Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Frost Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 30th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 72 and 80 in my name. I will not say anything about autonomy other than to mention to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that although it is a philosophical concept which was drafted in recent centuries, academic philosophy is very divided on how worthwhile it is as a concept.

I begin with my Amendment 80, which would substitute some detail for the very vague requirement that death within six months can reasonably be expected. We have already heard in the Committee, from everybody—not only today but on other days—that certain diagnosis is a very inexact science, and that diagnosing someone as having six months is very inexact.

We have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, in opening, that conditions can differ, patterns can differ and patients can differ—we also heard that from the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins. Therefore, each patient must be assessed on an individual basis.

Against that, my Amendment 80 proposes that the difficult job of assessment is done by two consultants specialising in the relevant area, and it pins down that the expectation should instead be an 80% probability. If the sponsors are in earnest that those eligible really should be those who are within six months of death, they should be pleased to accept an amendment that tries to overcome the inexactness of such judgments by requiring confirmation by two of the most qualified experts in the area, and they should accept that an 80% likelihood is what, in this context, can reasonably be expected.

I move on briefly to Amendment 72. The Bill already refuses eligibility for assisted suicide when a condition that in itself is diagnosed to lead to death within six months can be reversed. My amendment takes the next logical step by limiting eligibility to cases where the condition not only cannot be reversed but cannot be relieved, controlled or ameliorated; I am adding to what has already been proposed in that group. The amendment aims to substitute a constructive, optimistic approach to treating illness, rather than one that writes off the patient and points them on the path to suicide.

That requirement—that, when steps can be taken to relieve, control or ameliorate a disease, the patient can no longer be considered for assisted suicide—will remove many otherwise difficult cases from this murky area and allow the mechanisms to operate as best they can for those for whom the Bill, on its face, intends them: people whose deterioration is inevitable.

There is an even more pressing reason than those two to accept this amendment: unless we positively exclude from eligibility patients whose condition could be relieved, controlled or ameliorated, we set up the conditions in which the relief, control and amelioration of terminal illnesses will become increasingly rare. We have heard of some remarkable instances today, not least from the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton—whom I am delighted to see back. Why would an overburdened health service try to give some extra months of life, give a higher degree of relief of pain, or ameliorate or arrest the progression of the disease, when it is so much easier to direct the patient, either implicitly or by expectation, towards assisted suicide?

What about relatives—even no more than ordinarily unscrupulous or greedy ones, or merely selfish ones—for whom the speedy death of their loved one is likely to seem desirable? We may also reasonably fear an overzealous state service committed to the task of accelerating the pathways of such unfortunate cases to their ends. My amendment guards against those consequences—some of the worst of a Bill so rich and varied in its capacity for harm.

[Lord Frost (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I rise to introduce Amendment 84, which has already been touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer. I am grateful to, and thank, the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, for his support.

This group, as we have heard, is primarily about the definition of terminal illness. My amendment in this group touches on a somewhat different but related and important point, which is whether the terminal illness criterion—the existence of terminal illness—is in itself sufficient as a criterion. I am doubtful that it is, and that is why I have proposed this amendment.

As your Lordships know, there are two different models around the world for the kind of law that we are considering. Both include a terminal illness criterion. One type also has a suffering criterion, and that is the model used, as has been said, in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. The second type does not; it rests entirely on the concept of autonomy—the belief that if you know or have been told that you are going to die soon, you have the right to ask the state to allow you access to assisted suicide. I will say more about this autonomy point in a moment.

To state the obvious, the Bill is based on the second of those two models, but one of the problems is that much of the campaign for it is based on the first model—the assumption of a suffering criterion. Hence my amendment would introduce the concept of unbearable suffering that could not be relieved by treatment. It is probing; it aims to test the reasoning behind the preference of the Bill’s supporters for that type of model.

My amendment would do four things, and some of what I am about to say has already been touched on, so I will be brief. First, it would align the legal test in the Bill with the public justification for the Bill. It is clear that the campaign around the Bill bases much of its work on the need to deal with suffering and, if suffering is the moral foundation offered to the public, it should be in any eventual statute. It is clear from all the discussion around the Bill that many voters believe it already is in the Bill, and it should be.

Secondly, it would stop drift and the slippery slope. The problem here is that, if the real justification for access to assisted suicide is autonomy, what is the justification for the robustness of the six-month limit? We have heard that provisions in the Bill are vulnerable to court rulings, judicial review and the existence of the ECHR—although there is, of course, a way of resolving that particular problem—other broader principles and specific legislation such as the Equality Act. A suffering-led criterion would help Parliament to draw and defend a clear and principled line.

Thirdly, it is relatively—not totally, but relatively—easy to identify unbearable suffering. As has been noted, it is usually obvious from demeanour and body language when there is frequent and unbearable pain. This helps distinguish between qualifying and non-qualifying reasons for access to assisted dying, such as social pressures. This is vital given that we have already heard from the sponsor how widely drawn some of those criteria might ultimately be.

Fourthly, it has to be noted that, with a small number of exceptions, most other jurisdictions that use these laws have a suffering criterion: Australia, the proposed legislation in France, now happily stalled for the time being, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain, Portugal, the rejected legislation in Slovenia, New Zealand, Colombia and so on all have a suffering criterion, and for a good reason.

He has touched on it before, but when the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, responds to the debate on this group, perhaps he could explain in greater depth why he is so insistent on an autonomy-only Bill, whether he recognises any limits on autonomy, and whether and why he is content to rest on autonomy as a justification while allowing campaigners to make a case based on suffering.

I want to say a few words on the justification of autonomy because it is so crucial and the Bill’s sponsors have been clear on the importance they attach to it. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, has been quoted before but it needs repeating:

“the essence of the Bill is autonomy. You have a choice … Once you satisfy that requirement—obviously, the safeguards have to be complied with—that is the essence of the Bill. It is autonomy”.

We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, who is not in his place, about the importance of choice in this area. That is really another way of expressing the same issue.

Proponents of the Bill have, at times, been perhaps a little dismissive of those of us who have religious convictions and suggest that we should not bring them to this debate. But I suggest that the belief in autonomy is also an a priori conviction with no more or no less right be heard unchallenged. It is surprising perhaps to find Ayn Rand-like views of the importance of individual autonomy emanating from the Labour Benches. It is a view that one can have, but I suggest that very few people do in fact have such views in practice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)]

The noble Lord is over the 10-minute limit. Could he please wind up?

[Lord Frost (Non-Afl)]

I am coming to my conclusion. It is somewhat safer with the two criteria of autonomy plus life expectancy and of unbearable and irremediable suffering. It limits the scope of the moral and legal change, or regression as I would see it, that we are undertaking here. That is why I have tabled Amendment 84 and why I think it is so essential.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, I added my name to Amendment 84 since I think the noble Lord, Lord Frost, has struck gold with this amendment. Requiring

“unbearable suffering … which cannot be relieved by treatment”,

raises four critical issues at the epicentre of the Bill. First, his amendment exposes the total unreliability of a six-month prognosis of a terminal illness, as we have heard from numerous noble Lords. Trying to predict life expectancy is a hopeless exercise, especially when medical advances are improving at such a phenomenal rate. As the noble and learned Lord, the sponsor, said in relation to a prediction of six months to live, we are not dealing with certainty. I am with him on that.

Let me give the Committee an illustration from a real case. I know of somebody who was given a 5% chance of living for 10 years because he was suffering from an advanced aggressive cancer. It is not exact, but a 5% chance of living for 10 years approximates broadly to a reasonable expectation of dying within six months. That was 21 years ago and, as far as I know, I am still here—noble Lords will correct me if I have got that wrong. It does sometimes feel slightly otherworldly, listening to these debates.

Secondly, the requirement in Amendment 84 for unbearable suffering that cannot be relieved by treatment would have the obvious merit of bringing the effectiveness of palliative care into play, which is not currently the case as the Bill stands. As we know, the experts say that palliative care relieves pain in most cases and can help people who want to die to want to live. That is why a full assessment by a palliative care specialist is so important, as earlier amendments sensibly proposed. But the noble and learned Lord has said he is

“incredibly opposed to unbearable suffering as the root”

of this Bill. His view is unsurprising since the effectiveness of palliative care would significantly reduce the Bill’s impact.

So the noble and learned Lord falls back on the personal autonomy argument, telling the Select Committee that the essence of the Bill is autonomy—you have a choice, it is autonomy—and it would give people the option of an assisted death if they have simply had enough of life. This is the third issue that would be resolved by Amendment 84. Should the National Health—health—Service really be assisting a person to kill themselves if they have simply had enough of life, whether or not they are in pain and whether or not their feelings relate to their terminal illness? Is that what a health service should be doing? That starts to look very much like assisted suicide.

Fourthly, I respectfully suggest that the noble and learned Lord gets on the Clapham omnibus and asks anyone who supports assisted dying the reasons why they do so. Overwhelmingly, they will say that people should not have to suffer unbearable suffering. Yet, astonishingly, you will not find the words “pain” or “suffering” anywhere in the Bill. I read it word for word last night at great length to check that point. I could not find those words. Without any reference to unbearable suffering, there will be a massive disconnect between the public’s expectation and the Bill’s contents.

Let us be clear: the vast majority of the public are not on the edge of their seats watching our deliberations. Very few indeed will have read the Bill. They will therefore have a view of the Bill based on the common-sense assumption that people seeking an assisted death will be suffering unbearable pain. The compelling amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Frost, injects that common sense into the Bill by providing for that, and I heartily support him and Amendment 84.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Frost Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 16th January 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Frost]

34: Clause 1, page 1, line 13, leave out “assistance to end their own life” and insert “medical help to commit suicide by provision of lethal drugs”
Member’s explanatory statement
This is part of a long series of identical or near-identical amendments which Lord Frost would seek to table at Report Stage should this amendment find favour. The intention is to provide clarity on the nature of the services provided by this Bill and to avoid euphemism. This is the first occasion in the Bill text at which the phrase “assistance to end their own life” occurs.

[Lord Frost (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have four amendments which constitute the entirety of this group: Amendments 34, 121, 138 and 153. I am very grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Fox of Buckley and Lady Lawlor, and the noble Lord, Lord Harper, for putting their name to these amendments.

I will begin by making a purely process point. Were the underlying change I propose to find favour, as the explanatory statement on the Marshalled List makes clear, a large number of textual amendments would in fact be needed to ensure internal coherence within the Bill. For the convenience of the House, I have not tabled all those amendments now. In this sense, my amendments are exploratory and probing. The four specific amendments I have chosen, which are on the Marshalled List, have been chosen because they represent the first occasion on which a particular type of change would be required.

To summarise, Amendment 34 represents the first occasion in the Bill in which the phrase

“assistance to end their own life”

occurs; Amendment 121 is similarly the first occasion in which the phrase “voluntary assisted dying commissioner” occurs; Amendment 138 is the first occasion in which the phrase “assisted dying review panel” occurs; and Amendment 153 is the first occasion in which the simple word “assistance” occurs: a word that is not in fact defined in isolation but is taken to be short for the phrase “provision of assistance to a person to end their own life”.

Let me now turn to the substance of these amendments. I put them forward for two major underlying reasons. First, it is bad for us as legislators to attempt to legislate in such ambiguous language. Secondly, such language substantively carries real risks for at least some of those who may wish to avail themselves of the provisions of this Bill or have it put to them that they should.

All these amendments have one thing in common. They would replace phrases including the word “assisted” or “assistance” with something much clearer—an explicit reference to what is actually provided for in the Bill, the provision of

“medical help to commit suicide by provision of lethal drugs”.

I was aware when I tabled these amendments—some noble Lords have subsequently mentioned this to me—that the phrase “commit suicide” raises particular wider issues. I understand that and I will come back to it, but let me first proceed with the text as tabled.

First, it is a well-understood principle in drafting legislation—the noble Lord, Lord Deben, made this point earlier today—that it should be unambiguously clear. In this Bill, we have a phrase which covers a wide range of possible meanings. The core phrase,

“assistance to end their own life”,

could be read in a wide variety of ways. It could be read as meaning making somebody comfortable in their last hours. It could be read as withdrawing food and drink in a medical setting. It could even be read as an actual act of killing by another party at the request of the individual concerned. It could be read as many other things too, including of course the thing that is actually provided for by this Bill.

The polling about this Bill and the discussion around it shows there are many misunderstandings about what it does and what it allows. Surveys and experimental research show that public responses to questions about legality and support are very sensitive to the wording chosen. That is why it is important to be clear. My amendment would do that by providing clear language. It is possibly language that would be regarded by some as forceful, but nevertheless it is clear.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

I apologise for intervening, but this is quite important to the debate. Is the noble Lord saying that his amendments—I take it they are simply exemplar ones—would change the meaning of the Bill, or are they just for the purposes of, as it were, better public understanding?

[Lord Frost (Non-Afl)]

Yes, they are intended to clarify what the Bill actually provides for. I will explain further. The provision of medical help to commit suicide by the provision of lethal drugs is what the Bill does. That is what it does and that is what it should say that it does. I would say in passing that it is particularly important, since the Bill leaves so much to delegated powers, that we should be unambiguous about the particular power that is provided for.

Secondly, this House and this Parliament should always be clear to ourselves what we are doing when we are legislating. We should try and avoid euphemism. Where we deal with difficult topics, I think it is good to avoid distancing ourselves from uncomfortable realities in legislation by using abstractions. I refer to the 2024 guidance to parliamentary draftsmen which says:

“Write in modern, standard English using vocabulary which reflects ordinary general usage”.


It goes on to say you should

“use precise and concrete words rather than vague and abstract words”.

It is noticeable the most common term in this Bill for the activity for which it provides is the single word “assistance”. The common meaning of that word, I think it is fair to say, does not include providing for the death of an individual. In this Bill, that word has become a euphemistic term of art. Indeed, it is easy to imagine it becoming a jargon word in which a practitioner says to a patient, “Have you thought of asking for assistance?”, as a comfortable way to suggest to vulnerable people that taking their own life might not be something to be too concerned about, or even in the worst case, almost hide from them in the initial discussion what is actually being discussed.

We can see the distancing function of this word, the Latinate “assistance”, if we replace it, as my amendment would, with the Anglo-Saxon “help”. If the Bill used “help”, the jarring nature of the contrast between that word and the action that is provided for by the Bill would, I think, be too great to bear. I will not go into detail for reasons of time, but exactly the same concern arises from the Bill’s use of the phrase, “approved substance” when what is meant is a lethal drug.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

Forgive me for interrupting; I do not want to take up time. The noble Lord is now giving us a lesson in Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Latin and indeed Old German, as well as Middle English. We are missing the point. We need to move on, surely. He has been over 12 minutes on this speech, and it is beyond what we would accept at this stage of the day.

[Lord Frost (Non-Afl)]

I think I am allowed 15 minutes, actually. I do not think I mentioned Celtic either, just on a point of detail.

That aside, I was reaching—in fact, had already delivered—my peroration. I hope, as I said, the proponents might be open to some reflection on this point. Meanwhile, I beg to move.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

I point out to the Committee that if Amendment 34 were to be accepted, it would pre-empt Amendment 35, which leads the next group.

The noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, is taking part remotely, and I now invite the noble Lord to address us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

The purpose of making the amendments advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Frost, is clarity. We have to look at this not as some pamphlet but as a piece of legislation. The key thing is that it conveys what it means. The relevant words in the Bill at the moment are:

“A terminally ill person in England or Wales … may, on request, be provided in England or Wales with assistance to end their own life in accordance with sections 8 to 30”.


In my view, that could not be clearer. It is saying that the Bill is about providing assistance to end their own life in accordance with Sections 8 to 30.

The noble Lord, Lord Frost, wishes to change the words

“assistance to end their own life”

to

“medical help to commit suicide by provision of lethal drugs”.

The language of the noble Lord, Lord Frost, is both more technical and much looser. Simply as a matter of legal drafting, the draft as it is at the moment is much clearer and accurately describes what would happen. It is not my drafting or that of the sponsor in the other place; it is the drafting of a professional draftsman and I strongly urge the Committee to stick with the non-emotional, accurate, clear drafting that is there already.

[Lord Frost (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank all those who have supported and engaged with the substance of my amendments. I think we have had a good debate. I also thank the Minister for acknowledging that these amendments would not cause significant or major workability issues—I think her words were something like that—at least on a first viewing. That is important.

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the sponsor of the Bill, but I think we will have to disagree on what language is clear and what is not. I continue to believe that the form of words in my amendments is much clearer and sharper, whereas the language in the Bill covers a multitude of possible actions.

To conclude, I continue to believe that there is an important and dangerous ambiguity at the heart of the Bill, which we can clear up by focusing on the language. Therefore, we will probably have to return to this—if we ever get that far. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 34 withdrawn.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Frost Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 5th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I rise to introduce Amendment 23 in my name. This amendment obviously goes with the thrust of some of the other amendments that have already been proposed and deals with some of the issues that have come up in this debate. It takes a slightly different route from the others by simply adding a new criterion, paragraph (e), to Clause 1, and would therefore restrict access to assisted dying support to two well-defined and well-understood categories of people: British citizens and those with indefinite leave to remain.

The purpose of couching it in this way is twofold: it is designed to do two things. First, it is designed to provide a way of cutting through the eligibility problem that we have been discussing and the ambiguity of some of the definitions by providing two very clear definitions that avoid the border issues and potential uncertainties of meaning in some of the other definitions. It could be read, as I have drafted it, together with the criteria of ordinary residence—in other words, you must satisfy both these criteria to be eligible for assisted dying support—or we could simply remove the ordinary residence criteria and rest entirely on the fact that you have to be a British citizen or have indefinite leave to remain. Both of those are well-understood categories: they are not susceptible to debate and they are both easily proven. That is the advantage of looking at it in this way.

The other purpose is to provide a very clear barrier, for similar reasons, to death tourism for people who obtain short-term visas, or no visa at all, for the purpose of obtaining an assisted death. It would stop England and Wales becoming destinations for this. I want to briefly summarise why we want to avoid that: the reasons have been taken slightly as read in this discussion, but I want to recall them, although not in great depth.

First, without such a provision as my amendment would provide, it becomes more difficult to enforce the safeguards, whatever they are, that end up in this Bill, for example on past medical history and mental health capacity. It can be difficult to obtain international medical records, they are not always written in exactly the same way and they can, from some countries, be relatively easily forged or faked. It is also difficult to confirm that somebody who has a short-term relationship or no relationship with the UK is not being coerced by people abroad or has consistent capacity. So there is that angle to it.

Secondly, there is also the risk of diplomatic complication, taking in non-permanently resident foreign citizens to commit what may be an offence in their home jurisdiction. Some countries will probably feel more strongly about that than others, but the risk exists and this would exclude it.

Thirdly, there are pull factors, an obvious problem that we are very familiar with in the UK: the global appeal of the English language, the ease of registration with a GP, and, as I have said, the laxity of some of the definitions.

Fourthly, there are resource constraints: our healthcare system has finite capacity for end-of-life care, whoever ends up providing it. This amendment ensures that those who end up being eligible are those with a very clear connection to the UK, either with citizenship or the clear right to remain here for as long as they wish.

Finally—

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend is making interesting points, but I am somewhat worried. He is particularly well-equipped to recognise that there are possibly as many as 1.5 million people from the European Union in this country with pre-settled status who are neither British citizens nor have indefinite leave to remain. There are also probably somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 Irish citizens living in this country who have neither of these qualifications.

[Lord Frost (Non-Afl)]

That is certainly true. The noble Lord makes a good point. The principle that is in my amendment could be expanded to take in other well-defined categories. I will be more convinced about the Irish category than the EU pre-settled status, given this issue was not anything like an issue when we negotiated the EU treaties that created that status, but that is for discussion if the principle is agreed.

Finally, I will just note that the amendment I have put forward reflects norms elsewhere, notably in Australia and New Zealand. It is quite closely based on Section 9 of the Victoria Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017, which, whatever its manifold other weaknesses, is at least clear on this point. I will stop there and look forward to the discussion and the views of the sponsor. I offer this amendment as a potential way of providing more clarity and reducing the level of ambiguity in what is obviously going to be a very important provision in the Bill.

[Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly in support of Amendment 23, which was spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Frost, bearing in mind that amendments in Committee very often are probing amendments to test the view of the sponsor.

It is important to recognise at the start that it is, in fact, not clear from the Bill whether the NHS will provide voluntary assisted dying services. This was a point in relation to which the Bill was criticised very heavily by the Delegated Powers Committee, on which I sit. But it clearly is the intention of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, that it should, and I want to assume for the purposes of this debate, very briefly, that it will.

My noble friend Lady Coffey raised at the start of this debate a problem, which was the question of whether someone might seek to obtain residency under the terms of the Bill in order to obtain what has been referred to as death shopping. This is clearly a problem. The virtue of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Frost, is that it would deal with this, imperfect though the amendment may be. I would like to hear from the sponsor of the Bill, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, what his view is of the problem raised by my noble friend Lady Coffey. I think he accepts that death tourism is a problem. Is his view, like that of my noble friend Lord Lansley, that residency remains the only sensible way of determining these matters? If it is, why has he put the additional safeguard into Clause 1 of the Bill? Or, if he thinks residency is not sufficient, what additional safeguards might he be able to offer? I look forward to hearing from him when he responds to this debate.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Frost Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I am against the Bill, because it is legally and practically defective in many ways, as many other noble Lords have already said. I am against it for philosophical and religious reasons too. For the first time ever, a Bill seeks to give a person of sound will and mind the right to act contrary to a fundamental element of the ethical tradition that has been fundamental to this country—Judeo-Christian morality, and the view that our life is not our own possession to dispose of as we see fit, nor to be taken from us by others, even at our own request.

Noble Lords may ask, as many have done so already, why this should matter to them. They say that they are not religious and that they do not share that ethical system. We have heard some noble Lords say that they have the right to free choice, autonomy over their own life and to protect the dignity, as they see it, of those close to them. I want to briefly explain why I do not think this argument is sufficient and why even those of no religious belief should still be concerned by the prospect of going down the road set out in the Bill.

As I see it, the problem is that the values used to justify the Bill—those of ensuring dignity and preserving autonomy and personal freedom—are also derived from that Judeo-Christian ethical system. As my noble friend Lord Roberts of Belgravia reminded us last week, there have been in the past, and there still are today, many societies that do not fully share those values. They are not self-evident, however much many of us would wish they were.

The Bill is proposing to dismantle part of that inherited ethical system by allowing the state to engage in killing innocent people at their request. Once we have dismantled one part of that system, because we think we know best, what then is the status of the rest of that moral and ethical system? Once you have introduced utilitarianism into our society’s decisions, where do you stop? The ultimate destination of this journey is a utilitarian society with a utilitarian Government, one where there are no free-standing, inherited moral principles of any kind, only the principles that we think we are clever enough to create.

The problem is that in such a society none of us is really safe. The only protection for any of us then are the collective wishes of society, whatever they are at any given moment. In such a society, the rights of those who are inconvenient—the disabled, the ill, the elderly or maybe those who are just unpopular—have no robust defence and are potentially vulnerable. Any of us might one day fall into any of those categories. At that point, your only protection against the general will of society comes from an appeal to the same ethical system that you have just decided is merely contingent, capable of being disposed of if it is inconvenient. Noble Lords may think, as I do, that human dignity and autonomy and freedom are important, but what if the general will of society does not? What ground do you have to stand on there? That is why it is so dangerous to continue dismantling this ethical code, as the Bill does.

I urge noble Lords to think hard about whether we are really confident that we are the generation that is so sure of its judgment and so wise, knowledgeable and confident that we can create a good society on foundations not that we have inherited but which we ourselves have designed. Are we so sure of all those things that we can casually cast aside 2,000 years of our moral tradition and tell ourselves that it does not matter? Noble Lords should look around our country and ask themselves that question. I do not think so, and this is why I hope the Bill will founder.

Covid-19 Inquiry

Lord Frost Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad that we have the chance to debate this first inquiry report, because there is a lot to say. We all have our own experience of the pandemic, and we have heard some earlier. My own experience is bracketed by two events. It was bracketed at the end by my own resignation from government. I think I am the only person in HM Government, either a Minister or official, to have stepped down in protest at pandemic handling, specifically against vaccine passports and the prospect of a further lockdown in December 2021. At the beginning, it was bracketed by having watched the near-collapse of the government machine in Downing Street in early 2020.

In my view, there has been much largely unreasonable vilification of Ministers’ and officials’ behaviour over the pandemic period and I want to put on record that personally I cannot forget the courage of those who turned up to work in those difficult days, believing at that time that they were risking serious illness or even death. Those people deserve commendation for doing everything that they could at that point to live up to their responsibility to the nation and keep the Government going.

Between those two points, while I was trying to run a trade negotiation, I saw a lot of the decision-making on the pandemic. I have not been asked about any of this by the inquiry; so be it. Like others, I am not particularly impressed by what I have seen of the workings of the inquiry so far, and I cannot share the warm words that I have heard earlier today. The inquiry’s conduct so far seems to have lacked something, both in seriousness and in real intellectual curiosity about the pandemic. I hope I am proved wrong as subsequent reports emerge, but I fear that this one rather bears out my concerns and I want to begin by saying why.

First, there is something unsatisfactory about producing a series of, in effect, interim reports rather than an overall judgment. Inevitably, the early reports will beg lots of questions. It is, after all, difficult to judge the first report without a clear understanding of what the inquiry’s view is on other important questions: the effectiveness of decision-making; the effect on the health service; the impact on the economy, and so on. Indeed, it is not even clear to me that we are going to get from the inquiry what we really need—a report on the costs and benefits of measures taken, factoring in the economic and social costs—and if the inquiry does not produce it, then the Government must.

Meanwhile, what we have is a report that tells us that much went wrong in pandemic preparation. Of course, the inquiry can reasonably reach that conclusion only if it is confident that deaths in the pandemic were worse than they might have been with better preparation. The report does not actually tell us that; it just assumes it. Perhaps the evidence will come later, in the future reports, but meanwhile we have the conclusions without any of the workings, and I find that methodologically quite unsatisfactory.

Let me turn to some of the conclusions and recommendations. I am going to be quite critical, but I want to begin with one important and positive aspect of the report: its criticism of groupthink and its recommendation about “red teams” in government. Groupthink was, as noble Lords have said, very obvious in some of these decisions. It is easier said than done to make red teams really effective, but I hope that new Ministers will take this recommendation seriously, and perhaps not only in this area of policy.

I have three concerns about the report’s conclusions and recommendations. The first, which has been touched on already, is its heavily reported conclusion that:

“The UK prepared for the wrong pandemic”.


The report uses those words in its executive summary but never repeats them in the main text, which makes one suspicious, of course, that they are there for popular consumption and not actual analysis. To my mind, and I am not the only one—I share my noble friend Lord Lansley’s reservations on this point—the report never makes clear why the inquiry has said this. It is certainly not obvious to me. After all, the 2011 strategy was expressly designed to address all respiratory viruses, and WHO advice from even this year says that Covid and flu

“spread in similar ways … Many risk factors for severe disease are common to both … Many of the same protective measures are effective against COVID-19 and influenza”.

So it is not clear why flu is in any way a bad proxy for the pandemic that we had.

To the extent that one can assess what is meant from the report’s verbiage, it is possible that what the inquiry means to say is that the Government were wrong to prepare for a pandemic of which the spread could only be mitigated and not contained or prevented. But the spread was not in the end contained or prevented, so it is still not obvious why the 2011 strategy was, in the inquiry’s view, such a poor one. Understanding this properly is crucial to future planning, and I am afraid that I do not think we do understand it properly on the basis of the report.

My second concern is about the recommendations for structural change. It is undoubtedly true, I fear, that, as the report says, Ministers and officials failed to learn from planning exercises or to implement their conclusions. I am afraid that is just normal life in Whitehall—a standard cultural feature and one we had to fight very hard to overcome when we were planning for a no-deal Brexit. But, of course, you cannot generally change the culture by just changing the structures. That is why I find it surprising that the inquiry focused so much on this in its proposal to scrap the lead department model and move responsibility to the Cabinet Office, a department widely recognised, I think, to be one of the least effective in government. I can see how people with little experience in public administration, such as most of those staffing the inquiry, might think that issues involving many government departments should be managed from the centre, but, after all, everything in government is cross-government, and not everything can be run from 70 Whitehall. I fear that the consequence of this recommendation will be to disempower departments which really have the expertise and the resources while producing no extra coherence or direction, only duplication.

For similar reasons, I also have concerns about the proposed independent statutory body that is recommended in paragraph 6.93. It is obvious that responsible Ministers need a good mechanism for consulting and remaining in touch with a wide range of experience in pandemic management—and, I would add, outside this country as well as within it—but I fear that the effect of creating what is, in effect, just another quango will in practice be to remove planning from politics altogether. We will have the same situation that we have in many areas now, when a quango makes recommendations which are just disconnected from the real choices that actual Governments have to make—choices about trade- offs on risks, about costs, about resource constraints—and yet Ministers end up by having no real choice but to accept those recommendations or be accused of overruling technical advice for political reasons. That is not satisfactory and will not help us get things right in future.

My third comment is on something the report does not say explicitly but which is quite obvious from reading it and certainly obvious to those of us who lived through it in government. That is that one major reason for complexity, duplication and uncertainty in the pandemic response was the complicating role of the devolved Governments. I doubt very much that anyone thought, back in 1998 when we created the devolved Administrations, that the devolution of public health as a competence would have the end result of travel bans between England and Wales, or Scotland operating, in effect, its own and different entry control system to third countries during the pandemic. The report hints at this problem by proposing that the new quango that I just mentioned should have “a UK-wide remit”. It understandably refrains from going into detail about why. I am not quite so constrained, and I think that proper management of public health in emergency conditions requires decisions to be taken at a national level for the whole country, that the Government should have brought in legislation to that effect in 2020 and that it should be made possible in future as soon as we can.

I want to draw one broader conclusion. It is my concern that this report falls into the trap that so many inquiries fall into of believing that cleverer people, more information, more preparation, better planning, if done properly and rigorously, can solve problems; and that if those problems are not solved, that is, ipso facto, evidence of poor preparation. The report recommends, for example—some might think ambitiously—that:

“It should be a fundamental aspect of all risk assessment that the potential impacts on society and the economy are taken into account”.


You do not have to be a complete devotee of Hayek’s explanation of the knowledge problem to think it unlikely that even the most efficient Government are going to be able to foresee and respond to all “impacts on society and the economy”; there are limits to what planning can do.

Of course, we should do the best possible, but what is also needed is something else: an adaptive and a learning Government, one who can assimilate information, draw conclusions and alter course in the light of real-time developments. Unfortunately, we did not have that during the pandemic. Instead, I am afraid we had a culture of compliance and denial, making it impossible to learn from experience. When it decided to lock down in spring 2020, the machine kept doing the same thing on autopilot. It was not just unable to assess the trade-offs between lockdowns and the economy; it was unable to assess, assimilate and explain basic facts such as the fatality rate, the effectiveness of vaccines, their effect on transmission, the effect or lack of it of vaccine passports, the effectiveness of facemasks and much more. Above all, it failed to draw conclusions from the evidence and adjust its approach. Instead, until the whole Covid world collapsed in January 2022, the first and last recourse was always to lockdowns, like a brain-dead animal still moving with instinct as if it were still alive and thinking.

The Minister said in introducing this debate that the intention in future is to create a learning system which can respond. But unless you change the wider culture in society, that will be quite tricky. Plenty of individuals at the time resisted exactly that learning. The then responsible Ministers are some of them, but they were not the only ones. Most of civil society, trade unions and faith groups—including the Church of England—all pushed for the most risk-averse policies possible. All other political parties pressed for more and tougher lockdowns, more working from home, more public money and more debt. To take just one example, the current Prime Minister said in July 2021:

“Lifting all restrictions at once is reckless—and doing so when the Johnson variant”—


let us not forget that shameful use of language—

“is already out of control risks a summer of chaos”,

with “deadly consequences”. It never happened. Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, he turned out to be talking nonsense.

But others advising the Government at the time must also take responsibility. The second lockdown was publicly justified through figures and charts which were simply wrong when presented and shown to be so immediately afterwards. They never learned. Even as late as December 2021, these advisers were predicting disaster. The then Chief Medical Officer said on 16 December that large numbers of Covid patients ending up in hospital was a “nailed-on prospect” and that the UK was facing “a really serious threat”. The then and current head of the UK Health Security Agency said that omicron represented

“probably the most significant threat we’ve had since the start of the pandemic”.

Anyone who looked at the data from South Africa, as has been said, knew that these statements were wrong. We certainly know it now.

This behaviour could persist because there simply was no free political debate about these issues. Many Governments leaned on social media and tried to terrify citizens into losing their faculties in support of their approaches. We were not allowed to discuss obvious things such as the plausibility that the virus emerged from a lab in China. We learned what happened from the Twitter files and from Mark Zuckerberg’s letter of 26 August to the House Judiciary Committee in the US, which said that

“the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain Covid-19 content … I regret that we were not more outspoken about it. I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today”.

As I keep saying, most disinformation and misinformation comes from Governments. That culture was set during the pandemic, and it needs to change.

That is why it is so important not just to avoid groupthink in government but to promote free debate more broadly. We in this country, in particular the Conservative Party, can be proud that in the end we broke through that cycle of risk-averse controls and repression. Debate in this Parliament could not in the end be stifled. We should be glad that Boris Johnson in the end reached his own judgment about lockdowns and refused to go with the flow. That decision broke the spell and the cycle of lockdowns. It showed the rest of the world that the control and prevention approach was fundamentally misconceived and that it would have been better to stick to the 2011 plan so criticised in this report. It showed that it was not necessary to keep repeating the same actions, expecting a different result. But by then the damage had been done. One thing that is surely clear, even from this quite unsatisfactory first inquiry report, is that we must never repeat it.