Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Moore of Etchingham Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 5th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I understand very much the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Winston, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. I come to this issue from a rather different position. I used to try a lot of cases, some of terminally ill young people, generally from the ages of 15 up to 25 or more. There were a number of cases of those with terminal illness, undoubtedly with capacity, who were also suffering from depression, not very surprisingly, or were confused as to what they really wanted. They came before me for all sorts of reasons unconnected with whether they should live or die from their perspective. What I was looking at was the medical evidence as to the sort of support that they ought to have.

Despite the neuroscience issue, which is important, and despite 18—or down to 16 under the present Government—being the age at which you are able to vote, I just raise whether you are looking at how much you care about the future of this country and what you care about for yourself. Do you want to die because you are going to die in the next few months? The doctors may be right or wrong about six months; we know that many diagnoses are inaccurate. This may be the most important decision of all to make: life or death? Consequently, I am concerned about the age of 18 from my own experience. Whether it should be 21 or 25 is arguable, but I am worried if it sticks at 18.

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Berger. It is reasonable to have these considerations about the different ways people think and feel at different times in their life. One of the big discussions we have more broadly about the Bill is about the cognitive capacities of old people, which are very important in their freedom of decision.

In a similar way, it is reasonable to talk about the cognitive capacities of very young people. In particular, one of the things that makes very young people different from older people is that they naturally have very little encounter with death; they are much less likely to have come across situations in which people die and people they know have died. They simply do not know what it involves. If it were banned throughout the world that anybody under the age of 25 would fight in a war, we would hardly have any wars. One reason why soldiers are prepared to fight in wars is that they do not understand death when they are very young. They are ready for anything.

There is often a very strong culture of suicide in young people, because it is a romantic idea. The poet Keats expressed it absolutely beautifully in his “Ode to a Nightingale” when he speaks about being

“half in love with easeful Death”,

and the joy of ceasing on the midnight with no pain. He knew of what he spoke, in a sense, because he was suffering from a terminal illness, and he died before he was 25.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, and others have brought out, we need to think about the influences on young people who may go in that direction. If they suffer from a terminal illness, that becomes even more acute. Because of their lack of experience in these matters, they will be under greater pressure, quite possibly, to feel that suicide is the way out and is somehow a noble thing to do.

I remember, at school, there was a very brilliant boy who was 18 and wrote a very short poem that just said, “If I should die, think only this of me: ennui”. It was a very clever thing to write, and he subsequently committed suicide aged 19. I ask noble Lords to think about what it might be like in such a situation at such an age.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, the people we are talking about are dying, in suffering and in pain. They are not being offered; they are going to be asking. I think of a 23 or 24 year-old in pain and about to die, possibly within weeks or months, and we turn around and say, “I am really sorry. You have had children, taken big decisions in your life, taken career decisions and seen whatever has happened to your parents, but you cannot be helped in your last few days, weeks or months because you are only 24”. I find that extraordinary. The age of 18 is probably the right one. Can we remember that these people are dying, and they are suffering? Those are the people who will be applying for this.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Moore of Etchingham Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I could not possibly attempt to compete with the forensic skill of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, which is so impressive. I simply want to add to this excellent debate one striking comparison which I hope may illuminate it.

Near my home in Sussex stands the beautiful cliff of Beachy Head, which is the most popular National Trust property, with 2.5 million visitors every year. Unfortunately, it is also the number one suicide spot in the world. Online suicide forums instruct people exactly how to get there and jump to their death. At least one such candidate arrives every single day. Also every day, however, a remarkable charity—the Beachy Head Chaplaincy Team—is there, based five minutes’ walk from the fatal cliff edge. The team’s purpose is the opposite of assisted suicide: they try to persuade those who have come to die to live. They are astonishingly successful. I have the latest figure from Gerry Howitt, the team’s CEO. So far this year, they have engaged with 271 people who have come to kill themselves. Of those, only four have jumped.

The chaplaincy team also works tirelessly with Sussex Police, the council, clinical mental health professionals, the local pub, the local taxi service and the National Trust at all practical measures of dissuasion. This means, for example, that lay-bys close to the cliff are blocked, pushing people to park nine minutes’ walk from the edge. Such preventive actions work. The total of those who arrive intending to jump has fallen by 32% since 2023.

As these potential suicides make that nine-minute walk, the chaplains, who are well trained in spotting symptoms and often carrying intelligence about individual arrivals, try to engage them in conversation. Their carefully honed technique starts by showing empathy and moves through establishing rapport to suggesting behavioural change and walking them down to the team’s building for a cup of tea.

Studies show that suicidal ideation, the overwhelming presence of thoughts of death and suicide, is never continuous for more than four hours, often for much less. Offered the right mixture of professionalism and human kindness, people change their minds. Of those 271 with whom the chaplaincy intervened this year, only 57 even reached the cliff. As I say, only four actually jumped.

I am sure your Lordships’ House will admire this moving example of co-operation between private charity and public services and this triumph for life itself. Indeed, the police intervene against suicide attempts under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights—the right to life. Some may object that the sort of suicide being assisted by the Bill before us is very different from that being prevented on Beachy Head, and in some ways that is true. But I end by asking your Lordships to consider the following thought.

The Bill does not support the freedom to kill yourself: that, we already possess. It confers a right to kill yourself with the active assistance of the state and doctors, and at public expense. It also reverses the operation of that power of human persuasion which works such wonders on Beachy Head. Under this legislation, the professionals will, by definition, be people wishing to fulfil a person’s wish to die. No one will be present to advocate the choice of life.

I do not believe that our country, particularly our National Health Service, can successfully contain such a contradiction in public policy and morality. If the Bill is enacted, the same hospital whose professionals help rescue potential suicides will contain other professionals who give gravely sick people the substances to kill themselves.

On Beachy Head, the chaplains say, “Please don’t jump”. In regard to this Bill, my Lords, I say the same to you.