Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Finn Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, the powerful speeches in this debate have shown compassion and seriousness and reflect the depth of feeling on all sides. It is a privilege to take part. Like other noble Lords, I thank all who have written to me on the subject.

Let me begin with the law as it stands. The Suicide Act 1961 is shot through with contradiction. It makes suicide lawful, yet criminalises assistance with a penalty of up to 14 years’ imprisonment. That contradiction does not fall just on private individuals. It is the daily terrain for doctors, nurses, police officers, coroners and prosecutors, who must operate within rules whose boundaries are blurred. Patients, families and professionals are all left to navigate an area of law where the line between compassion and crime can be perilously unclear. In practice, we have combined a lawful right to end one’s life with a criminal prohibition on the assistance that may be needed to exercise that right safely and humanely. That is the very tension that our clinicians and our prosecutors are asked to manage without clear parliamentary settlement.

The human cost is all too real. Families live in fear and uncertainty. If a person, because their suffering is intolerable, wishes to exercise their lawful right to end their life, the law pushes them towards doing so alone—too often, in messy, improvised and traumatic ways. Others are driven overseas. Hundreds of our fellow citizens have travelled to Switzerland to die, and those who book tickets or accompany them risk investigation on their return. Under the Forfeiture Act 1982, it is entirely plausible that if they are a beneficiary under the deceased’s will, they could also be deprived of any inheritance. This is not a humane or dignified settlement.

Since the CPS began collating cases in 2009, well over 190 suspected assisted suicide cases have been referred. Enforcement is arbitrary, because the framework is incoherent. No family can know in advance whether an act of love will be treated as a serious crime. The courts have done what they properly can. In the cases of Diane Pretty, Debbie Purdy, Tony Nicklinson and Paul Lamb, judges recognised the failings of the law but concluded, rightly, that only Parliament can resolve them.

We have also heard about the morality of assisted dying. I honour and respect those who differ from me, especially when their views are grounded in personal religious faith, but we should respect the decision of the elected House on the principle, a decision that reflects the settled view of a great many of our fellow citizens. In our democratic system, the proper role of this House is to improve the Bill so that it gives effect to that decision with the greatest possible care.

The Bill before us is not perfect. No Private Member’s Bill on a question of this magnitude ever could be. Noble Lords have raised serious concerns about process, safeguards and palliative care. Ideally, this should have been a government Bill, drafted with the full resources of Whitehall and the time such gravity deserves, but the constructive path is not to block the Bill but to engage with it, strengthen it and improve it. I pay tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, and the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, for their agreement to set up the Select Committee to hear further evidence, and that it will report back in time to allow the whole House to consider the Bill through all its stages. We should, in the same spirit, match the quality of this debate in our approach to the Bill not by defending an indefensible status quo, not by closing the door on the elected House, but by doing what we do best—rigorous scrutiny, honest debate and constructive amendment.