Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Lord Weir of Ballyholme and Baroness Coffey

Committee stage
Friday 14th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, group 1 is perhaps not the ordinary place to start when we are considering the issue of Wales, but I have tabled 40 amendments with specific reference to Wales for a reason. We will get into aspects of this in more detail and I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, for degrouping some of their amendments, because I think it is important that we have a considered debate about how the Bill could potentially apply in Wales. I am also conscious that the Committee will want to get on to the key principles that we will cover in later groups.

My reason for raising this is that the Bill started as a judge-led process, with quite a focus on, in effect, decriminalising parts of the Suicide Act. I am in no doubt that that is a reserved competence: having the one judicial system. I completely accept that. That is not what I am seeking to get into. However, what has happened in the Commons, and even more now in Committee in your Lordships’ House, with the amendments that have been tabled, has basically flipped the Bill into being a Bill on NHS-provided assisted dying—or “assisted suicide”, or “assisted help”; I have forgotten the varieties that are now being proposed on what it is going to be called—and without doubt, health is devolved to the Welsh Government, and therefore the Welsh Senedd.

There have been a number of debates in the Welsh Senedd, and the Welsh Senedd has consistently said that it does not want assisted suicide to go ahead, particularly in Wales, under its devolved elements. That vote was actually taken fairly recently and, as a consequence, I am concerned that aspects of the Bill will, in effect, potentially be breaking the Sewel convention, although I accept that the Welsh Government are now on to their second legislative consent Motion and will have more.

When I have asked the Government questions, I have tried to do it through freedom of information requests, just trying to understand what concerns the Government have had about the Bill and why it has needed, I think, 11.7 full-time equivalent civil servants working in the Department of Health and more than three in the Ministry of Justice to work through and understand the issues that have made the Government decide, “That’s not workable”, “That’s not practical”, “Let’s think about the legal element”. I have been blocked at pretty much every turn. I have been told, on FoI elements, “It’s going to take too long to answer you”. Indeed, I am still waiting for an answer from the Department of Health, but I got another one just saying, in effect, “Well, the Minister mentioned it basically in Committee in the other place, you can look it up yourself”. I am not sure that that is the attitude that is going to help us get through this detailed understanding of where we are.

Returning to Wales, the Government have been having weekly technical meetings with Welsh Government officials. It has not been possible to get information about what has been discussed. Recognising that both Governments are supposed to be neutral on this, this is not a case of government policy formation, which is protected under the Freedom of Information Act, but nor do I feel it is in the spirit of considering the most important Bill of this entire parliamentary Session, indeed of this entire Parliament.

The other aspect I am concerned about is what is happening in the Welsh Senedd. There is clearly a difference of view between the Welsh Senedd and the Welsh Government, and information is not currently being released. I am not trying to get into a whole debate on Wales, but can the Minister give us an understanding of what is happening? I appreciate that the sponsor of the Bill may have the answers, but let us be candid: it is the civil servants who have been doing all the technical work and the sponsor has been doing the more general policy ideation—at least, that is what Ministers told the Select Committee. I know the Select Committee had limited time and I tried to get a discussion about Wales during it, but it was not possible.

I am not going to delay debate on the first group, but it needs some careful consideration. I could make lots of references to reports, which are online, but there is a huge difference in what the Welsh Senedd believes should be devolved and what needs a legislative consent Motion. I am still awaiting an answer from the Government about whether they have requested the legislative consent Motion.

There are many more clauses the Welsh Senedd believes should be in here, and I am looking for a straightforward response from both Ministers on the clauses that they believe are not devolved and why. Ideally, I would like to hear it on the Floor of the House but if the information is not available today, I would be grateful if it could be responded to in a letter to be laid in the Library so that everyone has a proper understanding of what is the responsibility of this House and what is the responsibility of another Parliament. We need to be transparent about what that means, because we should not assume that we have the opportunity to ride roughshod over what other devolved Administrations and Parliaments believe. I beg to move.

[Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment standing in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. Some people may detect from my accent that, although I hail from the great city of Bangor, it is not the great city of Bangor in north Wales but the great city of Bangor in Northern Ireland. I have particular empathy with the amendments that have been put forward by the noble Baroness due to my experience as a Minister in a devolved Administration. The clarity the noble Baroness seeks goes to the heart of the relationship between the devolved Administrations and Westminster, and it is of particular relevance to this Bill.

Generally speaking, a Minister in a devolved institution will face three categories of legislation. First, there will be reserved matters, which are entirely within the purview of Westminster—national issues, which I think everyone would accept. Secondly, there will be a range of issues which, although not strictly reserved, are of such obvious applicability across the United Kingdom that a legislative consent Motion should be applied. I do not see the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, in his place, but on occasions even the SNP Government in Scotland have been prepared to sign up to legislative consent Motions. The third category—the bulk of legislation—is situations that should be decided locally, where a devolved Government and a devolved Parliament can choose whether to follow what is happening at Westminster and in England, to take a different path in seeking either to virtually replicate or to amend, or to go in a tangentially very different direction. That is at the heart of democratic accountability in devolution.

I believe that this is an issue that should be decided in Wales. It is an issue that should clearly fall into category three. We all know that we have a very unusual constitutional set-up in the United Kingdom, where devolution to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland is on a slightly different basis in each case. That can produce some unusual aspects. What we have today is a certain level of anomaly, because this legislation falls into what may be described as a fourth, hybrid category. As the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, highlighted, the distinction is between the aspects that deal with criminal justice and criminal responsibility, and those that deal with health and social policy, with the former being reserved and the latter being devolved.

It is very clear that the heart of the Bill makes major decisions that impact on health and social policy. However, we are left with a situation for Wales that means, if this goes through unaltered, that the criminal responsibility will be lifted but there will be no regulations coming from this House as to how that will actually be brought about. It is the equivalent of this House saying that we are going to bring in new road safety measures, which will not apply to Wales, but if you are caught speeding on the motorway there could be no criminal sanction against you. What we have potentially arrived at for Wales is the worst of all worlds.

We need to take a step back. We need to ensure that the wishes of the Welsh people, as exercised by the Senedd—they may change over time—are respected. Rather than, in effect, imposing something that then has to be more or less corrected in Wales by way of changes to their health and social policy, we should be allowing the issue of assisted dying to be decided by the Welsh Senedd. If they decide to make those changes, this Parliament should then reflect them by way of changes to the criminal justice system, which I think would be relatively easy to do.

In the absence of that, the importance of these amendments, as outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, is that if we cannot get things definitively the right way round, we can at least get a level of clarity over what aspects apply to Wales, rather than a potential wall of obfuscation. This is an ideal opportunity for the Government and the sponsors to highlight where exactly the demarcation is, which will be very helpful as we move through the rest of this Bill.