Lord Sumption tells Stage 4 cancer sufferer her life is ‘less valuable’ than others

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Former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption today told a Stage 4 bowel cancer sufferer that her life was ‘less valuable’ than others.  

Jonathan Sumption, who sat on the Supreme Court until 2018, made the comments while appearing on the BBC‘s The Big Questions this morning to discuss the cost of lockdown. 

He told BBC podcaster Deborah James, 39, that her life was ‘less valuable’ than others because she suffers with Stage 4 metastatic bowel cancer.  

Host Nicky Campbell invited guests to discuss the cost of lockdown and whether it was ‘punishing too many for the greater good’. 

Lord Sumption, who argues that vulnerable people should be able to isolate if they want while leaving the rest of the population to continue without lockdown, said: ‘All lives are not of equal value – the older you are, the less valuable yours is because there’s less of it left.’ 

Ms James, who hosts the BBC‘s You, Me And The Big C podcast, has had 17 tumours in her lifetime and had her latest cancer operation just six weeks ago. 

She told Lord Sumption: ‘With all due respect I’m the person who you say their life is not valuable, I live with metastatic bowel cancer.’  

Lord Sumption then interrupted Ms James and said: ‘I didn’t say your life was not valuable, I said it was less valuable.’

Ms James, from London, known as Bowel Babe, said: ‘Who are you to put a value on life? In my view, and I think in many others, life is sacred and i don’t think we should make those judgement calls. 

‘All life is worth saving regardless of what life it is people are living. 

‘I’m fully aware and I’ve seen first hand and said goodbye to best friends in terms of collateral Covid is causing but at the same time I’m grateful to be somebody who is kept alive because of the NHS… 

‘Only six weeks ago I was in intensive care for a cancer operation that has got me back up on my feet and without that I wouldn’t be here.

‘And we have to protect the NHS to allow the collateral to be as minimal on all health conditions as possible.’ 

Ms James said she has seen ‘many friends’ who she met through cancer die in the four years since her diagnosis. One was a fellow host of the podcast, Rachael Bland, who died of breast cancer in 2018, aged 40. 

Lord Sumption also claimed there was no real evidence to suggest that lockdowns are an effective method for reducing fatalities from coronavirus and instead said there are a ‘large number’ of statistical studies into the relationship between lockdown and mortality and ‘there is almost no correlation at all’.

He added that they show variables which determine mortality depends primarily on the age boundary balance and underlying state of health of the population. 

Lord Sumption said: ‘Covid attacks vulnerable groups… 90 per cent of the deaths from Covid have been of people over 70 and 90 per cent of those have other very serious underlying clinical conditions.’  

He added: ‘Instead of isolating the old and the vulnerable who need it, we have chosen to isolate everybody.   

‘The argument is that if the young fit and healthy get Covid they will pass it on to the old and vulnerable but that is not correct because the old and vulnerable can isolate themselves if they want to.’

In October Lord Sumption accused ministers of keeping Britons ‘under a form of house arrest’ for three months in the spring under the original lockdown.

Giving a prestigious Cambridge University law lecture he attacked the control ministers had had over everyday life, saying they went further than any previous curbs, even during wartime.

The peer, a seasoned critic of the lockdown, accused Mr Johnson and his Cabinet of acting by ministerial decree and sidelining MPs.

His concerns echo those of many MPs who have demanded more power to oversee Government coronavirus measures. 

Tonight he gave a speech, Government by decree – Covid-19 and the Constitution, to the Cambridge Law faculty. 

Speaking via Zoom from Milan he said: ‘During the Covid-19 pandemic the British state has exercised coercive powers over its citizens on a scale never previously attempted.  

‘This has taken effective legal control enforced by the police over the personal lives of the entire population, who they could meet, what they could do, even within their own homes.

‘For three months it placed everybody under a form of house arrest qualified only by their right to do a limit number of things approved by ministers

‘All of this has been authorised by ministerial decree with minimal parliamentary involvement. 

‘It has been the most significant interference with personal freedom in the history of our country. We have never sought to do such a thing before, even in war-time and even when faced with health crises far more serious than this one.’

Lord Sumption, 71, who sat in the Supreme Court from 2012 until his retirement in 2018, has repeatedly warned that ministers have been exceeding their rightful powers. 

He added: ‘I do not doubt the seriousness of the epidemic but I believe that history will look back on the measures taken to contain it as a monument of collective hysteria and governmental folly.’

In another swipe at Mr Johnson, he drew a parallel with its attempt last year to prorogue parliament to force through Brexit legislation.  

He said: ‘Governments hold power in Britain on the sufferance of the elected chamber of the legislature. Without that we are not a democracy.’

Orders to remain at home and rafts of new laws to restrict what people can do amount to a ‘breathtaking’ infringement of democratic rights, he said.

He accused ministers of using the police to suppress opposition to their policies, of creating new criminal offences without the legal right to do so, and of grabbing unconstitutional powers by issuing misleading guidance.

He warned the methods used by ministers will undo the unity of society and will lead to long-term authoritarian government.