Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Lord Tyrie and Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston

Committee stage
Friday 14th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyrie (Non-Afl)]

I will be brief—everybody will be delighted to hear that. I should say that I am a supporter of the intentions of the Bill, and I agree with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said, particularly when he suggested that the Government will need to be involved in sorting out some of these problems.

What concerns me is that we are now going to try to improve a Bill, which is demonstrably flawed, with 900 amendments—many of which seem to make sense to me—on the Floor of the House between now and Christmas. Surely the Government should now be listening, and grasping that they need to take the Bill in themselves. They need to consult nationally and widely, to try to find as much consensus as possible, and then in a considered way they need to come back to the House. To attempt to deal with these 900 amendments in this way will end up with the Bill being talked out, with us being in a place we do not want to be—at least those of us who want to see progress on the Bill—and we will end up in a worse place than we would have been had the Government done the sensible thing at the beginning and taken the Bill in, as they did with Private Members’ Bills such as the Suicide Act.

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, I shall be even more brief than the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, but I put on record that I am quite in favour of Damascene conversions on this occasion. This last hour and a half have shown us that this is irrespective of the aims of the Bill. The way the Bill is written has so many flaws that I do not think that, however long we debate it, this House will be able to get it to a stage where it is legislatively fit to be passed, and that is our role: we should not vote for anything that cannot legislatively be properly implemented.