Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, in a House packed to the gunwales with legal, medical and moral experts, it feels almost impertinent to intervene. However, along with many noble Lords, I have experienced unprecedented lobbying on this Bill. It is only respectful to those who have contacted me to say a few words in one of the most significant Second Readings in my 27 years in this House.

We have watched loved ones die, sometimes peacefully and sometimes in a drawn-out struggle. Like many noble Lords, I am conflicted on this end-of-life Bill. I voted against the last Bill to come before us some years ago. However, in the intervening years, I have tried to see the arguments for self-determination at the end of one’s life and to acknowledge the current, totally inadequate, position of the law in this area. After all, in nearly every other aspect of our lives, we are able to practise autonomy in our decision-making—well, those of us with agency are—so why should we not have self-determination in death if that is our wish and if life has become unbearable?

Yet still, I cannot dismiss my misgivings about my noble and learned friend’s Bill: not religious misgivings—I am afraid I am a collapsed Catholic—but misgivings about the Bill underestimating the coercive factors in society that could affect people at their most vulnerable time, be they personal or financial, and the Bill overestimating people’s ability not to feel a burden on their families and caregivers.

I know that in Clause 11, regulations are to be set out to avoid this happening, but the whole issue of the Bill relying so much on regulations yet to be seen has been rehearsed in the report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which has a point. I worry that we have not yet had time to listen to those professional bodies that are hesitant about the Bill and to ask them about the reliability of a six-month diagnosis. I worry about the lack of learning from other countries where assisted dying is already the law, which provide examples of assisted dying being offered too quickly to those who simply need greater support.

I worry too about the economics of healthcare under the Bill—that assisted dying will be fully funded in our overstretched NHS, while palliative care is only partly funded, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, highlighted last week. Choice is squeezed out in such a scenario. I do not wish to see a future where palliative care withers on the vine while assisted dying becomes the default and cheaper option.

Having said all that, the Commons has spoken and sent us the Bill, and it is our responsibility now to take it and make it as workable as possible for our most vulnerable citizens, as seen in the compromise reached between my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton and my noble friend Lady Berger. We have a job to do in the coming months, and the whole country is watching—not something you often hear about your Lordships’ House.