Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Baroness Coffey and Lord Ashcombe

Committee stage
Friday 21st November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashcombe (Con)]

My Lords, I just want to raise one point. We have heard an awful lot today, but I very much support what my noble friend Lady Berridge and the noble Baroness, Lady Rafferty, have just said about training. I do not believe a doctor, or any form of medical practitioner, can spot coercion with one discussion. Training in this area is absolutely imperative to have any way of making it work reasonably. That has to be part of the overall solution to this problem.

I will just add that, while I support every one of these amendments to a greater or lesser extent, I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, will consider them all very closely and not ignore them.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendments 47 and 49. It should be no surprise to noble Lords that this group is going to take some time, because it is probably one of the most important elements of our consideration of the Bill.

I also gently point out that it feels like coercion is being applied, but I am not going to be bullied by people into not raising my concerns at this point. I point out that it is the Department of Health and Social Care that proposed the groupings, and I believe it was passed by the sponsor. Therefore, we have had over 18 amendments from 14 people grouped together. If the concern is that we are taking too long with big groups, that will actually encourage people like me to degroup even further. That is not necessarily fruitful in addressing some of the concerns of the Bill, when we need some joined-up conversations.

The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, have talked about existing safeguards. There is an obvious one at the moment: it is against the law to help somebody to go to Dignitas. The person who wrote the guidelines on whether to press charges is of course now the Prime Minister. There are amendments made in Committee that reinstate the element of the DPP undertaking that.

In answer to questions that I tabled to the Government, the Justice Minister fortunately replied, basically indicating how many people had had proceedings against them. On average it was one a year for the last decade, and only two people have been convicted. But I am still waiting to hear about the arrests and charges made, never mind the proceedings. I will give an example. Sean Davison, who was in the papers in the summer, was arrested for helping 29 people take their own lives by going to Switzerland—not to Dignitas but to another place. This is the same man—he is well known—who had already been convicted of helping his own mother take her life, which was against the law, in a different country and jurisdiction. This is why I was interested in tabling questions: to understand what is actually going on.

The figures of people going to Switzerland are quite small—it is about 40 people. One of the things that worries me—and, I think, worries a lot of people—is how this whole situation could start to become commonplace. The Liverpool care pathway became commonplace—what a horrible way to die. I specifically mentioned at Second Reading that my greatest concern of all is indirect coercion. I appreciate that some other noble Lords have already spoken to this, so I hope to bring a slightly different angle with some of my concerns.

If I have time, I will try to explain why I strongly support several of the other words being used, particularly “encouragement”, which appeared in the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and got support in certain parts of the Committee. That is interesting, bearing in mind that the campaign group Dignity in Dying, anticipating the passage of the Bill, has now initiated a new element by creating a conversation guide on how to start to bring up assisted dying in conversations with people. Never mind the coercion that very obviously exists in the medical profession in trying to coerce people into “do not resuscitate” orders. That is already happening in our medical system today, which is why several Peers, I think, are generally worried.

Turning to my amendments, I will start with Amendment 49. As the proposer and sponsor of the Bill put forward, it started off as a judge-led process, which is why I support what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, seeks to do in amendments in later groups. We have a situation here where this is turning into a sort of commissioner/panel. We need to make sure that the legislation is as simple as possible to the ordinary man and woman on the street. I appreciate that there are some legal niceties about what the word “person” means in law—I believe it can mean almost anybody—but we need to be more explicit, which is why I have suggested talking about

“body corporate, institution or organisation”.

I hope that might start to cover some of the online issues that my noble friend Lady Berridge raised; I do not know whether the Online Safety Act can cover this.

I respect what some noble Lords may think: “What is she going on about? These people are dying anyway. We have the general approach of trying to prevent suicide, so what would be different in hastening that?” This is where I turn to Amendment 47, which talks about both external and internal coercion. We have had a considerable debate about external coercion, with some suggestions about that in the amendments, as well as, to some extent, the question of burden. It is that burden that genuinely worries me.

The evidence is clear. We have already heard of the 35% figure from, I think, Western Australia. Whether it is from Oregon, Canada, Western Australia or Washington, the jurisdictions that collect data on this issue show that between 35% and 59% of people cite being a burden. We then heard evidence given to the Commons from Professor Owen, who said that thinking about being a burden is

“an essential question. I work clinically in the over-65 age group, where there is a lot of terminal illness, some of it in the last six months. You have to understand the population … There can be a terminal illness, very typically with comorbidity. That comorbidity is often mental health comorbidity”.—[Official Report, Commons, Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill Committee, 30/1/25; col. 234.]

As Dr Price sensibly said, for somebody who has found out that they have a terminal illness and less than 12 months or six months to live, it would be surprising if there was not an element of depression at that point.

This is where we get into talking about burden. That is where a group already feels burdened, and some of that may be excessive. That is when you start to get into some of these interpersonal pressures. It is also where the impairments will start to interact and amplify each other, and that in itself can have an important consequence in terms of the functional ability of mental capacity. According to Professor Owen, outside the AD context, the Court of Protection itself has been struggling to recognise that. This is where trying to get some understanding of this is really important. But it is not, to the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Rafferty, somewhere where you can just have a ready-built training manual.

Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Baroness Coffey and Lord Ashcombe

Committee stage
Thursday 5th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I expect the bigger employers, if they know about this legislation—although we are hearing from a lot of the employers’ representatives that a lot of their members had not even heard about the day one rights until very recently—will probably put their HR departments and lawyers on it. I am concerned about the smaller ones, which is why I am sympathetic to the amendments in this group on micro employers and small employers. Otherwise, this could start to become a very expensive business. It is yet another reason why the Government generally do not seem to understand the chilling effect that not only their economic policies but legislation such as this will have on the recruitment of people to jobs.

[Lord Ashcombe (Con)]

My Lords, I had no intention of coming here today to speak until I had dinner last night. Having put in a day’s work, I thought it was time to come here and express an opinion.

I would like to describe that situation last night. It follows on from a lot of what my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley said and the powerful words of the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor. This friend of mine, whom I have known for 30 or 40 years, is a small businessman in Bath, down in the West Country. He said to me, “Mark, we have a major problem coming. I have friends in similar places who run small businesses”—he runs a business of some six or seven people. “We are all talking together, because that is how we transfer knowledge, and the number of us beginning to think about throwing in the towel is significant. I want you to know about it”.

If this change were to happen, it would affect the poor employees of these businesses. There is nothing inherently wrong with these businesses but there is, as we have heard, more and more legislation coming upon them. It is the employees who are going. The domino effect through local economies is too much for these businesses. These small guys have to employ lawyers, HR experts and so on. I work for a company where we have those in house. They are just getting to the end of their tether. They do not want to stop, but I hope that Amendments 205 and 207 will help prevent that sort of thing happening and another nail in the coffin for these small businesses, which are really struggling as they think about the hassle of going on.

Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Baroness Coffey and Lord Ashcombe

Committee stage
Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, this is an interesting debate. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has pointed out, this idea was in both the 2022 Green Paper and in the paper that the Labour Party published during last year’s election. Clearly, there is an expectation that this needs to be addressed in this huge Bill, the main purpose of which, as I have said to this Committee before, could have been achieved through a statutory instrument.

However, one of the important things in the amendment, which has been carefully written by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, sets in place the idea that:

“The right to disconnect does not apply where … a worker is on call or standby duty and receiving appropriate compensation for such duty”.


In trying to get into this debate, which is a fair debate to have, we find that the legislation already addresses the majority of situations where this would already happen, and so all that would happen if this were to become law is that contracts would be written in such a way that, in effect, if necessary, everybody would be on call—which would not be a desirable outcome.

I want to build on that. The noble Lord, Lord Goddard, referred to a variety of anecdotes and his personal experience. Personal experience matters in considering how a good employer can act. For what it is worth, in my private office, which was very busy, and in my parliamentary office when I used to employ people, I required everybody to have their “do not disturb” setting on. The setting works such that if somebody really needs to get hold of you—if you are a Minister, say—switch will get through to you eventually. I have to say to the people on the Front Bench that that is the case even if you do not have your phone on. Those situations are already addressed.

One of the things the Bill is trying to do overall is to get that balance. However, it is fair to say that not everything needs to be put into legislation. It is about having a positive relationship, and some of that can be done through ACAS and in other different ways, such as guidance. Trying to micromanage every single relationship that the millions of workers have directly with their employer risks overcomplicating things. The fear that I have, given that this is in the Government’s manifesto, which they seek to put in place—it will be interesting to see how they want to make this happen—is that this will make for very tricky legislation. Although there may be instances where this would work, ultimately, it comes down to employment tribunals and somebody else’s judgment.

For what it is worth, we have an evolving variety of workplaces. A lot of people who used to work at home have now come back to the office so that they can leave their job behind, as opposed to feeling that they will open something up after dinner or whatever.

I look forward to hearing the Minister set out how the Government are planning to fulfil their manifesto commitment while trying to make sure that they do not micromanage every single element of how a job can be done in the workplace.

[Lord Ashcombe (Con)]

My Lords, I appreciate what the noble Baroness said, because this is about fairness and making sure life works. There are a lot of companies, big and small, where, to a great extent, what has been proposed is already working. However, there are a number of instances—including somewhere like where I work—where I do not think this would work.

I will just give your Lordships one quick example. I work in insurance for a huge insurance broker. We had a client in the United States who by 5 pm had not decided whether to renew his insurance contract in London. If he had not renewed it by 1 June—which I guess was a Sunday—he would have had no insurance on that specific part of his business. A member of my team kindly stayed online, for want of a better word—he was probably out and about with the phone in his pocket—and the call came through at some time after 9 pm. Looking at the way the clause is drafted, I am not sure whether that would be considered enough of an emergency to get a member of staff out of bed, so to speak. Equally, that company might have had to stop working, doing whatever it was doing in the oil and gas industry—I know that will not endear me to the noble Baroness, but that is a fact. But we had to bind that insurance contract once we got the order. It was all ready to go; it was just a question of sending a number of emails to say that it was done. So there are huge swathes of the country where it is in fact in place already, as the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, has said, but in some of the big City environments where you are working across time zones particularly, it is extremely difficult to enact.

On working from home, we all worked at home for some time; personally I loathed it—I am back in the office almost as much as I can be. However, I have members of staff who like working at home, and, let me tell your Lordships, they know how to turn themselves off when they do not want to talk to us anymore, and they are good at it. So they should be, and I respect them for it. But if you really need them, you can always find them.

Finally, you can turn the damn machines off. Be it a telephone, a computer, an iPad or whatever it is, there is an off button out there. Certainly when I was a child, we were told never to call anybody after 9 pm, and that was friends and family. So there are some unwritten rules out there that are already very effective.

Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Baroness Coffey and Lord Ashcombe

Committee stage
Wednesday 21st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashcombe (Con)]

I am aware of a case of a small company that has got rid of four individuals in view of the legislation because those individuals are not doing a good enough job, but it could live with them if it had the ability to get rid of them. What it cannot face the thought of is having to go down any form of tribunal route or indeed threat thereof. That is not what we are trying to do with this Bill; we are trying to prevent that. We do not want to see those individuals leave employment. That is not what we want, and that is where it could lead a lot of people.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, this is one of the most important parts of this legislation, and I am very conscious of the Labour Party’s manifesto and its success in the election last year. However, at the same time, this is the same Government who want to increase the employment rate to 80%, which has not been achieved in a very long time. If we go back in history, we see that the Blair-Brown Government did not make changes to go to zero or day-one rights in the same way. Yes, they changed it from two years to one year. The coalition Government later changed it back to two years.

Yet we are now seeing—as has already been pointed out elegantly by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, in response to some of the comments raised on the Government Benches—that this is the Government’s own impact assessment. If we look at the Regulatory Policy Committee’s assessment of these proposals, we see that it gives a very strong red rating on this element and suggests that, basically, there is no evidence that they are in any way needed.

There are aspects here of “What is the problem that the Government is trying to address?”. Lewis Silkin solicitors point out that if the only changes to be made were those referred to and we were still to have, as the noble Lord, Lord Hendy read out, the different approaches on fair dismissal in the tribunal, the Government could just put forward a statutory instrument based on the existing power of the 1996 Act. However, they have not done so in the Bill; they are seeking to go much further in a variety of ways in Schedule 3. That is why I share the concerns of many other noble Lords who are worried about the unintended consequences. Nobody can believe that a Labour Government would want to see unemployment rise or more people on benefits, or not tackle the challenge of people not in education, employment or training—