Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Friday 27th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

My Lords, I remind the Committee that the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, is taking part remotely. I invite the noble Lord to reply to the debate.

[Lord Shinkwin (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am mindful that noble Lords will be counting down the minutes to the start of a well-earned Easter Recess, so I will keep my remarks as short as I can. I hope I will be forgiven if I do not refer to individual contributions, but I was struck by the strong consensus that record keeping, as would be provided by the amendments in this group, is crucial—not just to engendering trust in the system but for providing for patient safety, especially as conditions towards the end of life will fluctuate, particularly in the case of delirium. I thank noble Lords for their contributions.

Although I disagree with the noble and learned Lord that it is not appropriate to report any discussions about assisted dying, I believe that keeping records on assisted dying is vital. I feel I must thank him, as something he said on 20 March—the 12th day in Committee—made the case for my Amendment 193 and the other amendments in this group perfectly.

Noble Lords may recall that the noble and learned Lord caused the House to be convulsed in laughter by a quip he made when my noble friend Lord Frost appeared in the Chamber after my noble friend Lord Gove had addressed the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Frost, in his unavoidable absence. According to parliamentlive.tv and the transcript that goes with it, at approximately 4.10 pm on 20 March, on seeing the noble Lord, Lord Frost, return to the Chamber, the noble and learned Lord quipped, “Sorry. Perhaps he shouldn’t have bothered”.

It was brilliant for a number of reasons: its timing, its spontaneity and, in particular, its piercing, if inadvertent, honesty. At a stroke, the noble and learned Lord exposed brilliantly—in the true sense of the word, of shining a light on something—his overall approach to dealing with 14 days of dismissing amendment after amendment and allowing Dignity in Dying and other supporters of the Bill to denigrate noble Lords’ carefully considered and well-intentioned attempts to mitigate the worst dangers posed by the Bill.

Noble Lords would to be forgiven for asking why this is relevant to today’s consideration of this group of amendments. The reason is this: the amendments we are discussing highlight the need for rigorous record-keeping at the preliminary discussion phase and, indeed, beyond, throughout the assisted dying process. Yet noble Lords may be interested to know that, despite it being clearly captured on parliamentlive.tv, both on screen and in the accompanying transcript, as I have already mentioned, there is no record of the noble and learned Lord’s quip in Hansard.

I mean no criticism of our wonderful Hansard team, but I find it rather odd that the official record should be inaccurate in this specific respect. I therefore hope it helps the House, and the noble and learned Lord, that his significant remarks to my noble friend Lord Frost—“Sorry. Perhaps he shouldn’t have bothered”—are now on the record in Hansard. The fact that they were omitted surely provides compelling evidence in support of rigorous record-keeping, as provided for in Amendment 193 and the other amendments in this group. I hope that we can all accept that there is no such thing as too much transparency when it comes to the matters of life and death that we are discussing in relation to the Bill.

In closing, I entirely endorse, as my noble friend Lady Fraser of Craigmaddie, did, the remarks of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland—that we all like each other a lot, and wish all noble Members a very happy Easter. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.