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Hello, I'm Susan Hume and this is the Yesterday in Parliament podcast.

The House of Lords spent another day debating the bill to allow adults in England and Wales with less than six months to live to ask for help to die.

This time, whether an assisted dying service should be separate from the

health service. This was Peer's 11th day of trawling through more than a thousand suggested

amendments to the assisted dying bill, and a non-party peer, Lady Finley, who's a palliative care

expert, suggested quite a fundamental change. She wanted any assisted death service to be completely

separate from healthcare. She used an example from her own practice.

36 years ago, a GP referred a distraught young man whose prognosis as estimated by him,

the surgeon and oncologist, was about three months, saying he is the

most clear cut case for euthanasia I have ever seen. In total pain, desperate for lethal drugs,

with the youngest child at only six weeks old, his care was challenging. Yet, since assisted

death was not available to him 36 years ago,

David is still alive today and has successfully brought up his three children

on his own after his wife died.

And Lady Finley argued that was why the possibility of an assisted death

should not colour someone's medical treatment.

But another non-party peer and doctor, Lady Murphy,

feared that separation would isolate people who were dying

from the support of the doctors who knew them best.

We should not separate them off.

We are there to support them during this process.

...