Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Friday 16th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak, given that we are going to continue until 5.30 pm and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, has mentioned me. The problem with removing the word “dying” is that it does not give to the public the absolutely key bit of information, which is that these people are dying anyway. We are talking only about people who are dying. That is what the Bill is about: people who have less than six months to live. They are dying. We may have a theological belief that we are all dying, and that each day we get nearer to that, but let us put that to one side.

The removal of the word “dying” would be the worst way to tell people what this Bill is about. The Bill is not about assisted suicide for someone who just decides that they want to commit suicide or have a suicide death—I do not like the word “commit”. It is not about people who suddenly say that they want to commit suicide because of this, that or the other. We are talking only about a cohort of people who are dying; remove that from the Bill and it is less likely to be understood.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

Does the noble Baroness not share my concerns about the misdiagnosis of six months, when you think of all the people who live for much longer afterwards?

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

While that is absolutely a legitimate thing to discuss, and I would always defer to doctors on that, it makes no difference to this part of the argument of whether we call it dying. The noble Lord may well want to raise the question of whether we can ever be sure that someone is dying, although I have to say that I cannot be the only one who has been with someone where it is jolly clear that they are not going to live till the end of the week. There are times when you absolutely know that someone is going to die. While he may well be right that there are other cases, that is not the issue of this word. This word in the Bill is to give to the public the understanding that we are talking about whether there is a way of helping either the final timing or the way of those final days. We are not talking about someone who just decides to commit suicide for some other reason; we are talking about people who are dying from some sort of terminal illness.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the Committee that I am one of those who are still balancing the arguments on the overall Bill, and where I get put off some arguments is when people heckle those who are trying to make a point. I do not think it helps their cause. On the other side of the argument—I am trying not to sound as if I spend my life sitting on the fence—those who speak much longer than they need to in making a point also make it difficult to support some of the points that are being made. On future Committee days, I would like to see a bit more mutual respect between the different sides of the debate, with shorter points made but also less heckling of those who want to make a point. It is important, if we are going to say that we are doing our job in scrutinising the Bill, that everyone who wants to make a valid point, relevant to the amendments, is allowed to make it.

I thank my noble friend Lord Frost for tabling the amendments in this group. I recall that at Second Reading my noble friend Lord Moylan spoke about the importance of language. Language is important, especially clarity of language, so I understand my noble friend’s intentions in tabling these amendments. One could argue that there is a distinction to be made between the terms “assisted dying” and “assisted suicide”. “Assisted dying” on its own, before you even consider the Bill, does not necessarily mean consent on the part of the person whose life is being ended. The Bill introduces that element of consent, but “assisted dying” on its own does not mean consent, whereas it could be argued that the term “assisted suicide” conveys some form of intent—that it is a person seeking to end their own life, they want to do so and are not being assisted to die, regardless of whether or not they want to die. That may seem to be a philosophical point, but it is important that there is a distinction between assisted dying and assisted suicide. As the Official Opposition, we have no collective view, but it is a legitimate challenge by my noble friend to the language of the Bill, seeking clarity or, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said, transparency.

Noble Lords have argued that people in this country should be able to access the services that people can access from Dignitas in Switzerland. However, Dignitas is described as offering physician-assisted suicide. Looking at the Dignitas website—not because I have lost the will to live after trying to get through a day of debates, but to look at the language—I see that it uses the phrase:

“Legal assistance for suicide with DIGNITAS”.


So we have to ask ourselves: if we are trying to be consistent with Dignitas, why is it okay for Dignitas to use the language of “suicide” but, when people want that same service in this country, we cannot use that language?

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

That is exactly because it will take people who are not dying. This is not what this Bill does.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

That is a fair point to be made. It is why the question was asked, and I thank the noble Baroness for answering it.

I thank my noble friend Lord Frost for provoking this debate, because there are still other arguments for using the phrase “assisted suicide”, particularly in terms of clarity. I look forward to the consideration of the arguments made by my noble friend Lord Frost from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, and the Minister.