Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Lord Falconer of Thoroton and Baroness Lawlor

Committee stage
Friday 21st November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

I will come to that in a moment, because I have to get through the amendments—we have to make progress a bit. However, I completely understand the question.

Amendment 50 is from the noble Lord, Lord Evans. He basically said that when anybody tries to behave badly, trying to coerce or pressure somebody into making the decision to have an assisted death, that should be sufficient to bar it for ever, even if it had no impact whatever in relation to it. I see the force of that; I think it would be a wrong amendment, for the following reasons. Somebody—a doctor—might go over the line, but it is absolutely clear that the person definitely wants an assisted death. I do not think they should be barred from doing that because they are concerned about what might happen to the doctor or to the person they love if it is absolutely clear that they have not been coerced or pressured into it.

On Amendment 52 from the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, she is saying that somebody should not be subject to or at risk of coercive control. Everybody agrees that the person who is adopting the assisted death should not be subject to coercive control. If they are at risk, I would expect the two doctors and the panel to investigate that fully and, if they are not satisfied that the person is reaching a decision of their own, plainly an assisted death cannot go ahead. But I think we are all on the same page in that the risk has to be properly investigated and a conclusion reached.

Amendment 57A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, says you should not be allowed to have an assisted death if someone has been

“prompted to consider ending their own life”—

presumably in the context of assisted death—by any professional person. Clause 5 leaves it to the judgment of the doctor as to whether they raise the question with the patient. If they raise it, they have to raise it under Clause 5 in the context of the treatment available to the patient and all other options available, including palliative care. I do not think that if a doctor, or indeed any other professional person, makes a judgment that it would be sensible to raise it, that should thereby debar the person from having an assisted death. The noble Baroness wants to intervene. By all means let us prolong the debate if it is a new point.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

It is about the level of authority which the professional person, who is in a way a public servant, and the trust which one endows in one’s GP or family doctor. As we have heard today from other people who are medically qualified, that has great weight with the patient—I speak as someone who comes from a medical family. They constantly agonise about their prescriptions for patients and their emotional condition, and all that. But if one raises assisted dying with somebody who is terminally ill, the professional—the doctor, say—is planting the idea.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Lord Falconer of Thoroton and Baroness Lawlor

Committee stage
Friday 14th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

I wanted to make it plain because some people listening to the noble and learned Lord might have thought I had not said that.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

Before the noble and learned Lord finishes, can he clarify for the Committee that a person who can grasp only a diluted amount of information, or who cannot retain the information in any real sense that would be intelligible to us, can be deemed to have capacity for the purposes of the Mental Capacity Act, but for this Bill, which is designed to give people agency and allow an individual as much choice as possible to choose treatment or have agency over medical and palliative care decisions and so on, an entirely different threshold should, quite rightly, be expected for such a serious measure as this?

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

I respect the noble Baroness for repeating her speech. Section 3 of the Mental Capacity Act says that if a person is unable to

“understand the information relevant to the decision … to retain that information … to use or weigh that information ... or … to communicate his decision”,

then they do not have capacity. I am content that that should be the approach under the Bill.