David Aaronovitch, using the pulpit of his column, challenged me to justify an “outrageous claim” that I made in my Easter sermon. I said that there was a “militantly atheist and secularist lobby” that believes that “we have the right to kill... surplus old people”. He replied that it was simply not true.

But there is clearly a strong body of opinion - part of a larger, albeit unorganised, secularising or atheist agenda - pressing in this direction. Such an agenda doesn't need protest marches. It has powerful politicians and journalists presenting the case.

Lord Joffe's “assisted dying” Bill, rejected by the Lords last year, was, at one level, about “voluntary euthanasia”. The normal word for that is, of course, suicide. But his Bill was about those too ill to achieve that unaided - it was proposing not just “voluntary dying” but “lawful killing” by people enlisted by the patient. You can't reduce this, as Mr Aaronovitch implied, to “people having a right to end their own lives”. The question is, do other people have the right to help them do so? Those who support this Bill reckoned they do.

He might want to come back at me on two other counts. First, I said “old” people. But clearly young people, too, suffer debilitating and incurable diseases. Reports from the Netherlands suggest that moves are being made to extend the euthanasia protocol to cover new-born children.

Secondly, I said “surplus” people. It might well be said that they are not “surplus”, but simply “suffering”. Fair point, but once you legalise killing (or “helping people kill themselves”), the key question will be: how do you know which people can be killed? A reasonably fixed answer would emerge, with reference not merely to subjective judgment in individual cases, but also the convenience of the wider society. We would, in effect, set up a governmental sub-department that would decide in principle which people could be killed - which might include some who had not explicitly asked to die. The Dutch experience suggests that this could happen quite quickly.

So I stand by my (admittedly abbreviated) form of words. I agree with the British Medical Association - not to mention Help the Aged, and the Disability Rights Commission - that the Joffe Bill is highly undesirable. So let me invite David to come with me to any one of the splendid hospices here in the North East, where the truly radical alternative to euthanasia is worked out day by day. Palliative care, in which Britain is a world leader, brings genuine relief and comfort to patients and families alike, instead of encouraging them into the murky world of potential mixed motives and huge suppressed moral questions.

The Rt Rev Dr Tom Wright is the Bishop of Durham

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