Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Markham Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

My Lords, like many noble Lords, I come at this debate from a point of personal experience. My mum, Judy, was 62, a fit and healthy Macmillan nurse, when, out of the blue, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given weeks to live. She was taken to a hospice three weeks later, barely conscious, and, very quickly, the clinicians gathered round her next of kin and suggested that she was in a lot of pain, that she did not have long, and that maybe helping her to take an earlier train would be the kind thing to do. We all agreed, and we all thank that hospice to this day for the kind and peaceful death that they gave her.

This happened not in some far-away land but right here in the UK. I think we are all probably aware of many such instances in the UK where, informally and quietly, terminally ill people are helped to have a kinder, compassionate, pain-free death. It is because of that experience that I am in favour of finding a way to allow other people to experience a kinder, safer death in a way of their choosing. I know from talking to many terminally ill people that it gives them great comfort knowing that they could have the ability to take that earlier train home.

I understand the concerns of many noble Lords here. I understand that, for some, it is a point of principle, for religious or moral reasons. I understand the concerns that many others have about the risks presented by the Bill, which is why I support the approach taken by the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, in her amendment to have a Select Committee scrutinise the Bill to make it the best it can possibly be. That is, after all, what we do best in the Lords.

However, I believe that arguments against the Bill about the burden on the NHS can be addressed by making sure that the Bill enables provision by the voluntary sector, just as happens with our excellent hospices, which are majority funded by voluntary rather than government money. I do not believe that arguments about undue burden on the NHS should be a reason to oppose the Bill.

After speaking to many terminally ill people, I think that it is wrong to equate their wish to die in comfort and without pain with suicide. My experience is that these people very much want to live but unfortunately know that they will shortly die. They therefore want to have the choice to do that in a way of their choosing, with comfort and in a pain-free way.

To conclude, the Bill is about choices—whether terminally ill people are given the choice voluntarily to face a kinder, pain-free death and to take that earlier train home, or whether we choose that that choice should be denied to them because we feel that, somehow, they are not fit to make that choice or may have felt coerced into it. Giving people that choice is a fundamental right, which is why I want to work on the Bill to ensure we do it in the kindest and safest way.