Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Lord Harper

Committee stage
Friday 23rd January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

That is a very helpful intervention because the evidence from the places that have gone down this road and changed their legislation is that the unassisted suicide rate does not fall. This does not seem to prevent suicides from happening and these amendments are about people having information. With these amendments, we are not debating whether the Bill passes; we are debating the contents of the Bill and whether it is safe for patients.

Given the problems, I ask the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer: is there a plan to relicense drugs that in this country are available only for veterinary use, for the purpose of ending the life of patients here?

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I will make two brief points. First, I support the important point made by my noble friend Lady Berridge about how we deal with misinformation. In an enlightening exchange I had with Health Ministers on the subject of flu vaccination, I discovered that a significant number of people working in the health service are vaccine hesitant and at least some of them are because of the scare stories that we read about vaccination. I suspect that those people will be more informed than the general public, because they work in the health service, so how we deal with misinformation is very important.

My main question, for which I am pleased to be in this House surrounded by expert lawyers, is a legal question on Amendment 188A, tabled by my noble friend Lady Coffey, about putting current case law in statute. My question is aimed at the Minister, I suspect, but if he is not able to answer it today, I would be grateful if he could write to us. Would it be helpful to put the current case law position in statute? Would that be helpful in the sense of giving Parliament’s imprimatur, saying that we are comfortable and that we think the current position is helpful? Would it in any way inhibit or prevent the development of further case law?

Again, because of what my noble friend Lady Berridge said, I am conscious that a lot of the information that people get is from online sources. Because of the fast-changing nature of the world, artificial intelligence and so forth, I would want to make sure that, in this area, evolving ways of people getting accurate information that they can rely on were able to be taken into account by case law; equally, I would want to ensure that case law could take into account information sources that are not reliable and reputable and give guidance to clinicians about how they deal with informed consent. The danger of putting some of that detail into statute is that it does take some time to update. I am looking for factual guidance about whether that is helpful for us to put into statute or whether it is better to leave it for evolving case law. It is a factual question, and I hope that the Minister can either deal with it today or write to us.