Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Baroness Grey-Thompson and Lord Kennedy of Southwark

Friday 16th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

As I said earlier, it is absolutely fine to break mid-group on these amendments.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, thank you. If there is one place where language matters, it is in the Bill before us. As a young disabled person, I used to interchangeably use “person with a disability” and “disabled person” and did not understand the importance of that. In later amendments, I will argue that “disabled person” is much better phraseology to use.

Language is the dress of thought. We are all spending many hours working on this Bill, but, if the outside world does not understand what is meant by “assisted dying”, we could be in a situation where somebody with learning disabilities or who uses British Sign Language, who has not spent as much time as we have interrogating the Bill in every single session, might not understand what they are signing up to. Personally, I would prefer something around “died by suicide”—that is something else that can be finessed as we go through the Bill.

The BMJ published an article that showed how poorly understood the phrase “assisted dying” was. This highlights the problem that we are facing: the phrase is poorly understood and creates confusion. Just 43% of respondents thought that “assisted dying” involved

“the provision of lethal drugs to end somebody’s life. The majority believed the term meant withdrawing life-prolonging treatment or providing hospice-type care”.

That is something we must consider. The noble Lord, Lord Winston, talked about how the Bill should be largely workable. It should be workable, but it should also be safe. Part of that safety is about the public understanding what they might be signing up to.

In other groups, we have talked about doctors and medics, and I have many in my family. There is nothing more medic-like than using very long words and things that the public do not necessarily understand. Not everybody is an expert patient. We must be clear about what we mean in the Bill. We should stop hiding behind phrases that people may choose to use. To be clear, I have used the term “assisted dying”, because I try to be very thoughtful of the people who do not like “assisted suicide”. However, I have used “assisted suicide” today, and I will from now on, because that is what the Bill is going to do to the people who sign up to it.