Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Baroness Grey-Thompson and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Committee stage
Friday 20th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I therefore understand that the noble Baroness does not mean this for everybody, but only for people in a restricted category.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

In the context of this amendment, I meant it in a restricted category. I did not want to start withdrawing amendments and retabling them, because, in Committee, I think it is useful to explore such issues. I am not sure for anyone reading the Marshalled List on the outside—for any who do—that it is terribly helpful to see that amendments have been withdrawn. It has been a really useful discussion to have in Committee.

I thank my noble friend Lady Cass for raising the issue of remembering information, and I thank my noble friend Lady Finlay of Llandaff for bringing in a sporting analogy. I was thinking about the work that I do outside this Bill, and over the years I have done a lot of work on concussion protocols. In the early years, when concussion protocols in sport were brought in to help make sure that people did not carry on playing rugby or other sports while concussed, there was a lot of coaching going on because the same questions were asked through the concussion protocols: do you know what day it is?; do you know who the monarch is? The answers were learned. In that moment, people might not have been able to answer the question but they had learned the answers. The point raised by my noble friend Lady Cass is something else that we need to think clearly about.

Another area I work in is anti-doping in sports. We now have a new system. It used to be that the governing body of the sport would take tests from the athletes and then, if there was an adverse finding, do the policing on that. An independent system, UK Anti-Doping, was purposely developed so that the governing body could, if there was an adverse finding at the first or second stage, guide an athlete through really complex processes. This is just anti-doping in sport, and the athletes are educated about it at least every year, but if even something such as anti-doping in sport is hard to understand—between what is written in a document and what happens when you are in the process—assisted suicide probably deserves a bit more.

I am not convinced by the amendment tabled by the noble and learned Lord. I still do not think it provides enough of a safeguard. I would be interested in being able to tie up what the noble and learned Lord said in the Chamber and then coming back with some stronger amendments.

This is in the context that statutory advocacy is generally of quite poor quality. Less than 15% of people get advocates in other areas when they need them. If you look at advocacy in general, it is worrying that there is no central data collection for advocacy under the Mental Capacity Act. In 2019, a freedom of information request which looked at this area found that 51 out of 139 local authorities did not collect data on IMCA support. There is still limited data on Care Act advocacy. The CQC said that, for Care Act safeguarding, where there is a duty to appoint an independent advocate, in England in 2025 some 83.38% of those lacking capacity had an advocate appointed. To pick some random counties, in Derbyshire, the figure was 14.38%; in County Durham, it was 32.64%; and in Liverpool, it was 53%. Where there is a duty to appoint one and the figures are so low, I wonder whether the take-up in this space would be very limited.

I still do not think that we have the right balance between accessing the process and safeguarding, but at this stage I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Baroness Grey-Thompson and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Committee stage
Friday 16th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, thank you. If there is one place where language matters, it is in the Bill before us. As a young disabled person, I used to interchangeably use “person with a disability” and “disabled person” and did not understand the importance of that. In later amendments, I will argue that “disabled person” is much better phraseology to use.

Language is the dress of thought. We are all spending many hours working on this Bill, but, if the outside world does not understand what is meant by “assisted dying”, we could be in a situation where somebody with learning disabilities or who uses British Sign Language, who has not spent as much time as we have interrogating the Bill in every single session, might not understand what they are signing up to. Personally, I would prefer something around “died by suicide”—that is something else that can be finessed as we go through the Bill.

The BMJ published an article that showed how poorly understood the phrase “assisted dying” was. This highlights the problem that we are facing: the phrase is poorly understood and creates confusion. Just 43% of respondents thought that “assisted dying” involved

“the provision of lethal drugs to end somebody’s life. The majority believed the term meant withdrawing life-prolonging treatment or providing hospice-type care”.

That is something we must consider. The noble Lord, Lord Winston, talked about how the Bill should be largely workable. It should be workable, but it should also be safe. Part of that safety is about the public understanding what they might be signing up to.

In other groups, we have talked about doctors and medics, and I have many in my family. There is nothing more medic-like than using very long words and things that the public do not necessarily understand. Not everybody is an expert patient. We must be clear about what we mean in the Bill. We should stop hiding behind phrases that people may choose to use. To be clear, I have used the term “assisted dying”, because I try to be very thoughtful of the people who do not like “assisted suicide”. However, I have used “assisted suicide” today, and I will from now on, because that is what the Bill is going to do to the people who sign up to it.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak, given that we are going to continue until 5.30 pm and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, has mentioned me. The problem with removing the word “dying” is that it does not give to the public the absolutely key bit of information, which is that these people are dying anyway. We are talking only about people who are dying. That is what the Bill is about: people who have less than six months to live. They are dying. We may have a theological belief that we are all dying, and that each day we get nearer to that, but let us put that to one side.

The removal of the word “dying” would be the worst way to tell people what this Bill is about. The Bill is not about assisted suicide for someone who just decides that they want to commit suicide or have a suicide death—I do not like the word “commit”. It is not about people who suddenly say that they want to commit suicide because of this, that or the other. We are talking only about a cohort of people who are dying; remove that from the Bill and it is less likely to be understood.