Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Lord Hamilton of Epsom

Committee stage
Friday 23rd January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

If I understand the noble Baroness correctly, that is 23% of people who die well beyond the six-month sentence they have been given. That is an extraordinarily large figure, and I am grateful to her for it. I think that makes us question the whole basis of this Bill which is talking about medical diagnosis that gives people a limited life but turns out to be wrong. This could be very disturbing, if we are going to go ahead on the basis of information that could be wrong in quite as many cases as that.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord asked about data. During the Select Committee that was held on Lord Joffe’s Bill on this subject, the Royal College of Pathologists told us in evidence that, at post-mortem, one in 20 people were found to have died from something different to what was written on the death certificate. That underlines the point that he makes: errors in diagnosis are the fundamental problem, happen quite often and result in the wrong treatment being given—not through malpractice, but just because medicine is a very inexact science.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness. That just illustrates my point that misdiagnosis can very easily be done, and we are putting an enormous weight on it in this Bill and it can so often be wrong. We should be very disturbed and concerned about that because it means that we may be passing legislation which is based on faulty information.