Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Curry of Kirkharle Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 9th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Noble Lords]

Front Bench!

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB)]

My Lords, I will be very brief. I have tabled two amendments, Amendments 183 and 184, which I shall comment on very briefly. They are designed to address the consistent concern within this group about the availability of palliative care. I shall put some data to this which has not been mentioned.

Every day, it has been estimated that between 250 and 300 people die without adequate palliative care, and more than one-quarter facing the end of life do not receive the care they require and deserve. This is a serious figure: the service is under immense strain. It is a lottery. It varies significant depending on where you live, with ethnic minority groups facing even greater difficulty in accessing the service. One benefit of debating this Bill is that it has brought renewed focus on the palliative care crisis we face. We cannot introduce an assisted dying option without first having addressed this serious concern and without having qualified palliative care advice available to those who may want to choose end-of-life options.

Amendment 183 is a further strengthening of the extremely important amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, which would require quality palliative care to be offered to anyone who may be considering an assisted death, so that no one dies without having had this option. They would have to opt out—that is important. Secondly, Amendment 184 would require a definition of what constitutes a palliative care professional. This has been mentioned before and is extremely important. As a caring society, I believe we have a responsibility to ensure that patients can spend their final days being supported by a quality palliative care service, to relieve their suffering as far as possible. In short, no one should feel that they have no choice but to end their life due to gaps in the care system that we have failed to bridge.

[Noble Lords]

Front Bench!

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Curry of Kirkharle Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part one & Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Lords Chamber

I look forward to the Minister’s positive response to these two amendments, making it, I hope, unnecessary to have to return to this subject at Report.

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests on the register. Until recently, I was a farmer myself, and I have experienced, as the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, explained, the impact of illegal hare coursing—illegal activity—on my land.

I shall not go through the data and all the statistics, which have already been conveyed to the Committee by previous speakers, but I fully endorse the two amendments proposed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and supported by other noble Lords.

The destruction, pain, distress and expense are difficult to quantify. As well as the experience outlined by other noble Lords, it has been my experience that fences have been broken down, livestock have escaped and crops have been trodden on, particularly in wet weather. These things cause enormous distress, and it is a considerable expense to clean up afterwards. Of course, farmers dare not take the law into their own hands, because the consequences of doing that are very apparent, and can be high-risk.

As has been said, all the key rural organisations very much endorse and support these amendments, and I hope that the Minister will accept them and see them as a really positive step forward. They would make the countryside a safer place, not just for people but for hares, deer and other animals.

Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Curry of Kirkharle Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, am deeply concerned about this Bill and oppose it. Let me give yet another very personal insight into why I am concerned. Eight years ago, my wife and I held the hands of our daughter, aged 42, who had a learning disability, while she passed from time into eternity. She breathed her last while we held her hands. It was a very emotional and precious moment for us. It was not an experience that one ever envisages when bringing a child into the world.

Six years before that, she was very ill with pneumonia and other complications and was not expected to survive. We sat with her day and night as she struggled and battled to live. The medical staff had done what they could. Nothing more could be done. It was extremely distressing and we were torn between wishing for her to pull through and thinking that perhaps the best solution might be for her to slip quietly away so that her pain and suffering could be over.

If someone at that time had offered an assisted dying—assisted suicide—option, I firmly believe that in our heightened emotional state, not thinking rationally, we may have been tempted to agree to her premature death. Had we done that, it would have troubled us for the rest of our lives.

Remarkably, she pulled through. It was a long, hard slog, but she enriched our lives for another six years, enjoyed her own life and continued to influence hundreds of people during that time. What a tragedy it would have been had her life been cut short six years too early. That is exactly what will happen if this Bill is supported. There will be a few in the first year and a few hundred in future years who feel that they have become a burden on their families and society and will be killed off prematurely because it will become the simple, easy option.

I fear that this country will become a society that terminates the lives of its old people and its sick and disabled people because they fear they are being a burden to their loved ones and because of the time and the cost of their care. I have the same letter that the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, referred to, where a doctor wrote very eloquently. I want to repeat that phrase: “Doctors are very poor at predicting when people will die.”

We live in an imperfect, fallen world. Support for this Bill will not make it perfect. In closing, I challenge the interpretation of theology given by the noble Lord, Lord Vinson. Christ’s death was not assisted. He voluntarily offered up his life and it was the purpose for which he came.