Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Friday 9th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes) (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, is taking part remotely. I invite him to speak.

[Lord Shinkwin (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 120 and the amendments consequential to it. I should explain at the outset that my remarks incorporate the concerns of my noble friend Lord Farmer, who regrets that he is unable to be here. We are both worried, as I know are many other noble Lords, about current capacity and other pressures on the family courts. We are particularly concerned that these amendments would increase capacity pressures still further by placing decision-making and sign-off for applications for assisted dying orders into the Family Division of the High Court.

The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, mentioned safety. Notwithstanding his reference to 40-plus circuit judges and a cohort of recorders, I fear that what is before us is a recipe for overwhelming a system that already shows grave signs of being overloaded. Noble Lords will know that, for some considerable time, my noble friend Lord Farmer has been pressing this and previous Governments to cite early legal advice and support in family hubs when families separate, to ease pressure precisely because of existing capacity issues.

Moreover, the National Audit Office recently said of the family justice system:

“The government … does not have an overall assessment of the main drivers of delays or the capacity required to manage the system efficiently and reduce delay. MoJ, DfE and others have carried out several reviews … to identify causes of delay in family justice, identifying more than 25 different contributing factors … but most of the reviews could not quantify the scale and impact of each issue on overall performance, or the resources required to deal with these causes efficiently, due to data limitations”.

Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I have listened with care and respect to the passionate arguments expressed on both sides. My contribution to this crucial debate stems from my personal experience of having been unable to talk, swallow or even breathe independently following lifesaving neurosurgery. My neurosurgeon would not give me odds even on survival, never mind recovery.

To say that I felt vulnerable would be an understatement. However, the one thing that did not compound my pain, anguish and complete loss of autonomy was the fear that the law presumed to pose the question of whether my life was worth living. That is the fear that has been so powerfully articulated by my noble friend Lady Fraser, the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Campbell of Surbiton and Lady Grey-Thompson.

Sadly, nothing that I have heard today comes close to addressing that fear. In fact, I know that had the Bill been law, it would have compounded my acute sense of vulnerability. There is no doubt in my mind that I would have felt like a burden. If I had known then what we know now about the highly relevant assisted dying developments in Canada, I would have felt that a price had been placed on my head.

It is a simple fact that keeping those of us with severe disabilities alive costs money—lots of it. Rebuilding this broken body in which I live has cost an awful lot of money.

The British Islamic Medical Association rightly states that

“when it comes to assisted dying, there are no opportunities to rectify well-intentioned mistakes or benefit from hindsight.”

Let us not make a very well-intentioned mistake. Instead, let us protect those in vulnerable situations, such as I found myself in, by opposing the Bill.