Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Archbishop of York Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Archbishop of York]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins. I will of course speak for myself, but I also know that I represent views held by many faith leaders—not just Christian leaders—across our nation, with whom I have been in discussion and who have written to me.

Jesus teaches us that how we live our lives in relationship to others is vital for the health of our society and our own personal well-being. We belong with and for each other. The Bill is wrong because it ruptures relationships, serving one need but creating many others.

The noble Lord, Lord Baker, and several others in this important and moving debate gave the game away early on: no Government, he said, will be prepared to provide palliative and social care in the way it is needed, thus revealing that the Bill’s impact will be economic as well as social. Several speakers said there were too many safeguards; others, that provision for assisted dying ought to be expanded.

As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, pointed out, if this is where compassion leads, the logic of compassion demands the scope be widened. On this side of the argument, and also motivated by compassion, we must say that, while we share the same anguish as we witness the death of a loved one and long for the suffering to end, there is a moral universe of difference between doctors and clinicians in consultation with families withdrawing treatment in the last days of someone’s life, and picking out six months as the point at which life for some can be extinguished.

If we do this, we unleash into our society a fundamental change in our relationships: the relationship between death and life, between doctor and patient, between parent and child, between citizen and state. Last year I saw this at first hand in Canada, where priest after priest told me heart-rending stories of people choosing an assisted death because it was better for their family than spending an already meagre inheritance on expensive care and sometimes feeling forced into this choice; they felt it was their duty to die. I know this is not what we want here, but this is what we are proposing. Do we seriously think that if the Bill is passed, palliative care will not be detrimentally impacted or six months will not in due course become 12?

I think we can do better than this. Of course, I do not want anyone to die a painful, agonising death, but nor do I want poor and vulnerable people to be faced with such agonising choices. Better palliative care can massively ease the first dilemma. Assisted death will turbocharge the latter.

Before I trained for ordination, I worked for a year at St Christopher’s Hospice. It was probably the most formative year of my life. On my first day on the ward, I was terrified; all I could see was cancer and death. But during that year I learned that it is possible to live until you die, and although there are some illnesses so hideous that they cannot be completely controlled, in most cases they can, honouring people’s dignity and upholding their value as someone made in the image of God until their life’s end. Why then, I ask the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, does the Bill deny the right of hospices to opt out?

I welcome the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, but I also want to say, alongside the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, that if the Bill reaches a Third Reading, we on these Benches will be prepared to table an amendment to offer us a vote. Meanwhile, I give the last word to Dame Cicely Saunders:

“You matter because you are you, and you matter to the last moment of your life. We will do all that we can not only to help you die peacefully, but also to live until you die”.

Social Care: Workforce Strategy

Lord Archbishop of York Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I do not recognise “cuts” in this context. Noble Lords are aware that we have committed to a £7.5 billion increase over the next two years, which amounts to about a 20% increase. We will see record investment and provision in this area.

[The Archbishop of York]

My Lords, the report by the Archbishops’ Commission on Reimagining Care was published in January. I am sure that the Minister is aware of this: in fact, I know that he is having a meeting later today with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle, who co-chaired that commission. We argue for a very bold approach to social care, which puts at its heart the concept of a care covenant, with clear expectations on each of us of what we should give and expect in return, recognising that each of us is a carer and that most of us will need care one day.

I speak as someone representing a region. In the cities of Hull and Middlesbrough, which I serve, I see many people in need of care and not receiving it; I discover that recruitment and retention are appalling; and I find care workers having to use food banks so that they can feed their families. It gives me no pleasure to say that we are in a very distressing situation.

I realise that the Minister is not in a position where he can say much but, surely, at the heart of this, as the noble Baroness said, it is about valuing the care worker in the same way that we value others. Can he give us an assurance that this will be at the heart of what is proposed?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

Absolutely. I speak as an ex-carer myself. Caring is part of everyone’s role, as has been quite rightly written about. Part of this is about the people we are employing. I am glad to say that we are managing to increase recruitment, which is not easy in the age of full employment. It is about the parts that you and I—all of us—can play in care in the community, and organising domiciliary care so that we can have a full wraparound service.

Vaping

Lord Archbishop of York Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I am not sure who unicorn milk would appeal to—maybe my five year-old, but she is not smoking yet. Seriously, the point here is about advertising. It is quite right that they cannot be advertised to promote them but they can be advertised for public health reasons. They are incredibly effective at stopping people smoking. As I have said, we are not seeing the kind of abuse and the epidemic of youth usage that we have seen in the States, but we are alert to any signs that that may be the case.

[The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford]

My Lords, the Minister’s joke makes the point. Does he agree that such flavours appeal to children and one needs to be careful about that?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The right reverend Prelate is right. However, as I say, we do not see evidence of what is going on in the States happening in this country. The reason for that is that we have many more restrictions, and the US is now playing catch-up by introducing them.