Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Murray of Blidworth Excerpts

Friday 12th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, irrespective of the underlying moral and policy question, as many noble Lords have already identified, the Bill in its present form is seriously procedurally flawed. I am against it.

I am most concerned about the impact those flaws will have on vulnerable people. Given the time available, two points occur to me which demonstrate this problem. First, at no point in the mechanism under the Bill does anyone expressly ask the applicant the reason why they wish to die. Such a question would not be an intrusion on private autonomy; to the contrary: it would be a reasonable and compassionate inquiry. In its own way, it would be a significant guard to protect the most vulnerable.

Secondly, more technically, there are very significant failings in the panel stage of the process, as described in the Bill and embodied in Clause 17. In its current form, the panel stage of the process, as the noble Lord, Lord Grabiner, identified, is lawyer window dressing—I agree. Unlike him, though, I suggest that this stage could and should be used to reinforce the process and to protect the most vulnerable against abuse.

Clause 17 provides that the panel’s function in an application for a certificate of eligibility for assisted suicide is simply to determine whether the nine tick boxes set out in Clause 17(2) are met. To do so, the panel, who are described in Schedule 2 as comprising a lawyer, a psychiatrist and a social worker, must hear from the co-ordinating doctor, the applicant, and they may hear from anyone else. Subsection (7) then requires that the panel must grant a certificate if they have satisfied that the nine boxes in subsection (2) are met.

This is a quasi-tribunal process in which the tribunal is bereft of any appropriate powers. Frankly, even a parking adjudicator has more evidential power than these panels. In the past few months, this Government have given more enforceable rights to employees and tenants, to mention two Bills that have recently passed through your Lordships’ House—the Employment Rights Bill and the Renters’ Reform Bill—than to those who seek assistance to die under this Bill. How is that so? Because those other pieces of legislation—employment legislation and landlord and tenant legislation—go before a court or tribunal with evidential powers to look into the matter before them.

The panel in this Bill is toothless. It has no power to require evidence to protect vulnerable people, no power to summon witnesses or experts, no power to order the disclosure of documents and no powers of compulsion at all. Indeed, the panel would have no power even to see an applicant’s will or to summon witnesses to explain the relationships in the application before them. There is no logical reason why those applying for assistance to die should have their request for a certificate of eligibility scrutinised by a body with fewer powers to compel evidence and make decisions than a person would have had if they had brought an employment claim, a landlord and tenant claim or a road traffic matter. At the very least, this Bill should explicitly provide that part of the statutory role of the panel should be to investigate motivation and possible coercion. The panel should have the powers of any other tribunal in performing that task.