Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie Excerpts

Friday 14th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harper (Con)]

I am happy to answer. I do not know how many did. My understanding is that the royal college, whatever its decision-making processes are, has publicly said that it does not think this is adequate. As I said, I did not quote it, because it had been quoted at length. I put some weight on that.

As a relatively new Member of your Lordships’ House, I am also very struck that this House is blessed with those who have enormous experience in the law, who have to make some of these decisions in practice, and experienced legislators, such as myself, who have looked carefully at the operation of the legislation, both in taking it and post-legislative scrutiny. Many Members have personal experience, either themselves or through family members, of the exercise of these laws in practice. I will listen very carefully to them.

Therefore, the view of the Royal College of Psychiatrists is clearly an important one that I will put some weight on, but I will also listen very carefully to others in the House, who I think will add enormously to this debate as we weigh up this important piece of legislation. I thank the noble Lord for his question.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for bringing this debate to the Floor. I declare my interests as chief executive of Cerebral Palsy Scotland, and I have been involved with the Scottish Government on neurological conditions and policies for many years.

What has struck me in the debate so far is something that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said about concentrating on the interests of the person. This is what I see every day when I deal with vulnerable people and they are dealing with service providers, whether in health, education, housing or whatever. I take the point your Lordships have made that this debate is about the difference between “capacity” and “ability”; capacity, as we define it in the Mental Capacity Act, is something that professionals will assess. They have lots of experience of doing that, and that is great. However, if we come back to concentrating on the interests of the person, the person is quite often in this difficult, complex situation for the very first time. Therefore, as my noble friend Lord Deben said, their ability to take on complex information, potentially when there might be multiple comorbidities and issues going on, is very different.

We see it in children in education and in people with communication difficulties—I have an amendment later on about how we support people with communication difficulties to navigate this. But we see it every day with the ability of people to take on something really profound that professionals are used to talking about—and we are professionals in here; we can talk about definitions and how we define things in legislation. I wanted to question whether people in the street that will be dealing with this have the ability to understand all the options, the prognoses and everything in front of them.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

Does the noble Baroness accept that someone can take their own life now? They are dying; it is completely legal for them to commit suicide without anyone doing any checks about whether they have capacity, ability or anything else. So the Bill is in fact adding a safeguard that is not there at the moment, because at the moment someone can take their own life.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her intervention. Every suicide is a tragic situation, and I am sure that all of us would wish to help that person. But that is not what the Bill is about. It is about whether we find a method where they have a settled will to make a decision—to make a choice.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Is the difference not absolutely fundamental? The Bill allows the state to enter into this discussion and allows somebody in fact to kill somebody else. That is wholly different from suicide, and the noble Baroness is wrong.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for saying what I wish I could have said myself. I will end, because we have had a very long debate on this. I just want to emphasise that from my experience of dealing with people, with families, versus what professionals think, it is a very different landscape when we compare those who do it every day with those who are faced with these difficult decisions for the very first time.

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, I want to add a correction for the noble Lord, Lord Winston. The Royal College of Psychiatrists voted on the principle and it was a 50:50 split. The issue of this Bill is different. The college has taken the view, after a great deal of consultation, that it does not support the Bill.