Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Baroness Berger and Lord Hamilton of Epsom

Friday 30th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berger (Lab)]

My Lords, very briefly, I support the amendment that is calling for face-to-face consultations to take place, rather than only in exceptional cases. I want to reflect on why this matters. We know from other jurisdictions that many of these assessments are being done online. It is a really important question for us to consider whether we would want that in our country—and if not, it should be in the Bill. In addition, my comments are informed by the evidence that we were presented with in the Select Committee and drawn from my experience of meeting a number of elderly constituents over the course of nearly a decade as a Member of Parliament.

I reflect particularly on the women I met in their 70s, 80s and 90s who shared their experiences of domestic abuse. This conversation and these amendments matter because this legislation does not happen in a vacuum. The Labour Government today are rightly concerned with addressing the public health emergency of violence against women and girls in our country and has an important landmark mission and goal of halving violence against women and girls over the next decades. The NHS is playing its part and enhancing its efforts in tackling and violence against women and girls, focusing particularly on early identification. There is a lot of other very important work going on via training and investment, and I commend the work of many colleagues who are dealing with this on a daily basis. It was the experts that told us that to identify coercion, undue influence and pressure, doctors and other professionals need to look at someone’s body language. It is not just the words we say, how we say them, the volume or the tone—it is our non-verbal cues and what our body says. It is what we do not say that often shares an important message.

I listened very carefully to the counterchallenge of noble Lords so far. I do not think there is anything to stop the Bill from stipulating that, in exceptional circumstances, the doctors, or the independent advocates or panel members can visit an individual. But I would much rather that we had legislation that supports the Government’s important aim to reduce violence against women and girls, rather than something that will exacerbate the very serious problem that we know that too many women in our country face, particularly at their most vulnerable moments, which includes the end of life.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

Can the noble Baroness recall that last week she told the House that 23% of six-months-to-live diagnoses turned out to be wrong and that people lived longer? Does that not make the whole position of face-to-face diagnosis much more important when doctors so often get it wrong?

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Baroness Berger and Lord Hamilton of Epsom

Committee stage
Friday 23rd January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berger (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. It might be helpful, in the context of this conversation, for noble Lords to be aware that the data that the Department for Work and Pensions has on people who are in receipt of a benefit that comes during the six months towards the end of life shows that 23% of people who were given a six-month prognosis are still alive three years later.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

If I understand the noble Baroness correctly, that is 23% of people who die well beyond the six-month sentence they have been given. That is an extraordinarily large figure, and I am grateful to her for it. I think that makes us question the whole basis of this Bill which is talking about medical diagnosis that gives people a limited life but turns out to be wrong. This could be very disturbing, if we are going to go ahead on the basis of information that could be wrong in quite as many cases as that.