are killing thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq" - which, he added acidly, God told Bush to do.

The Voluntary Euthanasia Society says well over 60% of the Lords speakers were religious, with battle lines rarely crossed between the rationalists and the believers. Most of the religious acted as though whipped - albeit whipped by God, so their reasoned arguments against the right to die had a hollow, inauthentic ring. Palliative care and hospices for all could make every death a good death, they said. The Bishop of London made death sound delightful: "It may be that a breakthrough to a new reality of human solidarity, to a new depth of experience, of giving and receiving and loving, is part of the education of dying. It is the daily experience of those in hospice care."

How cruelly far removed that vision is from the experience of my mother or Alan Rusbridger's father or thousands more who see those they love inching towards death through a torture chamber. Some will always be beyond the help of even the best palliative care. The religious view distorts all reality to squeeze into its own dogma. It was shocking to hear a number of (religious) doctors claiming every death could be eased and painless these days. Either they are liars or self-deceivers or simply ignorant of what some of their dying patients are going through.

The Bishop of Oxford harrumphed in the Lords at this week's Guardian leader that said the bishops "should be listened to with respect - and then ignored". But he didn't explain why we are obliged to listen to them at all within parliament. It is, says the National Secular Society, the only legislature in the west with ex officio religious lawmakers - 26 bishops are entitled to be there, plus assorted retirees such as Carey and Hapgood, who spoke in this debate too. They have been there since Henry VIII designated their number, though now they represent only 6.6% of the people, the few remaining Church of England worshippers.

The Church of England newspaper trumpeted a triumph: "Euthanasia plans savaged in Lords." This debate was, indeed, a reminder of how strongly the religions still flavour our national discussion, how much they influence government thinking, as they command the airwaves every morning on Thought for the Day with their unchallenged views on abortion or anything else. On this they are wildly out of step with the nation, which has for years overwhelmingly - 82% - supported both the right to die and the right to choose not to give birth.

But for how long will it be until the House of Lords is reformed? Blair has no taste for electoral reform, but bill after bill risks being lost as these appointees assume ever more authority now the hereditaries are gone. It may please many if the Lords block religious incitement and 90-day detention of terror suspects or overturn the new licensing laws, but it is not constitutionally acceptable to have the Commons constantly overruled by the Lords. Party political shenanigans in shifting alliances are often disguised as principled objection.

By a hair's whisker and due to procedural chaos, Lords reform failed last time. However, the favoured compromise option likely to succeed in the end was for a chamber 80% elected regionally, by proportional representation, and 20% appointed. But who will that 20% be?

Labour's manifesto promises a chamber balanced for gender, race and religion. The bishops are to remain, and space will be found for other denominations and other faiths. However, Professor Ian Maclean of Oxford has proved by calculation that it is statistically impossible to appoint 20% of the lords to ensure a balance for religion as well as race and gender. Including religion simply cannot be done; and most voters think religion should have no place anyway.

The way this government nurtures religion is beyond comprehension in most of its own ranks. Why 150 more separatist faith schools? Why incitement to religious hatred when hardly a voice in the Commons could be found to support it, and when most people profess no religion? And what is all this for? As religion breaks out across the world as the most ferociously divisive force, it is time to be serious about secularism.

There was no vote this week; the bill returns in January, and the outcome hangs in the balance. Many laws are passed amid much sound and fury, signifying very little in the end. But if this bill does not pass, it will condemn yet more helpless people to a humiliating and desperate end. For myself, until the law is changed I shall hold on to the supply of my mother's morphine pills and be sure to take them in good time should a horrible death ever beckon.

· polly.toynbee@guardian.co.uk