Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Jay of Paddington Excerpts

Friday 23rd January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

I do not think there is much difference between what I am saying and what my noble friend is saying. I am saying that, if this law is passed, people should be able to obtain assisted suicide because of intolerable suffering. I am not seeking to exclude other matters that might be in their mind, but the cause of asking for assisted suicide should be that suffering. The medical profession, lawyers and judges in particular—if we have the judicial option rather than the panel option—are perfectly capable of reaching a decision on the facts that would lead to the appropriate conclusion.

[Baroness Jay of Paddington (Lab)]

My Lords, I was only going to say to the noble Lord that, as I am sure he will remember, I too was a member of those earlier Select Committees. I am sure in that context he will remember that the arguments, discussions and vagueness, frankly, about how one would ever define “intolerable suffering” in a legal sense, or an Act of Parliament, were even more intense than the ones we are having today. That was because there is even more subjectivity about the concept of “intolerable suffering” than there is about any other.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

I do not agree with the noble Baroness, much as I admire her contributions to this House. I believe that, as a legal concept, what I am suggesting is absolutely clear and could be defined properly if we were to use the courts to make the determinations.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, this is the point where we come to the heart of the reason why I find this Bill so difficult. I know what sort of society I have spent my life trying to produce and work for: a society that cares, particularly for the vulnerable. I was accused by the noble Baroness of being patronising the other day. If it is patronising to defend the vulnerable, I plead guilty.

[Baroness Jay of Paddington (Lab)]

My Lords, I must respond to that. I certainly did not accuse the noble Lord of being patronising. I said that I thought there were difficulties in health policy when we accepted some of the old—and, now, more old-fashioned—concepts in which the medical profession seemed to be patronising. I was not referring to parliamentarians.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I will not take it, therefore, as I did on the occasion when she mentioned it.

What I want to say to the Committee is simply this: many people in many institutions will be tempted to look at the price of death as against the price of life for those who are very seriously ill. There is no doubt at all that all the countries that have already enacted laws of this kind have found this to be a problem. They have all found the difficulty that, for people who have been given about six months to live—even if that is a false diagnosis—there is a tendency to say, “Well, they’re going to die anyway”. A number of noble Lords and noble Baronesses who support this Bill have said that.

I want a society that cares about those people right to their last moment in which they die. That is what I think we are here to do. I hope that does not sound too sentimental, but this is about the difference between kindness and love. Love is something with a backbone that cares for people right to the end and makes sure that they do not feel a burden. We cannot do that for everybody, but the trouble with this particular Bill is that it does not make it absolute and determined that we do look after people and that we find out whether they feel a burden and help them not to feel a burden.

Any of us who has had loved ones who are ill know that, even if they are not seriously ill, the very first thing they do is feel a burden—a burden on their spouses and on other people. That is what decent people do. Other decent people spend their time trying to make sure that they do not feel a burden. Other decent people try to see what is at the heart of their misery—that is the phrase that is used. We should be here to try to remove the misery from people in their last six months, just as we should throughout the whole of their lives. Those who are proposing this Bill seem so committed to getting it through somehow that they think we must not in fact consider what the rest of society is.

I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, hopes to interrupt me, but, before she does, I will just say this. I am not one of those Conservatives who believes in the kind of free market operation where you do not deal with things at all. I am, in that sense, a socialist; I believe in the individual in society. The whole problem with this emphasis on autonomy is that it is not acceptable unless you see the individual in society. The trouble with the Bill is that it tempts those who find it more convenient to allow people to kill themselves because it is more expensive for them to continue to live.