Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 14th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

I thank the noble Baroness. At the Lady Mayor’s parade, a member of the public introduced himself and told me that this is what he was doing. We agreed to disagree on the outcome of the Bill. Slightly patronisingly, he followed this up by saying how wonderful he thought I was and to keep going.

I did not mean to make a point that was amusing to the Chamber, as this is far from amusing, but these are the details that we need to understand. Is there far more going on behind the scenes? Is the presumption that very few amendments will be accepted, as happened in another place, or are the supporters of this Bill really open to making it better? I have tabled the second-highest number of amendments; my competitive edge fails in this example, as my noble friend Lady Finlay is about 30 amendments ahead of me. My amendments are to improve the Bill. Many are slight drafting changes, changes of words, which are to improve this Bill. That is our role. That is what we must remember. We have to improve this Bill. We have to make it workable.

Coming back to the point of this grouping, we have to make it work for England and Wales and we have to remember, as people who work in Westminster, that we have a responsibility to the people of Wales and should not step into areas that are not for us to step into.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, this is the first debate in Committee on this important Bill so I hope that the Committee will allow me to take a minute or two to set out the approach of the Official Opposition. As my noble friend Lord Kamall and I said at Second Reading, the Official Opposition have no collective view on this Bill. Although each Member of the Opposition Front Bench will have their own view on the Bill, we will support noble Lords across the House in their scrutiny of the Bill. We will also table a small number of additional amendments where we feel that parts of the Bill need probing further. We will not seek to delay the passage of the Bill, nor will we seek to hold up progress in Committee. Instead, we will seriously engage in detailed scrutiny of the Bill so that we can collectively deliver the best possible piece of legislation.

In that regard, I respectfully pay tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, for demonstrating his openness to improving the Bill already by tabling amendments that we hope to get to today and which reflect concerns that have been raised by noble Lords. I speak for all my colleagues on the Opposition Front Bench when I say that I look forward to working with him to ensure that we send a better Bill back to the other place.

The amendments in this group relate to the territorial extent of the Bill. My noble friend Lady Coffey is seeking to remove references to Wales in the Bill so that it would apply only to England. While I am not entirely persuaded that making this an England-only Bill is necessary per se, these amendments raise important questions about devolution. The core question for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, is why the Bill does not apply to the whole of the United Kingdom on the one hand or only to England on the other.

At the heart of this is, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, said—although various Acts of Parliament may put us to sleep, a speech by the noble and learned Lord never does; I was listening very carefully—that these amendments speak to the devolution settlement that we work with and the inconsistencies and confusions of that settlement. The noble and learned Lord used the word “complexity”. It is extremely complex. In this area, we have the problem that criminal law is not devolved to Wales whereas health is devolved. To pick up the point made by the noble and learned Lord, with which I respectfully agree, declaring the appropriate interest, Wales should not be regarded as inferior to Scotland. That is a point of general application.

The Scottish Parliament, as noble Lords know, is currently considering its own legislation on this topic. I hope that noble Lords have picked up that the Scottish Bill is significantly different in key ways—most markedly in the definition of terminal illness. In Scotland, it lacks the “six months to live” test which, whatever view we take, is at the heart of the Bill before us. The definition of terminal illness in the Scottish Bill is:

“For the purposes of this Act, a person is terminally ill if they have an advanced and progressive disease, illness or condition from which they are unable to recover and that can reasonably be expected to cause their premature death”.


I am not quite sure about “premature” in that context in all cases, but that is what the text says.

Leaving aside the point that those resident in one part of the United Kingdom will therefore have different rights to assistance under the law from those in another region of the United Kingdom should both Bills pass, I see the point that my noble friend Lady Coffey is making. If the people of Scotland may choose whether to have a law for terminally ill adults who wish to end their lives, why—I ask rhetorically, so to speak, looking forward to the response of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer—should people in Wales not have the same choice? This is the key question that the noble and learned Lord has been presented with by this group of amendments.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the opening comments of the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, which were helpful. I thank noble Lords for this debate.

I want to set out some points about the role of government Ministers. As noble Lords are well aware, the Government remain neutral on the principle of assisted dying and on the passage of this Bill. Whether the law in this area should change is absolutely and rightly a matter for Parliament. I and my noble friend Lady Levitt will speak in Committee as government Ministers responsible for ensuring that the Bill, if passed, is legally robust, effective and workable. To that end, I will not be providing a government view on the merits of proposed changes. Those are rightly a matter for noble Lords to decide. Throughout Committee, my remarks will focus only on amendments where the Government have significant workability concerns. I hope that this will be of assistance to noble Lords in their consideration of amendments. Where no comment is made, any workability concerns are less significant. The Government are unable to confirm at this stage that the current drafting of those amendments is fully workable, effective or enforceable.

Turning to the amendments in this group—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My noble friend has put it more accurately—that is precisely the question I am trying to understand. I am trying to be a legislator rather than somebody who argues in court, but the very fact that somebody can make health decisions on behalf of somebody else is important to consider in this matter, and I am not clear that it is explicit in the Bill—yet—that that power of attorney could not apply. We know that the Mental Capacity Act 2005 does not apply to Section 2 of the Suicide Act 1961. I will not go into a history lesson about the Suicide Act at Clause 1, but at the moment everything seems silent on the use of that lasting power of attorney.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, this is the first amendment to be introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff. We all acknowledge her extensive experience and deep knowledge of this issue, as both a doctor and a professor of palliative medicine. Like my noble friend Lord Shinkwin, I expect noble Lords across the House to benefit from the noble Baroness’s advice and guidance as we seek to improve this Bill through Committee.

I have listened carefully to the debate and it seems that there are two related but conceptually separate issues going on. One is a valuable, perhaps somewhat philosophical, debate about the difference between “can” and “able to”; in other words, just because you can take a decision, does it always mean that you are able to take a decision? It is an interesting debate to have.

There is a separate but related issue about how one reflects that or the conclusion one comes to in law. That is really the issue raised by the amendments to Clause 3 in the next group. As both the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, pointed out—and as set out in the explanatory note for this amendment—Amendment 2 is linked to Amendment 115 from the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, which seeks to replace Clause 3 with a new clause. To that extent, the debate we have just had is an hors d’oeuvre before the main course of group 3. Perhaps this is a restaurant that serves its hors d’oeuvres in larger portions than normal.

For reasons that I hope are obvious—I mean no discourtesy to the Committee—I may not be able to stay until the end of group 3, so I hope to take a quick moment now to explain this interrelationship. The proposed new Clause 3 is a considered amendment that challenges the Bill’s reliance on the definition of “capacity” under the Mental Capacity Act. It seeks to make special provision in the Bill for how the definition of lack of capacity is to be dealt with, and it touches on important information and the ability to make decisions. In particular, it builds in information relating to palliative care. I look forward to the Minister’s response to this group and I will read her response to the group of amendments on Clause 3, in due course, and the noble and learned Lord the sponsor’s response to both groups. Although we will debate these two groups separately, they seem to me to be intimately connected.

With some trepidation, I will respond to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. I am conscious of her experience in both this and the other House, which considerably exceeds mine on both counts. However, I touched on this point at Second Reading and, respectfully and certainly from my analysis, there does not appear to be any constitutional reason why this House should not take its time considering the Bill or even, should it wish to, reject it as a non-manifesto Bill that is also a Private Member’s Bill.

For noble Lords who are interested, there are some useful articles on this point from Professor Mark Elliott, who is a professor of public law at the University of Cambridge. I refer to him because of two important features. First, he is a professor of public law at the University of Cambridge. Secondly, when I was a Minister, he did not agree with me on anything so, if we agree on this, it is likely that we are actually right.

In all seriousness, the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, made a point that I made at Second Reading, which is particularly important in the context of this Bill. A number of Members of Parliament said, both in and outside the Chamber, that they voted for the Bill on the express basis that they relied on this House to give it proper scrutiny. If the noble Baroness wants to intervene, of course I will give way.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

I obviously did not express myself very clearly. I was not in any way suggesting that this was a government Bill to which the conventions applied or that there was any reason why we should not properly scrutinise it; I absolutely stand by that, and I do not think that there is any bar to us doing that. What I was suggesting to the Committee, respectfully, is that it should take very seriously the fact that this Bill has been considered and approved by the other place; and that, therefore, in the conduct of our proceedings, we should make sure that we do things in a considered and responsible way. To speak completely personally, I think that this House should be able to vote on amendments—obviously, it has the right to vote at Third Reading—but we should reach decisions on this Bill in an appropriate timeframe. It would not be satisfactory to anyone if this were simply extended and extended so that we never actually reached a view.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for intervening. If there is a difference between us, it may be one of emphasis and not substance, because, respectfully, I do not disagree with anything she just said. As I said in my opening remarks, the Official Opposition’s position from the Front Bench is that we want this House to be able to do proper scrutiny.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

In making that last point, does the noble Lord accept that, in essence, we need to be given more days in Committee so that we can go through this Bill in detail but do so in the way that the noble Baroness suggested? The issue is that, at the moment, there is an assumption that we are going to get only four days in Committee; frankly, that is not enough for such a complex Bill.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for that point from the noble Lord.

I do not want to bring my own personal circumstances into it, but the plain fact of the matter is that I will not be able to participate in the next group because, for obvious reasons, I have to leave. I am a practising barrister. I set aside time to contribute—usefully, I hope—to the work of this House, but there are other pressures on time. If this were a government Bill, we all know how government Bills work. This is well beyond my unpaid pay grade, but it seems to me that we are perhaps trying to pour a quart into a pint pot by doing this Bill as a Private Member’s Bill; as I say, though, that is way beyond my pay grade.

I will sit down in a moment but, because of the exchange we have just had, I want to place on the record the fact that I will not be here for the next group. Having said on this group that the two groups are interrelated, I hope that that will not be a discourtesy to the Committee—certainly not to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, who is the sponsor of the Bill.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, as it is nearly 2.30 pm, it might be helpful to the Committee to know that, when my noble friend Lady Merron has responded for the Government Front Bench and my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer has responded, I intend to invite the House to resume; that will bring today’s debate to a close. That is my intention but, obviously, it is a matter for the Committee to decide what it wants to do.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, and take part in this important debate. We have had two days of discussion, with many fine speeches. The ones we have heard today are still ringing in our ears, but let me take a moment to remind the House of a few of last week’s contributions.

I will never forget the exchange between my noble friend Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and his late father. I will never forget the tragic story of the parents-in-law of the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell. I remember the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, with all his experience—that without the proper provision of palliative care, you do not really have freedom of choice. At the same time, I recall the warning from the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, that proper government funding for palliative care might always remain elusive. I know that the whole House shares my admiration for the brave, moving and extremely personal speech made by my noble and learned friend Lady Prentis of Banbury, and will join me in wishing her well in the months ahead.

Although I am winding up for the Official Opposition, we do not have an official position. These Benches have a free vote, so I speak for myself and my conscience. Two points flow from that. First, we all bring to this debate our background; our education; our professional or other knowledge; our faith, or lack of it; and our personal experiences of the fact of death and the experiences of the dying. I suggest that it is as wrong to discount an opinion because it is informed by religious faith as it is to ignore an opinion grounded in a sincere belief in the irrelevance of faith, because both the supporters and the opponents of this Bill sincerely believe in the validity of their arguments. There is no doubt that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, places the Bill before us in perfectly good faith, but I repeat a point made by my noble friend Lord Polak in the name of the former Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks; on a personal note, I miss him especially on days like this. He said that

“purity of motive has never ensured rightness of outcomes”.

Secondly, we do not sit here as moral philosophers or, with the evident exception of the Lords spiritual, as theologians. Over the past few weeks, I have looked deeply into the learning of my own tradition. I have read the letter from the current Chief Rabbi and essays by Orthodox thinkers. I have considered articles from modern Reform Rabbis, such as Rabbi Romain, who was mentioned earlier today. I have studied responsa from a rich written legal tradition extending over 3,000 years.

Yet, I confess to your Lordships that I vacillate on the underlying moral question. As a lawyer, I spend my life dealing not with black and white but shades of grey. I feel like I ought to have clarity on the underlying moral and philosophical questions. If I may borrow respectfully from another biblical tradition on this issue, I see through a glass, darkly. But—and this is the key point—we sit here as legislators. It is as a legislator and a lawyer that I look at the Bill. The ultimate question before us will be whether the Bill should become law. My answer to that question is no, and certainly not in the state the Bill is now in.

By contrast, my answer to the question, should anybody put it, of whether the Bill should get a Second Reading, would be, “Of course it should”. I say that for two reasons: first, because this is a serious, if also seriously flawed, Bill which merits this House’s careful consideration in Committee; and secondly, because the other House passed the Bill and handed it over to us. But that, I suggest, is the limit of the force of the point—that the House of Commons passed the Bill.

Some have suggested that, because the House of Commons passed the Bill, we should not reject it. For my part, I reject that contention. I accept that this House should not, except in the most exceptional of circumstances, unceremoniously dispose of a Bill passed by the House of Commons. So the fact that the House of Commons passed the Bill means that we need to take it seriously, and we are taking it seriously, but it does not mean that we have to pass the Bill as it is or even as it might be following amendment. That is right as a matter of constitutional principle, but it is especially right in the case of this Bill. A number of Members of the other place passed the Bill only on the basis that it would be the subject of detailed scrutiny here. In those circumstances, the idea that we should uncritically defer to the House of Commons seems to be the parliamentary equivalent of “heads I win, tails you lose”.

Let me make four short substantive points about the Bill. A number of us have repeatedly made the argument that because some people in this country have the option of paying to go to Switzerland and Dignitas, the Bill is needed for those who cannot afford that option. That superficially attractive point suffers from two defects. First, there is a conceptual problem. The fact that Switzerland offers assisted suicide and offers it to non-Swiss residents does not mean that we have to follow because of that. Otherwise, the fact that any country in the world adopted the Swiss model would mean that we should also pass such legislation. That is not a sound basis on which to legislate.

The second defect is a practical problem. The Bill would not cover many, if not most, of those who travel to Switzerland, because if you have a degenerative disease but have more than six months to live, you can go to Switzerland but you are outside the scope of the Bill. That also means that relatives who are anguished by the idea of what might happen to them if they assist their relative in going to Switzerland would still be in that predicament, even if the Bill were to pass.

The second point is in response to an important speech by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, who will know that I listen to anything he says with particular care. He made two points. First, the law already rejects the absolute sanctity of life and recognises the right to suicide. Secondly, citing the decision in the Bland case, he drew an analogy between the right to refuse life-saving treatment—which is our right under English law, and which I support—and the right to demand an assisted death.

As to the first point, it is not correct to say that the law recognises a right to suicide. Suicide is no longer unlawful, but that does not mean that there is a right to commit suicide. Indeed, that point was emphasised by Lord Bingham, the former Master of the Rolls, in the earlier case of Pretty. As to the second point made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, I accept that the law rejects the absolute sanctity of life, but that is a straw man. In practice, all religious and philosophical traditions, if sometimes sotto voce, reject the absolute sanctity of life. Nobody would suggest that we should tax everybody in the country out of half their wealth to give one person another three months of life. Absolute sanctity of life is a straw man.

However, the law does respect the sanctity of life. The sanctity of life is a religious and philosophical principle. That means that, in our law, all human life is regarded as being intrinsically valuable and that we do not deliberately terminate a life even if the patient so consents. Indeed, that is at the heart of the decision in the Bland case, to which the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, referred. The House will be happy to hear that the detail will await Committee, but Lord Goff of Chieveley began his speech in that case by referring to

“the applicable principles of law”,

of which the first was

“the fundamental principle … of the sanctity of life”.

He drew a clear—his word was “crucial”—distinction between the withdrawal of life-supporting treatment and actively causing death. The key point is that withdrawal of treatment by doctors does not cause death; it is the underlying disease that causes death. The doctors do not have any intention to kill; they want to discontinue something that is of no benefit to the patient.

It is on that basis that most religious traditions, including my own, support the withdrawal of treatment in those circumstances. For example, there is the authoritative responsa of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein in his monumental Igrot Moshe, where—le’havdil—he draws the same distinction as Lord Goff does in Bland between removing impediments to death on the one hand and hastening death or assisted suicide on the other. Therefore, my answer to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick—why, if you can refuse treatment, can you not demand to be provided barbiturates?—is that this is contrary to the basic principle that human life is inviolate, even if the person in question has consented to its violation.

Thirdly, I have carefully read the human rights memorandum that accompanies the Bill, but I have not seen in it any response to the question of why the line is drawn at six months. The legal challenge is going to go along the following lines. First, “My personal status for the purposes of Article 14 discrimination is how long I have to live”. Secondly, “I cannot access assisted suicide at more than six months, even though my suffering may thus be longer than somebody who only has six months to live”. Thirdly, “There is no obvious reason why six months has been chosen”. Perhaps that is a lawyer’s way of putting the slippery slope argument. However, in my professional experience, legal slopes are exceptionally slippery. It seems that, once we are on this slope, we will slide inexorably to the point where anyone with a terminal illness shall be permitted to avail themselves of the provisions in the Bill.

I am afraid that we have an inherent contradiction regarding the supporters of the Bill. My noble friend Lord Johnson of Marylebone accepted that the logical outcome was that anyone with a terminal illness should be permitted to avail themselves, but at the same time we are told that the six-month limit is a fundamental protection. Both points cannot be right at the same time.

Finally, let me say a word about an absent friend: the High Court judge who, we were told when the Bill was introduced, would stand as guardian to make sure everything worked as it should. But our judges have their work cut out making sure that we can live in peace, and they did not like the idea of having to make sure that we die in peace as well. So the High Court judge has gone, to be replaced by what is now rather euphemistically called an “expanded panel”. Well, it has been expanded in that there are more people on it, but it has been diminished because one member does not have to be a judge: a King’s Counsel is sufficient.

I am the last person to denigrate the ancient and honourable status of one of His Majesty’s Counsel, learned in the law. But the fact is that there is now no minimum period of practice before you can apply to take silk, and it is also not immediately apparent to me why a barrister of, say, 12 years’ call who took silk last week can be on the panel but the senior partner of an international firm of solicitors cannot.

The truth, I suggest, is that this judicial panel falls between two stools. It is too complex for the normal, straightforward case, while it is not equipped with anything like sufficient powers for the more difficult cases. I am not sure what the answer is, or even if there is an answer, but I am afraid that the current proposal is neither fish nor fowl; it is something of a statutory red herring.

To repeat, although I have spoken from the Dispatch Box, I have spoken only for myself. I look forward to the forthcoming stages, so that, if and when this House has to decide whether the Bill should pass into law, it is by then in the best possible state. But, as matters stand today, the Bill is not fit for the statute book.