Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 20th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)]

Would the noble Baroness perhaps like to make it clear whether she believes that it is inappropriate for the sponsor of the Bill to reply to the question I have just put in Committee?

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I hope I will be permitted to say something about Wales. I was going to make a much longer speech but my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, made an excellent argument on the merits of the issues relating to Wales.

The short point to which I wish to draw attention is the issue in this case. Is it an issue about criminal law? This often arises in questions within a federal form of government, which in reality we have here: how do you characterise this issue? Does anyone really think this is about the criminal law? The criminal law is part of finding the solution, but it is a debate about a moral issue and how to use the resources of the NHS. The criminal law should not be seen as an impediment.

I would have said a lot more about other things but, being accused of wasting time, I will not make that speech. I just draw attention to the problem that arose in 2016-17. Wales wanted to pursue its own policy in relation to what is old-fashionedly known as the chastisement of children. Of course, the chastisement of children is governed by the criminal law. As Wales wanted to do it at a time when there was a Conservative Government in London and a Labour Government in Wales, there was an intergovernmental discussion on how this issue should sensibly be dealt with. It was decided that an exception ought to be written into the Government of Wales Act and the very complicated schedules, permitting Wales to make its own decision. So it was excised from the reservations of powers to Westminster.

All Amendment 844 seeks to do is to make a minor alteration to look at the issue for the people of Wales. Should they be entitled to deal with this issue comprehensively? I say nothing about what happened in the Senedd—enough has been said about that. I remind noble Lords that there will be a new Senedd after 7 May, before the Bill is dealt with, and a very different attitude may be taken. Having heard what has been said about the desire that the people of Wales should not be entitled to make their own decisions, I very much hope we are able to try to focus. What is the issue? Is it one that Wales ought to be able to make? If it is not, the simple solution is a technical one, which can easily be made through Amendment 844.

[Lord Gove (Con)]

My Lords, the inference from some comments during the course of this debate has been that somehow the issues raised in Wales and by the Senedd are peripheral to the centre of this legislation—not at all. The issues that have been raised by the debate are absolutely central to the legislation, as we have heard throughout the debate.

The Bill seeks to change primarily the criminal law, and it goes into some specificity about that. But as has been pointed out very effectively by the noble Lords, Lord Stevens of Birmingham and Lord Goodman of Wycombe, and others, the Bill carries with it certain consequential and potentially hugely consequential changes to the National Health Service—changes that will be made by regulation and are not in the Bill.

That is precisely the point that was at issue when the legislative consent Motion was debated in the Senedd. As my noble friend Lord Harper pointed out, when the Senedd voted on the broad principle of assisted dying—not this legislation but the broad principle—the Senedd was against it. When invited to vote on the legislative consent Motion, the Health Minister in Wales, Jeremy Miles MS, explained to the Members of the Senedd that a legislative consent Motion would be necessary because in the absence of a legislative consent Motion, as he understood it, it would be criminally possible to assist someone in dying, but he would not be able to provide the appropriate detail about whether the NHS would be responsible for that service. The spectre was raised in the minds of those legislating in the Senedd that, in effect, there would be assisted dying but it would be provided privately.

Jeremy Miles might have been confused in his interpretation, but he is the Health Minister in the Welsh Government and was previously the Minister responsible for constitutional relations between the Welsh Government and the United Kingdom Government. It is hardly the case that he is a naif stumbling into this argument without a background in the two most telling areas that the legislation covers.

It was also the case that the Senedd, in that same debate, voted by a clear margin to say that the whole issue had been constitutionally mishandled and that the way in which criminal legislation was being used as a Trojan horse, as has been pointed out, to potentially dramatically change the constitution and the provision of the NHS, was simply not good enough. The Senedd was very clear in voting in that way.

This brings us again to the heart of the problem with legislating for these measures through the Private Member’s Bill procedure. In a previous incarnation, I was the Minister for Intergovernmental Relations. I may have been a bad Minister or a good Minister, but I was a Minister conscious of the fact that the devolution settlement relied on government-to-government operation. When there were disputes between the legislative or the executive decisions of devolved legislatures or devolved Governments, they were resolved by intergovernmental relations and, in particular, by means of a dispute mechanism. As has been pointed out, a variety of questions have been raised specifically about the nature of regulation to do with the NHS that Ministers at the Dispatch Box cannot answer, not because they are unwilling, truculent or obstinate but because, as they clearly say, they are neutral on the Bill.

The Welsh Senedd granted the legislative consent Motion because it feared that it would not be in the driving seat of a vehicle, the ultimate destination of which they were uncertain of and the design of which they had little part in. It felt that this was the only way of ensuring its continued relevance. It was not, as supporters of the Bill in Wales have made clear, an endorsement of the principle of assisted dying, let alone an endorsement of this legislation. It would be dismissive of the people of Wales and reckless in regard to the devolution settlement to interpret that vote as endorsement of this legislation.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 14th November 2025 Lords Chamber

On some of the comments raised about the vote in the Senedd, I remind this House that there is a Senedd election next year. Therefore, it is most likely that the Welsh Government who would implement the Bill, if passed, would be new. We already know that at least 56% of the Members of the Senedd after May will be brand new—that is an important point for this House to consider. We should not take the previous vote as the say of the Senedd; instead, we should ensure that the Senedd has a proper say and can legislate for the people of Wales on the NHS in Wales.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I shall be brief. I oppose the amendment. As the noble Lord, Lord Markham, said, this is a decision for the people of Wales to make—not for the people of England, who dominate this Parliament, both in the other place and here.

The problem arises because of the complexity of the devolution arrangements for Wales, and we could spend quite a lot of time—which I am sure no one wants to spend—going through it to try to understand why it has happened. In essence, it has arisen because the enabling of the Senedd to do anything is determined by criminal law; that is how the legislation has been drafted. That is not the case in Scotland: they have the freedom. That is denied to Wales because of the way that the devolution arrangements work. It cannot be right and fair for this position to remain. The noble Lord, Lord Markham, put his finger on what the solution ought to be.

We cannot adopt what has been suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. If we did so, the Senedd would have no power to do anything because of those constitutional arrangements. Therefore, the solution that has been put forward, to delete Wales from the Bill, is a non-starter; we have to do something.

This is particularly important because, as has been said, although this is partly a great moral issue and partly an issue about the NHS, it is only in incidental effects a criminal law issue. The settlement makes it a criminal law issue, but we ought to allow the moral issue and the issue in relation to the NHS to be determined in Wales. If the Bill were to be passed in its current form, and then the Welsh Government decided that they did not want to implement it, the only people who would be able to obtain assisted dying in Wales would be those who were prepared to pay for it. That cannot conceivably be right.

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, and I have put down an amendment to try and resolve this. We have had it degrouped. I do not think any noble Lords have had much experience of reading the Government of Wales Act. The only experience noble Lords ought to have of doing that is if one suffers from insomnia.

In the coming period, we ought to settle down with the sponsors of the Bill and with the Government to try and work out a just solution to this problem; otherwise, I regret to say, the debate on the Floor of the House on the way in which we solve these problems will be time-consuming. It is not really the best way of dealing with such an important issue, which can be solved technically. I am sure everyone would agree with the noble Lord, Lord Markham, that it is a decision for the people of Wales and not for the people of England, who dominate this legislature. Wales should not be regarded as inferior to Scotland.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, bearing in mind that this is a Private Member’s Bill, it seems to me, as an Englishwoman, that whatever efforts are required, we should be, at the end of the day, removing Wales from it.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels: NHS Ambulance Services and the NHS Patient Transport Service) Regulations 2023

Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Lords Chamber

The statutory instrument on ambulances rides rough- shod over all the arrangements jointly agreed in every ambulance trust to protect patient safety. It has a real ability to undermine the social partnership working built up over half a century, which is so essential if we are to implement successfully the long-awaited NHS long-term workforce plan and restore the health of our nation. It is for these reasons that I ask this House to support the amendment on ambulances and NHS transport put forward by my noble friend Lady Merron.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

I thank the Minister very much and welcome the fact that, although this legislation extends to Wales and Scotland, it applies to neither of them. This is a welcome change of mind; I hope that it will be carried through in other pieces of legislation or other instruments contemplated that relate to both education and the NHS.

I want to add one further observation, if I may, in support of what the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, said. We can of course pass instruments of this kind after the Government have gone out to consult, and they can say with some force that they have had some views, but doing it that way diminishes the status of our democracy. This is the place where the debate should take place. On a contentious issue—this is very contentious—we ought to have the argument here so that people know that it is open. I very much hope that a means can be found when we get to the more contentious areas of education and staffing levels in the other aspects of the NHS—perhaps on other matters, too—so that we have a mechanism for a meaningful debate in this Chamber for the strength and the health of our democracy, which is under such pressure from some who think that their voices do not count.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I came in today to break the habit of a lifetime—I have been in the House for more than 20 years, half of them as a Minister—because I proposed to vote against the first two Motions. I was going to support the first two fatal amendments. I felt deprived that I did not have the opportunity to do that—I am still going to make my points, mind you.

These are steps too far. I do not think that we should pussyfoot around. We know that, earlier in the year, the Government rejected the report on the Bill from the Delegated Powers Committee. There are times when this House should not simply fall into line with this Tory Government; this is one of them. I am reminded in some ways that, very sadly, we are missing today the contribution of the late Lord Judge who, earlier this year—on more than one occasion—made it clear from those Benches that we need to use the powers available to this House when we need to be firm. There were a couple of debates on it. In my view, this is such a time.

In answer to the Lib Dem Benches, we know that the health service bosses are not independent—we know that from the pay review bodies—so it is fairly obvious what will happen. I realise about the so-called conventions but they are between Labour and the Conservatives. There is no rule in the Statutory Instruments Act 1946 about not voting against a statutory instrument in either House; it is just the convention that we do not do it. We fear now that, if we do it to them, they will do it to us. In fact, the Tories have done it more to Labour than Labour have to the Tories so I am not going to take any lectures about conventions from this Government, who have breached, systematically ignored and torn up many of the conventions that rule our constitution. I will not rely on the use of fatal amendments by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, either.

One area will suffice as an example: electoral law. I am in favour of ID cards but the identity system was deliberately designed to reduce voting. Rees-Mogg admitted when he was the Leader of the other place that they had got it wrong: they fully intended to get fewer people in polling stations. The Government have neutered the Electoral Commission as the guardian of free and fair elections and, this past month, they changed the finances of elections, all without any consultation and with no Speaker’s Conference whatever. That is part of the constitution and the conventions on the way we do things. We do not have to follow the conventions: if a thing is bad enough, vote against it.

Paragraph 41 of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee report on these regulations—this committee reports to this House, having been set up by the House to look at these issues—says:

“The Department of Health and Social Care’s … consultation document acknowledged that, during past strikes, emergency provision has been delivered through voluntary arrangements”.


So why are we doing this? Why are we picking on ambulance workers? It is not needed. If there were any evidence of flagrant abuse and the voluntary system not working, believe you me, your Lordships would know about it. That is the reality. Therefore, on this one, if anybody called the vote—although it has now been denied—I would be happy to vote against the SI.

I cannot quote much from my experience. When you lose the opportunities of the other place to be in contact with constituents and with people’s daily lives, it is different; it is different when you stop representing people simply because you are in this place. However, I will give one example from my personal experience. Four years ago this month, a few days before Christmas, I was carted really late one Saturday night from Hereford County Hospital, which had spent four years stopping me going over to the dark side, to Worcester Royal, to have my first chemotherapy as an in-patient. The weather was atrocious; the main roads were blocked. The driver of the ambulance said to me, “I’d better warn you now: it might be a bit rough—I’ve got to go down some country lanes”. We passed three upturned cars due to the weather. When I got through it all, I wrote to the chief executive and said, “You’d better put a note on the chitties of those two people who looked after me in that ambulance that night”. It was absolutely horrendous.

I now think that people like that who do this job cannot be trusted to deliver emergency services when there is a dispute—disputes deliberately created by the Government anyway for political reasons. The reality is that I am prepared to vote against this SI, above the others—I am not saying anything about the other two. We have evidence from our own committee that it is not needed, and I have my own bit of personal experience. I thought, “Why pick on the ambulance workers?” If there were an opportunity, I would vote against the SI; I may not have the opportunity, therefore I will obviously support the regret amendment. However, I much regret that I may not be able to vote for the fatal amendment.