Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Lord Hamilton of Epsom and Lord Markham

Committee stage
Friday 27th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I let my noble friend finish but I just want to give a bit of my own experience as a former Health Minister. I think we would all agree that clinicians always look at what is the best outcome for their patients, regardless of cost. I want to put very clearly here today that, although I am sure it is not anyone’s intention to suggest that clinicians will somehow be incentivised to push one course of treatment, be it assisted dying or another, for reasons of cost, all our experiences of the health service are that clinicians will always put the welfare of their patient first and that financial considerations do not come into it.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

I wish I could agree with my noble friend Lord Markham, but at the end of the day we have a National Health Service and it has to make choices, and we know that the National Health Service is desperately short of money. If it can save money by making sure that people go for assisted dying, I am sure it will do that, on the basis that then it could keep other people alive. Those are the invidious choices that the National Health Service has to make. I always assumed—I will give way in a minute—that, for the proposers of the Bill, one of their reasons was that they wanted to save money. I agree that the money concerned would not be very big, but at the end of the day there is an incentive to save money by ensuring that people opt for assisted dying, thereby saving the National Health Service money. I give way to the noble Baroness.

Childbirth: Black Women

Debate between Lord Hamilton of Epsom and Lord Markham

Wednesday 3rd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I do not think I would categorise this in any way in terms of institutionalised racism, and I do not believe that noble Lords would think that of the NHS. Clearly, work needs to be done on helping all ethnic minorities to access health services and on education, because there are many underlying conditions. That is what we are doing now. A few years ago, the numbers were quite a lot worse; black women were five times more likely to die in childbirth, but that figure is now 3.7. A lot more work needs to be done, but we are improving.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

Does my noble friend accept that the term “institutionalised” is, in the words of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, “ambiguous”, in that it means different things to different people? Can he define “institutionalised”?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

The point I was trying to make is that I think all noble Lords would agree that the NHS does a fantastic job in addressing and reaching people of all ethnic minorities. That is something we can all support.