Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Falconer of Thoroton Excerpts

Friday 24th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.

Amendment to the Motion

Moved by

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

At end insert “and takes note of the progress of its scrutiny of the Bill during the current session”.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

My Lords, today is our final day scheduled for the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. I am despondent that this Bill, so important to so many, has failed not on its merits but as a result of procedural wrangling. There is no prospect that the Bill can get through this House today or before Prorogation ahead of the King’s Speech on 13 May. Consequently, we cannot complete the Committee stage, let alone have a Report stage, when we could have tested the House’s views on the amendments proposed and then had a Third Reading debate.

If the elected Chamber decides to return this Bill to us in the next Session, as I very much hope it will, there will be ample time for us to pick up where we left off and complete the proper task assigned to us as a revising Chamber. We are not a democratically elected House, but we are rightly held to account for what we do here, or, in this case, what we have not done. Members of the public, who support assisted dying by a very large margin, will be asking themselves why Parliament has failed to enact a measure that they believed would and should become law after Members of Parliament voted in favour of it in the other place. That is why I believe it is not only right but imperative that we take some time today to consider why we find ourselves in this position.

I remain as committed to this Bill as I have been throughout the whole process, and so, I believe, do a majority in this House. We know that a majority of the Commons do, as do a majority of the public, as demonstrated in survey after survey by reputable polling organisations over a long period of time. The assisted dying Bill commands strong views. In those circumstances, it is for us in your Lordships’ House to debate with civility and patience. We need to set an example, in the way we conduct this debate, to everybody else engaged in the debate. I have kept that important point in my mind at all times in the course of this debate.

The public have had an eye on our proceedings on this matter in a way that they rarely do. Our constitutional role is to revise and propose amendments, not to block. I know, because many noble Lords have said so, that it is not just supporters of this Bill who believe that we have let ourselves and Parliament down. Much more importantly, we have let down those terminally ill people, and those who love them, who were depending on us at least to reach conclusions on the Bill. Although this House has debated assisted dying on several occasions over the past two decades, for the first time we have had before us a Bill sent from the other place following unprecedented scrutiny and with clear majorities there at both Second and Third Reading. The suggestion that Members of Parliament did not deeply interrogate this Bill in the other place and that the issues it raised were not properly dealt with is profoundly mistaken.

The Bill passed its Third Reading in the Commons in June after more than 100 hours of debate, including 29 sittings in Bill Committee, two full days of debate on Report on the Floor of the House, and a full day’s debate at both Second Reading and Third Reading, with no whipping and no guillotines. That is almost double the time given to scrutiny in the other place of, for example, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that we have been debating. Altogether, the Bill Committee in the other place considered and debated over 600 amendments, accepting around a quarter of them. Over 100 amendments were made in the sponsor’s name and more than 30 amendments were tabled by MPs and passed by MPs who had voted against the Bill.

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I am a democrat. I used to be an MP; I lost, and now I am here. It is the choice of the Commons whether to decide to use the Parliament Act for this Bill. That is their privilege, which I respect. But I hope they look at the issues that have been raised in this House and look carefully at what has gone through, not only in the Commons but here, and at the unanswered questions, when considering whether the Bill before us today is the right Bill to achieve the ends that they wish.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

The noble Baroness will be aware, and I am sure she will agree, that if the Bill comes back a second time to the Commons, it will come back here. The effect of the Parliament Act is not to stop further debate but simply to prevent the House blocking the Bill and not returning it to the Commons.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

Yes, I completely agree. That is why I say that I respect the right of MPs to decide to use the Parliament Act process. But I would rather that we did not have to go through all this again, having to change what has been a flawed Bill at this end. I appreciate and am aware of the Parliament Act process.

I completely understand the passion of people who want assisted dying to happen in this country. A variety of amendments have been rejected when talking about pain or other things being key criteria, or about autonomy versus the risk of coercion, and I think they should come up with a better Bill.

I am conscious that I have spoken for somewhat longer than I had intended. I could have said a lot more in response to what the noble and learned Lord said. The two Houses are different in their processes. I could have given examples of popular PMBs; one in particular had a majority of 304 in the Commons and then never made it through this House. I am conscious that others want to speak and, for what it is worth, I do want us to go into Committee at some point today. With that, I beg to move.

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I am in a different position from many noble Lords because the sponsor of the Bill, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, actually agreed with one of my proposals, on 16 January. He tabled three amendments—Amendments 330A, 357A and 387A—on requiring a doctor to ask somebody why they want an assisted death. If this legislation stops today, I would very much like to ask the noble and learned Lord—as well as anyone in the other place who might be minded to sponsor a similar Bill in the next Session—to do as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said and find a way of bringing forward legislation that includes some of the safeguards that the noble and learned Lord has indicated he would support.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

I apologise for intervening but I completely agree with what the noble Baroness has just said. The way in which that would happen is that the Bill would come back from the Commons and we would agree here to put in the amendments that I put in as a result of the power of the noble Baroness’s speeches. We would then send it back to the Commons, where it would be agreed, so as to not let it be caught again in a procedural thicket.

[Baroness O’Loan (CB)]

My Lords, as we all know, this is a Private Member’s Bill. There was no manifesto commitment to it, nor was it in the King’s Speech.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness O’Loan (CB)]

The noble and learned Lord is interrupting me but I am not going to give way.

As the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House said, it is our duty to scrutinise, approve, amend or reject any Bill. Constitutionally, we are under no duty to pass a Bill simply because the other place did so. No constitutional crisis will ensue when this Bill fails, as it probably will do today. A majority of MPs now agree that that is the case.

Government Ministers have told the House that the Government are not responsible for ensuring that safety is considered and provided for in legislation —that it is a matter for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, and, ultimately, a duty of this House to scrutinise draft legislation in order to ensure that what we pass is safe. Yet what has happened is that, although the noble and learned Lord has made multiple commitments to table amendments to remedy problems, he has not done so. Indeed, some of the amendments that he has tabled have reduced the safeguards contained in the Bill, such as those inserted by Daniel Francis MP and Jess Asato MP, which relate to people with learning disabilities and domestic abuse. We know that it has been said that MPs expected this House to scrutinise the Bill and improve it, but, as The Parliament Politics reports:

“New data has emerged suggesting that the initial support for the bill was not an endorsement of its specific mechanics, but rather a tentative nod toward a concept that many MPs now believe is fundamentally unsafe”.


Now, only 40% of them would vote for the Bill, while 45% would not.

As has been said, there was no pre-legislative scrutiny, consultation or proper impact assessment before the Bill was introduced. The result was widespread concern, not least among the professional organisations. The short Lords Select Committee that took evidence received very specific, detailed criticisms and concerns from stakeholders. Most of those concerns have not been addressed by the Bill’s sponsor, including concerns articulated by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Pathologists, the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Physicians, the British Geriatrics Society, the Law Society, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the organisation Standing Together Against Domestic Abuse. These are very real concerns about the safety of the Bill, its impact and its effect on professionals and ordinary people.

The debates at Second Reading and in Committee have enabled very extensive and necessary discussion on much of the Bill—but because it was so deficient when it came to your Lordships’ House, much remains to be considered. At least 244 Peers have been directly involved in scrutiny of the Bill in Committee. The average speech has lasted less than seven minutes. It has been said that only a handful of Peers tabled amendments. In fact, 92 Peers tabled or supported amendments. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, tabled 76 amendments. The noble Lords, Lord Birt and Lord Pannick, tabled 35 amendments jointly. Apart from that, the supporters of the Bill did not table any amendments and nor, for the most part, was there any constructive contribution to improving the Bill.

We have now debated more than 800 amendments. In the course of that debate, we have considered not just seven clauses, as has been asserted. Rather, we have considered Clauses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 41, 42, 43, 47, 49, 50, 51, 56, 57, 58 and 59, and Schedules 1, 2 and 3, in whole or in part.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

Is the noble Baroness’s position that we have completed our scrutiny in Committee of all clauses beyond the seven that she has mentioned? If not, I am not quite sure what point she is making. We certainly mentioned those clauses, but the idea that we completed our scrutiny is nonsense.

[Baroness O'Loan (CB)]

My Lords, to be accused of nonsense is slightly unsettling. I do not accept the accusation. The reality is that we have considered in depth a number of issues—

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[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

I apologise for saying “nonsense”.

[Baroness O'Loan (CB)]

This Bill seeks to provide for individuals to be provided by doctors with fatal drugs to kill themselves. Where those patients cannot self-administer, Clause 25(8) says that

“the coordinating doctor may … assist that person to ingest or otherwise self-administer”

the drug. We have not yet debated this clause at length, but it does raise the spectre of Dr Shipman. What protection is there against a Dr Shipman in these circumstances? What protection exists for those who may be subject to coercion, which will not be identified because of virtual assessments—for example, where the assessing doctor is not in the room with the patient or has no way of knowing who else is there or what is going on? These things had to be identified and discussed and amendments tabled to address them.

In the course of our debates and through the submission of evidence to the Committee, we have identified multiple other serious problems. On many of them there was no engagement by the sponsor, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, said. Following clearly argued criticisms, the noble and learned Lord has accepted a long number of problems with the Bill. However, there are virtually no amendments to address those issues. The legal definition of persons exerting pressure must expressly include bodies corporate, to uncover institutional or organisational abuse. Think of the pressures of bed-blocking and budgets in the NHS.

Regrettably, many of the amendments that the noble and learned Lord tabled weaken safeguards for which the MPs voted—such as explicit domestic abuse training or the mandatory independent advocate presence—under the guise of tidying up the Bill. Often these would save the Government money. The Government’s impact assessment reveals that it almost halves the cost of the assisted dying process if independent advocates or translators do not have to be present. There was provision for independent advocates to assist those who have substantial difficulty in understanding the process. Under the noble and learned Lord’s amendments, the advocate does not have to be physically present during medical assessments—and a person is allowed to entirely waive their right to an advocate.

It is perhaps paradoxical and dangerous to expect someone who qualifies for an advocate, precisely because they struggle to understand information, to independently decide to waive that very protection at the outset. The advocate is introduced only after key clinical and eligibility assessments have been completed, rendering them a box-ticking process. Think of the more than 100 languages spoken in England and Wales and of the problems of people with hearing difficulties, articulated by the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, and other communication difficulties.

Doctor-shopping possibilities have expanded as a consequence of the noble and learned Lord’s amendments. Let us be very clear. As is appropriate, our debates have ranged over a large number of issues. We have considered the effect on the NHS, the necessity to revise the NHS constitution, and the effect on practitioners who did not join their professions to kill people and who need protection against involvement. We have yet to debate the existing conscience protection provisions, but we know that they are inadequate. The BMA and the royal colleges asked for an explicit opt-in model, which was rebuffed multiple times in the Commons. The noble and learned Lord finally acknowledged the concern, but his Amendment 669A introduces an opt-in requirement only for training, not for assisted dying as a whole.

The Bill provides some protection for professionals but not for all the other people who enable our NHS to work—the administrators, the porters, the cleaners. The current option of going to an employment tribunal if facing disciplinary action in the context of an unwillingness to engage in any way in assisted dying is just not satisfactory. People need their jobs to pay their rent or mortgage, to feed their children. A system-wide opt-in model is the only way to protect staff from institutional pressure, yet the noble and learned Lord drew the line at protecting administrative staff, to ensure that the NHS runs properly.

Too many issues that should be debated fully in this House are to be left to secondary legislation, which Parliament can only accept or reject but not amend—for example, the approval of lethal drugs and the provision of assisted suicide services in England and Wales, which the DPRRC has said should be removed.

We talk of democracy, yet there is nothing democratic about handing sweeping powers to Ministers rather than to Parliament. There are those who, like me, believe that all life is sacred and to be protected, from conception to natural death. That has not been the subject of our debates over these months. As legislators, some with a religious faith and some with humanist beliefs or maybe no beliefs, we have been through this Bill word by word and clause by clause to see whether it can be improved. We have identified the massive inadequacy in the provision of specialist palliative care and the consequences of that inadequacy; the disparity of access to hospice care; the unique identity of hospices in providing a safe place to live and die without pain and at peace; the huge trust that is fundamental to the doctor-patient relationship in places in which people live and die; and the potential consequences if the Bill is passed for private and public funding arrangements for hospitals and the NHS.

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[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, this is a Private Member’s Bill, finally passed in the Commons with a shrinking majority of 26. I have spoken to a number of Labour MPs since, and what is possibly not known is that there was considerable pressure from No. 10 to pass the Bill. It was known that the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, supported it, and indeed there were government party Bill supporters standing at the entrance to the Lobbies taking note of who was going through. I am just passing on what Labour MPs have said to me: that they felt intimidated.

There have been and still are considerable concerns about such an important matter as assisted suicide coming on the statute book through a Private Member’s Bill. It has not had pre-legislative parliamentary scrutiny, as we have heard. Committee stage in the other place was chaired by its sponsor and appeared to some to be unbalanced, and there has been no publicly available impact assessment or cost analysis by the Government.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

The noble Lord says that there has been no publicly available impact assessment; that is wrong. There is a publicly available impact assessment, published not by the sponsors but by the Department of Health and Social Care.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

I will continue. Almost 250 Members of this House have been involved in a massive and sustained effort to try to make the Bill safe and workable. The House staff, as we have heard, have been outstanding in their service to us all and I am sure we are extremely thankful and grateful to them for that. Much has been imputed, particularly in the press, about our motivation in closely scrutinising the Bill, including that we are cruel. At no time have we been unaware of the suffering that the Bill’s supporters have wanted to alleviate. However, it is not compassionate to pass a Bill without addressing the many concerns raised by royal colleges, three committees of this House, myriad disability groups and others: that would be cruel to the poor and the vulnerable. Yet we, and by extension they, have been shown not a little contempt at times when we have taken time to lay out how the Bill would affect them. We need to be wary of contempt when courtesy, as we were reminded at the beginning, is the currency of this House.

I continue to have a quiet concern about the language used. Orwell described political language as

“designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”.

First, we talk about “assisted dying”, when we surely mean “assisted suicide”. Assisted dying is what Dame Cicely Saunders said hospices and palliative care would provide. She said:

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


I urge this Government to do what no previous Government have done and make high-quality palliative care sustainable and universally available.

Secondly, the legal qualifier for assistance is terminal illness within six months to live. As we have heard already, when that prognosis has at least a 20% to 30% unreliability, according to evidence given to the Select Committee, we should not pretend that legal solidity exists where actually there might be pure wind. Thirdly, any notion that noble Lords are filibustering rather than legitimately scrutinising the Bill is unsustainable, given both the length of the Bill and the proceedings in the Commons, and the fact that the mean length of speeches in this House has actually been under five minutes.

Finally, I detect an assumption that anyone who is religiously motivated should not be heard or impose their views on anyone else. We do not impose our views, but we do echo a very substantial number of people outside this Chamber whose faith is partly why the Bill evokes deep concern. In contrast, every day of our lives, secular humanism is imposed on us, with its assumptions about the primacy of individual autonomy and the irrationality of belief. Such assumptions deny that human existence is inherently relational, deny the loneliness of hyperindividualism and deny that it takes more faith to believe that this incredible world in which we live came from nothing than to believe that there is something or someone behind it:

“Does he who make the eye not see?”

Finally, there are very many ethical, medical and practical reasons why this Bill has needed robust and lengthy scrutiny from a very diverse group of Peers. The process in this House and evidence from other countries have profoundly challenged the assumption that the service that the Bill attempts to provide can be safe. Many here say that this is based not on faith, but on evidence. To return to what I said at the beginning, this House has a premier global reputation for its thoroughness of scrutiny. When I was in Brussels, I talked to an Italian lawyer working for the European Commission who said that the work received from this House was second to that from no other secondary Chamber in the world. I believe that we have lived up to that reputation over the course of this Bill.

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[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

I begin by making apology to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury. When I was shouting to be heard, I did not realise that she was standing. I apologise for that.

I would like to bring the debate back to the question of the process and remind us that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, when moving his amendment, began by talking about the pressure of public opinion. It is obviously a very important subject—and it has been in relation to that that much of this debate has taken place. I took part in a debate with the noble and learned Lord before the Bill came to this House, which was published in the Spectator. At the time he said that

“opinion polls shouldn’t determine whether or not parliament passes this. People should look at the details of how the thing works and say whether or not we can improve it”.

That is what we have been doing. It is not right to say that everybody has just kept on expressing their own views.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

The point that has been made repeatedly in this House is that public opinion is in favour of this Bill and the Commons has passed it. Therefore, we have a duty to get through our business. Does the noble Lord agree?

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

I accept that that is the argument made by the noble and learned Lord. However, the argument I am trying to make here in a limited time is about public opinion and its effect and how we should regard it. When the noble Lord, Lord Barber, said that we have a privilege here, he was right, but I think that he was criticising the privilege in the wrong way. We must exercise that privilege because, unlike most people in this country, we have been able to consider the Bill at great length. We owe it to those people to consider it seriously and to consider all its elements and effects.

I can just testify for myself—because I am not an expert on the subject—but I have learned a tremendous amount in these discussions. I understood the broad arguments of principle before these discussions, but I have just re-read the Explanatory Notes that the noble and learned Lord and others issued about the Bill when it began. The three words “National Health Service” hardly appear in them. This was the big revelation to me and, I think, to many people. It is a matter not just of what you deeply believe about this very important issue—choice versus wider sanctity of life and so on—but of what will happen to the most important public service in this country and all the ramifications of that.

It is quite wrong to speak of a small minority of people who have been constantly agitating within the House. I do not know who those people are, but I know that many noble Lords on both sides, certainly on the side that is critical of the Bill, are very learned people on the subject of the effects on the National Health Service—for example, the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Cass and Lady Hollins. It is very important that they be heard and understood.

I sometimes think the Bill would be clearer if it were entitled the Terminally Ill Adults National Health Service (Assisted Suicide) Bill, because it is not just about assisted suicide. It is about how it would be carried out. It would be carried out by the National Health Service in almost all cases, so we need to debate its costs, its professional conflicts and all the difficult questions that arise. We have been doing that.

I come back, therefore, in justification of what we have all, on both sides, been trying to do. This is described accurately as a conscience Bill. If you have a conscience about something, you must be confident that the result will be safe. If it is not, how could you possibly not object to it? How could you just say, “Oh, well, there we are”? I do not think you can. In his opening remarks, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, said that the Bill has not failed on its merits, and I agree with him. It has failed on its demerits, and it is those that many of us cannot in conscience support.

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[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, the law should be changed. The current law on aiding and abetting suicide does not address the issues the promoters of the Bill undoubtedly seek to address.

The structure and detail of the Bill before the House are deeply flawed. It required restructuring and the debate we have had in the past six months. It is not a safe Bill, when you get down in the weeds. We have to remember that the original process was to be overseen and managed by the judges of the Family Division. Had that still been the case then it would have been obvious that many of the safeguards that had to be written into this Bill, in the absence of such judicial oversight and control, would not have needed to be put expressly in it. We rightly trust our judges on such delicate matters. They are used to dealing with whether to end life support, and so on.

The Family Division judges were removed from the scene. That required a proper rethink. Instead, we got this Bill. It was not the product of a royal commission. There had been no Green Paper. It has not received pre-legislative scrutiny. There was no formal consultation process on a draft or outline proposals. That is why, I am afraid, it is not fit for the very important purpose and aims which it has. Length does not mean quality.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

This is a most interesting speech. On the basis of what the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, is saying, if the judge was still there then the Bill would be okay. Why could we not have got to Report and voted on that to make a decision on it?

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

There were grave problems with having the judges. As the noble and learned Lord knows, it would have occupied far too much court time. It simply was not practicable to put it into the courts. If it was to be dealt with properly by a judge it would have been at least half a day, sometimes a day. If you had 1,000 cases a year, that would be 1,000 court days. A High Court judge has 240 sitting days a year, as the noble and learned Lord, a former Lord Chancellor, should jolly well know. Is he saying that four High Court judges should have been taken out of business permanently? The answer must be noted.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

I am not going to debate further.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

No. Sit down.

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[Baroness Berger (Lab)]

My Lords, I am dismayed at the decision to spend some time today on process instead of continuing to consider the raft of outstanding issues that we otherwise would have considered, so that the substantive challenges could be addressed in any future legislation. Today we would have considered how an assisted death would interact with the NHS constitution.

As we take note of the overall progress that has been made in this House, I will respond to a number of the claims that we have heard today, in some cases more or less from the moment the Bill arrived before us last summer. The claim today has been that the scrutiny that has taken place has been unnecessary or unusual and that in any event, the elected House had already undertaken sufficient scrutiny before we began. The Bill was first published in the way any Private Member’s Bill is. We have heard in this Chamber today some attempt to equate it with government Bills such as the Crime and Policing Bill and the welfare rights Bill, but there was no prior public consultation on this Bill. There was no pre-legislative scrutiny, no Green Paper, no White Paper, no international comparison. Even at the earliest stage, when the Bill was first presented, it was several times longer than any other Private Member’s Bill, weighing in at 43 clauses. It has now been expanded to 59 clauses and three schedules. The House of Lords Library tells us that this is the longest Private Member’s Bill ever.

This is in stark contrast to previous well-known Private Members’ legislation on issues of conscience that supporters have sought to use as precedents, such as the seven-clause-long Abortion Act and the four-clause-long Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act. Both benefited from a commission which fulfilled the pre-legislative scrutiny role that this Bill has sorely lacked.

After Second Reading, the amending stages in the other place began in Committee with the overwhelming majority of amendments being rejected by a Committee made up of 14 Members who supported the sponsor, in contrast to nine MPs who raised concerns about the Bill. Two-thirds of the way through Committee in the Commons, about 62 hours in, the most significant safeguard in the original Bill—the High Court stage at the end of the process, involving a judge—was removed. It was replaced by the new untrialled process, involving non-judicial panels overseen by a new, tsar-like figure, the voluntary assisted dying commissioner.

This seismic change was made without any input from the 627 Members of the other place who were not on the Bill Committee. Significantly, no evidence was taken on that totally new process. On Report in the Commons, scrutiny was limited to just over two days, and of 77 amendments tabled—

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

My understanding is that Sir Nicholas Mostyn and Sir Max Hill gave evidence to the Bill Committee about the role of the judges and the possibility of a panel. Am I wrong?

[Baroness Berger (Lab)]

My point is that the change to the Bill was introduced after 62 hours. No evidence was taken on the new process. On Report, of the 77 amendments tabled by Members other than the sponsor, only seven were selected for a separate decision.

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What would have helped us all to do our job is if the sponsor of the Bill had indicated which amendments he was prepared to accept or to offer an alternative to. I and others have repeatedly requested this list since last November and in subsequent meetings.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

The letter of 31 January 2026, which was sent to every Peer, said that.

[Baroness Berger (Lab)]

Forgive me, but I have seen that letter about amendments that would be forthcoming and looked at it very closely. There was a letter that said, for example, that my noble and learned friend would bring forward alternatives on the issue of 18 to 25 year-olds. We are still waiting for those alternative amendments.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

I am slightly surprised that the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, says that I did not indicate which of the coming amendments I would accept, because I indicated in detail which I would accept. I set out a whole number of amendments. The suggestion that the House did not know what I was willing to agree to is, if I may say so, not correct, and I am really surprised that she is saying it.

[Baroness Berger (Lab)]

I can reiterate only what I said in previous meetings about having specifics. I do not know which, if any, of the 1,000 amendments—some of which were tabled just the night before and we had to understand them in detail—my noble and learned friend was prepared to accept. I have looked very closely at the communications that I have received, and there have been some indications on two of the measures, but on everything else we have not received that.

I have taken a number of interventions. In conclusion, I will just address one issue that has been raised. The accusation has been repeatedly made, last weekend and this morning, that religion has been driving opposition to this legislation. There are Peers of all faiths and none who have participated in your Lordships’ House and raised concerns. The objections that I and many others have to the Bill are not doctrinal; they are rooted in the real-world consequences the Bill may have for those whom we have spent years striving to represent—in my case, drawn from my direct experience as a Member of Parliament for almost 10 years—including people who do not have the same amount of agency or resources that all in this place are fortunate to enjoy.

I conclude by saying that to insist that we should have glossed over this legislation that will hand the state the ability to end the lives of some of its most vulnerable citizens, ignoring the evidence that we have heard, and a Bill that no professional medical royal college in this country today says is safe, has been a misguided approach.

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Amendment (to the Amendment) withdrawn.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

My Lords, I give special thanks to those who shared personal experiences with us, in particular the noble Lords, Lord Markham and Lord Dobbs, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle, the noble Baronesses, Lady Hollins and Lady Grey-Thompson, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Prentis, and my noble friend Lord Cashman. I will single out the speech made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Prentis, in particular, as it was—for everybody—incredibly impressive and moving. I will say how welcome she is back here, and she has the warmest possible embrace from the House.

There was a moment when we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Rafferty, who had been the president of the Royal College of Nursing; we then heard from the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been the chief nurse of England and Wales; and sitting on the Woolsack we had the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, who was a distinguished professor of nursing. That is an indication of the depth of knowledge we have in this House.

I am not going to say the normal thing about what a great debate it has been. Honestly, it has been a horrible debate. Unlike almost every other debate I have ever participated in, there has been quite an edge, particularly from the opponents of the Bill.

I am not going to say that it is we who should end this debate; the views of the people outside the House should be taken into account. I quote the much-missed Lord Williams of Mostyn, who, whenever we behaved badly, always said, “Remember, there are people out there who are watching”.

I will finish with three voices. The first is that of Elise Burns, who is in the Gallery today. She has terminal cancer. She said that she would love Peers

“to look me in the eye and tell me why me and my friends, and anyone with terminal illness, don’t deserve to die with dignity and to have the choice to die as they choose, without pain”.

Nat Dye, whom noble Lords on both sides of the House met regularly during the course of the Bill, died a few weeks ago. His sister Becky said:

“I feel betrayed by the system really, that people are kind of able to serve their own agendas rather than being representative of the people in the general population”.


Finally, I quote Dan Tuckley’s sister, Kate. Dan got a very aggressive form of cancer and at the very end of his life went, in conditions of quite considerable distress, to Dignitas in Switzerland. Kate said: “This Bill running out of time is a complete travesty for the people of the UK. It will mean that the views of the people of England are not being properly represented by the people trusted to do so. It means the British people have been let down”.

I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment to the Motion withdrawn.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion withdrawn.