Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Gerada

Committee stage
Friday 27th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gerada (CB)]

I have talked before about using the term “assisted suicide”. If this becomes available, it will be an unusual event: we are not talking about hundreds of patients wanting an assisted death. I suspect that, within each local area, a list will be available, held at the local health authority or wherever, of those doctors who are willing to participate. Noble Lords may have gone to the event at which the Australians said how it is done in their country: it is done by doctors of all professional groups. It is about the competence and capabilities, not the specialties, of those doctors who wish to pursue the training in order to become competent and capable of doing this. This is all feasible. We are not talking about me in my consulting room nipping off at lunchtime and administering assisted death. We are talking about a regulated system that will be properly managed with small numbers. I hope that is an answer.

My final point is about the use of drugs that are there to treat disease. I am sure that, with her expertise in palliative care, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, will know that, at the end of life we use drugs, sometimes at extraordinarily high doses, that we know will accelerate death.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

I intervene on the noble Baroness’s comment about training. Everybody is, indeed, trained in abortion, for example, as they go through medical school, but by the time you are practising clinically and you are on a specialist register, you are no longer keeping up to date with those skills at all, and your revalidation depends on your keeping up to date with those skills, which is the benefit of having a specialist register.

If I might comment on the noble Baroness’s opening remarks about being worried about receiving hate mail, perhaps she might have some sympathy for those of us in palliative medicine who have been receiving a great deal of hate mail because we are known to be specialists in palliative medicine and because we have been flagging up concerns over the Bill. As for the numbers—