Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Baroness Coffey and Lord Kennedy of Southwark

Committee stage
Friday 27th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I have tabled a handful of amendments, a couple to Clause 17 and then some more to Schedule 2. It is perfectly acceptable for the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, to be appalled by some of these amendments. That is okay: that is her perception; that is her reality. It may not be what my noble friend intended, but we are dealing with a serious situation.

Noble Lords have talked about finding somebody dead. Of course, it would be devastating if the family around them had not known that somebody was thinking that the only way life could get better was if they did not have a life at all. That is the reason for some of the aspects about bereavement services and connection to next of kin, so that there is that contact to see whether somebody who is in a very dark place is terminally ill or doctors have suggested that they have less than six months to live. An interesting area that we are discussing is about the tipping point for somebody to choose to accelerate that, to take that poison, and for the state to help them do it without being in touch with the next of kin. I know there are other groups where we get into that in more detail, but this is why it has become so sensitive.

I held my mother’s hand as she died. She had less than a month to live, and we looked after her. My dad died while I was on a plane, and I found out when I landed at Heathrow Airport. That is why I cannot watch the end of “Love Actually” because it is everybody meeting their families. It is the most I have ever cried in my life, and I have to switch off the film before the end. These are very significant moments.

I am conscious of what noble Lords have said about whether this should be in public. I think on balance it should be in public because we are having this effectively quasi-judicial process, which is at the end of a line, to some extent, making sure that somebody is doing this of their own volition and is not being coerced. That is why all the different safeguards are suggested.

I have tabled Amendment 480A—I appreciate that the noble and learned Lord will, perhaps next time, speak to his Amendment 480—which refers to how the panel will operate. I believe that an audio link is not enough in terms of discussions with the co-ordinating doctor, the person doing it and, indeed, the person’s proxy. In person or by live video would be good. I have tabled Amendment 483C to amend subsection (5), which currently provides:

“Where the panel considers it appropriate for medical reasons, it may make provision for the use of pre-recorded audio or video material for the purposes of subsection (4)”.


I can completely understand that, but I can understand it only for the person applying. I do not understand why the co-ordinating doctor would not be available to go in person or on a videolink in order to have that interaction with the panel. I have chosen to put that amendment in at that point.

The panel is an important part and that is why it is vital to get to the bottom of Schedule 2. Another noble friend asked me to ask the sponsoring Member whether there would be immunity from suit for the panel members, but I want to get into a few amendments that I have tabled. I am trying to work out how this is all going to work. I see this panel very rarely meeting in person, and I can see it evolving quite quickly. It will all be done by Zoom or Teams, and that concerns me. If the intention is that this is going to be available effectively probably 365 days a year, I am trying to get a sense of how this is going to work.

I appreciate that the Government will not want to answer that; they say they have not done the thinking, but somebody has done the thinking, because this is what the legislation is about. We now have, in parts of Schedule 2, panel members even starting to ask whether they can have pension contributions. Who is going to be doing these roles? Is it going to become a full-time job? It is one of the reasons I put a suggestion—it is just a number—of a maximum of 25 years for panels. I do not know if that is a panel per day, whether multiple people will be in a panel, or whether it is a one-off panel. I think the Law Society, in its written evidence to the Commons, suggested that it should take a day per panel, per application. The Government have costed in an estimate, in their equality impact assessment, of two hours. I am trying to get a sense of who is going to be doing this.

I have not tabled an amendment about this, but will there be a register about who is there? I do not want this to become a thing for, dare I say, vigilantes to try to intimidate people, but there is a question about how we do some of the vetting—I will not repeat what my noble friend said earlier. I am also genuinely concerned that we are going to give this an international element. I do not mean the person applying, necessarily—we covered that some time ago—but the people on the panel. That is why I have put things like a judge in England and Wales. You can be a King’s Counsel and be in Canada or Australia, where there are all these other things, and in law at the moment that does not stop it being the case. People might think I am overimagining things, but I am trying to be precise about what the law allows and trying to understand how it might work. If I am wrong, fine: I am happy for it to be said in Committee that that is not going to apply, but I want it to be said in Committee, so that if anything does evolve like that, we can start the judicial reviews to stop that practice.

I have suggested in Amendment 921ZB that it should not be King’s Counsel. That was inspired by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, in his Second Reading speech. It made me think a little more. I am not trying to do this so that hardly anyone can do this role. What I am trying to ask is why we talk about high judicial office being needed. A pretty high-level judge or a KC, without being too rude to KCs, is not exactly the same comparison. There are plenty of other judges—deputy court judges or district judges—who are all regularly used to having this arbitration or tribunal approach, so I do not understand why we have limited it to being that or a KC.

As for Amendment 932A, I do not see why the lawyer is the person who has to chair it. This happens quite a lot in decision-making bodies in government: things just evolve. The reason why the local resilience forum in Buckinghamshire is actually across Bucks, Oxon and Berks, it so happens, is by default, not in law but in practice. The chief constable is always Gold Command—it is always the police that run it—therefore, what has happened over time and practice is that the LRF is across those three counties automatically. These sorts of things start to become habits; they start to become the way it is done and it cannot be changed, so I just want to be clear. I do not in any way understand why the lawyer should be making the decision as the chair of the panel. I do not understand why it should be the legal person who gets to determine whether the sitting should be in private. I think that is an unnecessary addition.

I would prefer the panel to be in public, but I completely understand the sensitivity, so the impact of my Amendment 933A is designed to be that they can sit in private but only for the part that directly involves the applicant. The reason for that is sensitivity to people at a very difficult time in their lives, but I do not understand why that should also apply to all the other people who have been involved at some point. Why should their interactions with the panel need to be in private? When people go behind closed doors, we start to get a lack of understanding of what is being said and of patterns. That is why, later in the Bill, I will mention other protections that I want to see. I am conscious or concerned about being a panel member effectively becoming a full-time job. That would be a bad step in this regard.

There are many other amendments that I would love to talk to, but I am conscious of the time. This is a really important moment in considering how this final safeguard will work in practice. Is it what we were expecting when the Bill arrived in this House?

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

My Lords, the Clerk of the Parliaments has confirmed to me that the clerks have recorded the names of every noble Lord who was here at the start of this debate. They will be circulated to the Chief Whips, including me, and the Convenor of the Cross Benches next week.

Arrangement of Business

Debate between Baroness Coffey and Lord Kennedy of Southwark

Friday 30th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I suggest to the Chief Whip that, in addition to the clerks’ seminar, noble Lords might want to speak to the noble Lord, Lord Spellar. His Private Member’s Bill did not proceed in this House, so he used the Parliament Act, or started the process that would trigger the Parliament Act if necessary. Therefore, I think he can give everybody some practical experience, alongside the theoretical insight from our good clerks.

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

First, if I cannot cover all the points, my door is open at all times. Please come and see me. I genuinely want to be helpful to all Members of the House.

The noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, gave us some very good advice. I first met my noble friend Lord Spellar when I was 16; he has been a friend of mine since then. He is a thoroughly good noble Lord, and I always listen to him very carefully.

I will say a few things in response to Members from across the House. First, a royal commission is not for me to discuss; that would be a matter for the Government to look at.

Protecting the House’s procedures is obviously one of my roles, and I try to do that as best as I can. I try to defend the House and enable all Members to have their say. We are, of course, self-regulating, and we all treasure our self-regulating status. But to be self-regulating, we have to show some self-regulation. We have to be mindful of that, because the alternative is that we end up with House of Commons-type procedures, which no one would want to see. When we are speaking, we have to treasure our self-regulating status and ensure that it carries on.

The Government have no intention of bringing back this Private Member’s Bill. It will remain a PMB, and the Government have no intention of bringing it back in the next Session. I am having enough problems getting the Government’s programme through at the moment, let alone trying to deal with this Bill, so I promise noble Lords that it will not come back as a government Bill. This is why I do not want to get into a lot of what ifs. If the Bill falls, it may come back through the House of Commons; it may get through and then the Parliament Act may be applied—but that is a matter for the other House. It is not for me or for any other Member of this House to determine what the other House or Mr Speaker do. That will be a matter for them—if it happens at all. That is all I can say on that.

I did not listen to my noble and learned friend on the “Today” programme. I am sorry; I usually listen to it, but I missed that one. I must listen to it on catch-up to hear what was said, because it has clearly had a lot of bearing on what Members have said today. A lot of things get talked about in the media; there is a lot of speculation and pages have been written in newspapers about this. At the end of the day, this House will decide what it does with this Bill and no one else will decide that—it is up to this House. I think we should make more progress.

As I said earlier, if the Parliament Act were to be applied, many conditions would be applied to make that happen. I suspect that they would look at how the House of Lords has dealt with the Bill—but that is a matter for the other place, not for any Member here. I think I have covered most issues, but please come and see me if not.