Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Friday 24th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

I accept that that is the argument made by the noble and learned Lord. However, the argument I am trying to make here in a limited time is about public opinion and its effect and how we should regard it. When the noble Lord, Lord Barber, said that we have a privilege here, he was right, but I think that he was criticising the privilege in the wrong way. We must exercise that privilege because, unlike most people in this country, we have been able to consider the Bill at great length. We owe it to those people to consider it seriously and to consider all its elements and effects.

I can just testify for myself—because I am not an expert on the subject—but I have learned a tremendous amount in these discussions. I understood the broad arguments of principle before these discussions, but I have just re-read the Explanatory Notes that the noble and learned Lord and others issued about the Bill when it began. The three words “National Health Service” hardly appear in them. This was the big revelation to me and, I think, to many people. It is a matter not just of what you deeply believe about this very important issue—choice versus wider sanctity of life and so on—but of what will happen to the most important public service in this country and all the ramifications of that.

It is quite wrong to speak of a small minority of people who have been constantly agitating within the House. I do not know who those people are, but I know that many noble Lords on both sides, certainly on the side that is critical of the Bill, are very learned people on the subject of the effects on the National Health Service—for example, the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Cass and Lady Hollins. It is very important that they be heard and understood.

I sometimes think the Bill would be clearer if it were entitled the Terminally Ill Adults National Health Service (Assisted Suicide) Bill, because it is not just about assisted suicide. It is about how it would be carried out. It would be carried out by the National Health Service in almost all cases, so we need to debate its costs, its professional conflicts and all the difficult questions that arise. We have been doing that.

I come back, therefore, in justification of what we have all, on both sides, been trying to do. This is described accurately as a conscience Bill. If you have a conscience about something, you must be confident that the result will be safe. If it is not, how could you possibly not object to it? How could you just say, “Oh, well, there we are”? I do not think you can. In his opening remarks, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, said that the Bill has not failed on its merits, and I agree with him. It has failed on its demerits, and it is those that many of us cannot in conscience support.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a very difficult day for this House. It is a profound day, and that has been reflected in extraordinary speeches, but it is a devastating day for people who invested hope that this House would follow the democratic lead of the other place and improve and vote for this Bill.

I am grateful to follow the noble Lord, Lord Moore of Etchingham, because there is one thing on which I want to take issue with him. On 27 March, he said there was “a big moral gulf” in this House between the two sides. I could not disagree more. We disagree on many aspects of the Bill—for example, I disagree with my dear friend, the noble Lord, Lord Deben, that it should have been a government Bill; I think there would have been an outcry if it had been a government Bill—but we are not divided on morality. We find different ways to approach grace. I am particularly glad that we have the most reverend Primate with us today and have listened to her words of reconciliation, because that is what this House has always been about.

Noble Lords will forgive me for a bit of history, but I was the responding Minister on the first Bill on assisted dying in this House in 2005. I remember very well what the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said—several people who are still in this House were there. It was the first time we had ever debated it. What marked that debate in 2005 was a generosity of spirit and a gentleness of approach that took every single view of this House into respectful consideration. That was true of the two other Bills we had in 2014 and 2016. We have never had a debate in this House that has been contested, where views have been challenged for the reasons that they have been held. This Bill has been different in so many ways. The tone of our debate has been pretty awful at times. We have not paid the respect we should have paid to what we have heard—and we have all learned a lot.

I also disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Deben, because I think this Bill is the best Bill we have ever had, not least because it has embedded legislation that has become tried and tested over the years—the Mental Capacity Act, for example. We have listened to the patient voice. We know more about patient safety than we did 20 years ago. We have the experience of many other countries.

When I stood at that Dispatch Box, hardly any of the medical colleges supported that Bill. They were sceptical and some were hostile. Public opinion was very ambivalent; it has moved. Medical opinion has moved to a position of more neutrality.

[Baroness Berger (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

I would prefer not to give way. I have hardly spoken in this debate and I would like to make a coherent case.

Public opinion has moved, medical opinion has moved, and I think the House has moved. Many countries have taken the decision, and millions of people now have the right to choose to die without fear and pain. That of course includes people near to home in Jersey and the Isle of Man. The major critical difference is that this House has listened to the other place make up its own mind—but we have come to the decision that we must not do that.

It is not a bad Bill. It was in the process of improvement. One of the first things that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, said was that he would have accepted many of the amendments that came out of the Delegated Powers Committee report, and it is hardly surprising that that committee found the emphasis on delegation something to comment on. Private Members’ legislation sometimes does not have government rigour, so there is always a sense that you have to put things into implementation. Let us have that debate. We have not had that debate and the House has not been able to vote on it.

I have not had the experience that others across the House have had, which we have heard in extraordinarily personal and powerful statements, not least this morning from the noble Lord, Lord Markham, which was so moving. But in the past few weeks, I have heard the testimonies of people who are living with the reality of what it means to know that they are dying. One of the things they have found so difficult, as has been so well said by many people this afternoon, is the disconnect with reality that they have heard as we have wrestled with arcane elements and bureaucratic and technocratic issues that they do not recognise in their experience of dealing with, say, a multiple team of medics rather than a single practitioner, or with residence qualifications. I will not rehearse any of those arguments.

We would have done better to listen more rather than, in some instances, pontificate. We should have listened to Chris Whitty, who said: do not overengineer a process that is already extremely complicated. I really wish more noble Lords had taken advantage of listening to the Australian practitioners who told us how they manage in the most humane and effective ways to implement the Act in Australia.

I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Moore, is not in his place. I want the House to listen for a moment to the words of a real expert, a terminally ill lady in a wheelchair who we heard on Wednesday:

“I am a lay preacher in the Church of England. I am deeply grateful for the excellent care and treatment I receive … I do not want to die. Not now. I want to live. But alongside that desire to live I carry something else, fear, a deep, persistent fear and how my life may end. And while palliative care is often excellent it is not all powerful. It has limits … I am not alone … too many terminally ill people are living not only with pain but with fear; fear of losing control … Fear of being forced to continue when all sense of dignity and meaning has gone. That fear shapes our days. For some that fear leads to impossible choices”.


She said that she may die

“sooner than I would choose … And yet instead of confronting reality we have seen repeated delay in the House of Lords … Delay is not neutral. It is a choice. A choice that risks overriding the will of the Commons and the wishes of the majority of the public”.