Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Friday 21st November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I think it might be appropriate to hear from somebody who is not against the Bill. We have heard endless interventions.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I want to respond to the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, who is a member of the Labour Party. With respect, I would like the Committee to listen.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Lemos) (Lab)]

Does my noble friend Lady Hayter want to make one point? Then we can hear from the noble Lord, Lord Polak.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My one point is that it would very nice if somebody who supports the Bill could also have a hearing.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

It is a shame, because I have a particular and important point to raise in response to the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

I will. I was given six months to live 37 years ago. I do not often share this personal issue. I stand here today as living proof that prognosis is not certainty. Estimates are sometimes wrong and sometimes wildly wrong. That experience shapes my approach to this legislation and underlines why safeguards matter so profoundly.

When I spoke at Second Reading, I made it clear that I was against the premise of the Bill, and that remains my conviction. However, if the House decides that the Bill should proceed, it must do so with the strongest possible protections, and I support many of the amendments that were mentioned, particularly Amendment 46 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay.

In listening to the debate, I was particularly moved by the noble Lords, Lord Evans, Lord Carlile and Lord Deben, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, on the issue of coercion and encouraging. I actually pay tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, on this whole issue, which is so difficult. I understand. I think that he is plastering over gaping wounds in the Bill. In fact, I think he must have more plasters than my local pharmacy. I will return to this properly when I speak to my own amendments, but I want to say that this vital piece of legislation is not fit for purpose, no matter how many amendments or how many plasters. I think we need to look.

I shall end with just these words: when we debate matters of life and death, we do so with the utmost seriousness. I believe that those who brought forward the Bill are acting from the highest motives, and I respect that, but in moments such as these, I know the whole House feels the absence of the wise counsel of the late Lord Sacks. He reminded us that purity of motive does not guarantee rightness of outcome. Our responsibility here is clear: to ensure that the law we craft is robust, precise and overridingly safe.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been something of an unbalanced debate, so I hope it might be possible to hear from someone who supports the Bill. I was particularly anxious to come before the noble Lord, Lord Polak—for whom I have a lot of respect; we agree on many other issues—to respond very soon after the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London. She was very honest when she said that she did not support the Bill, and I think she said that it was unamendable. Here we are, however, discussing amendments.

The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, spoke earlier about whether we should discuss a form of wording on which we could all agree. The question then would be: if we can agree a form of wording, would he then support the Bill? My feeling is that these amendments are not about making the Bill acceptable so that those putting them forward could then support it but are a way of trying to stop our discussion and proper scrutiny, because they do not want the Bill to go ahead.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

If I could just finish. It has been a long time in this debate without hearing from my side—I want to come on to something that the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said anyway.

The amendments to this Bill are about coercion or pressure. As stated by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, the situation at the moment is that people can go to Dignitas without even proving to a doctor that they are dying, and without any check as to whether there is coercion or pressure, or whether someone is going to inherit their house. They can go, and that is the way they end their life, and they feel it is not worth living any longer. On the definition of coercion, are we really content with continuing the status quo where there is absolutely no check—from a psychiatrist, a social worker, a lawyer, or anyone else—on whether they have been coerced? That is the alternative: allowing the status quo to continue with no checks whatever.

We have to ask, therefore, whether these discussions about definition are really about that, or whether they are about trying to stop the Bill. Perhaps we could discuss whether those who want the wording changed would then support the Bill. If they would, let us get down to discussing that, but if they are never going to, they are wasting the time of those who want it to go through.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Order!

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I do not have to give way. I have been speaking for three minutes, and I have listened for some hours. I am sure the noble Lord can come back; it is Committee stage, so he can speak again.

People have talked personally. Both my parents died when I was a child. People know that one of them died tragically and very suddenly; the other did so in enormous pain at the end. As a child, I went through that, so I understand about bereavement and grief, and seeing someone die in great pain. We have all been through that, and some of us come to a different conclusion. We come to a conclusion that no matter how we define pressure or coercion—the discussions we are having—what we want is the ability to move forward and help those who want help to bring things forward a few days earlier. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Deben, has been through probate when trying to sell a house, but for someone who is already dying and may be a month off, bringing it forward a month or a couple of weeks would not make that much difference. We are finding excuses.

I am sorry not to have given way, but I have listened for some hours, and it is only appropriate that someone who supports the Bill also gets the chance to speak today.

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, can I just ask which amendments she was speaking to, because this is Committee and not Second Reading? Every amendment that I have tabled is designed to make the Bill better and I feel quite concerned to be accused of time-wasting.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I was talking to the debate on coercion, because there is no check on it for the existing way of ending one’s life early, which is to go to Dignitas. I was asking whether, if the Bill is changed in the way that, for example, the noble Lady, Lady Hollins, would like, she would then support it.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, there are two separate situations here, and I wonder whether she agrees. One is that there are many of us who do not like the Bill, but there is a real probability that the Bill will pass, and if it passes, we want it better than it is at the moment. Consequently, we are not wasting time.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I was not suggesting wasting time. I was asking whether, if these changes were agreed, people would then allow the Bill to proceed.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, I have great admiration for her, but I and many others resent her waving her hands at us. The reason we wish to have the sorts of discussions that I was mentioning was so that, believe it or not, we can make a judgment as to whether we are prepared to support the Bill, or to be silent on whether we support the Bill, or to oppose it at Third Reading. It is unworthy of the noble Baroness to allege that all of us here who are expressing concerns are wasting time. It is not true, and it is what she said.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I never said that about wasting time. The words did not come; I did not say them. I was asking whether the people who want a better definition will then be able to support the Bill.

[A noble Lord]

They can decide at the end.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I hope that the right reverend Prelate is not going to push for a vote at Third Reading. The task for this House is scrutiny of the Bill both at this stage and on Report, and I hope that that is what we will do.

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I will not be long. I speak to Amendment 726, which, as those of you who get that far in the list of amendments will see from the explanatory statement, is one of a number of amendments that I have been prompted to put down by the Law Society. They are intended to make the Bill safer in operation.

I would also like the House to know that I speak free from religious belief, but I do speak as a world-weary lawyer with many years’ practice at the sharp end in both medical negligence matters and legal professional negligence matters. I am all too conscious of my own experience of having seen things go wrong even where the people concerned were decent, honest professionals. Some of them, of course, although professionals, were neither decent nor honest. I have also sat as a legal assessor for five years at the General Medical Council, and I appeared as counsel for a north-eastern NHS trust in a very messy inquiry about 20 years ago about the misdoings of a Doctor Neale, who had featured in a “Panorama” programme—some of you may know about that. I have seen things go wrong on the ground for the past 30 or 40 years of my life.

It is with that in mind that I put down, among others, Amendment 726 with the support of the Law Society. I stress that the Law Society is neutral in principle but has looked at this Bill with what can be described as lawyers’ eyes. Its amendment is designed to make the Bill safer and better in practice. This amendment would “require” and not just permit—that is the difference—the Secretary of State to issue a code of practice in connection with what we are concerned with today; that is, capacity and so on, and the absence of coercion. A code is necessary. In Clause 39 of the Bill, there is provision for other codes of practice to be made; this is simply to add an additional code.

I suggest that this is a perfectly safe, non-destructive amendment that would improve the Bill in respect of a very important practice. As we have heard, coercion—I use the word loosely to cover a wide range of subtle pressures—must be addressed, and it should come from the Secretary of State. The panels that will oversee all this will not be enough. This must come from the Government, looking at things carefully and putting down a code of practice which says: “This is how the panels must address this”. We cannot have a postcode lottery with a panel in one part of England adopting one approach and another adopting a much tougher approach. We need uniformity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, there is one aspect of coercion that we have not so far discussed. It was mentioned tangentially by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins. It is institutional coercion. As somebody who has unfortunately had to bring a loved one into hospital to be treated and discharged on a large number of occasions in recent years, I have become familiar with the process called “clerking”, where an individual is brought into the hospital, the paperwork obviously has to be brought to bear, the healthcare staff have to fill it in and so on.

If this legislation gets on to the statute book, in whatever form, it has to be translated into paper that the health service will have to deliver when a patient is brought into a hospital. We already have the “Do not resuscitate” aspect of an induction, and we will now have to have another set of paperwork. I have seen how it works frequently: the pressure that the staff are under from time to time, and the fact that the people coming and going and dealing with a patient are frequently different and they change at 8 am in the morning and 8 pm in the evening. That paperwork has to be done by an individual, sometimes a relatively junior member of staff, and all these things have to be translated into a box that has to be ticked.

How is that to be done? The actual process that one has to go through, particularly dealing with somebody who is seriously ill, is challenging in itself, and when you have to ask the person, “Do you want me to tick the box that says, ‘Do not resuscitate’?”, that is a big thing to do, and the person needs to be coherent, informed et cetera. We are moving things to a stage well beyond that.

I had the experience of being in a hospice and, while it was not an issue with pain that was the problem, when the consultant comes along and says to your loved one, “Have you considered the D-word?”, that sobers you up. Somebody who was perfect intellectually, who had the ability and the capability, shut down completely and could not cope with, “Have you considered the D-word?”. So, I say to noble Lords, these are emotional things, coercion is a very hard thing to define, but I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that the difference between his scenario and what we are facing is that the state is co-operating, providing the mechanism and delivering the mechanism for a person to end their life. That is the antithesis of what the medical profession and the National Health Service have stood for since its inception.

With regard to how we treat things in this House, when Bills come to us, of course we have a view on whether we are for them or against them. I remember when the Brexit legislation came before this House and I gently remind the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that she was not running to try to improve it so that she could get into the Content Lobby. It is the way things are. On an issue such as this, we have to be driven by our conscience, not by our parties or anything else, but let us remember that this will have to be translated into the room where the patient is sitting. What box is a junior nurse or a junior auxiliary going to be asked to tick? What is the question? Who is going to fill it out?

As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, said, if we had had a royal commission and a proper government Bill, we could have answered these questions, instead of having to sit here and go through the whole process again. I just ask the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, to bear these things in mind. These are gaps in the system which the staff are going to have to face. There will be shifts coming on and there will be some members of those shifts who will refuse to participate. What kind of chaos is that going to create? These things need to be thought through and they are not thought through.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I just remind the noble Lord, Lord Empey, that of course I did vote for the Brexit legislation and in fact led the Labour Party into the Lobby to support the final agreement on Brexit.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I support the thrust of the amendments in this group, but first, I want to say a word or two on one of the issues that has come up in this morning’s debate. I hope the Committee will indulge me if I just quote a few lines from yesterday’s maiden speech by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester. The House was a little less well-attended for the debate on the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill in which he spoke, but I thought his words yesterday, the ones I am going to read, are very relevant to the debate and the tone of it, so I hope the Committee will forgive me. He said that

“communication is a vital gift for those of us who nurture and curate community. In communication, we need to learn to speak and to listen. This is almost always done in person and directly. Indeed, I argue that one of our primary vocations in this noble House is to be with and to listen, for few disciplines are more vital in the search for wisdom—the search I so often witness in your Lordships’ House. The question for me is not so much how we can be great again, but how we can be kindly present. Greatness is great, but grace is greater”.—[Official Report, 20/11/25; col. 965.]

I think those were wise words. They moved me and I think they are relevant to how we conduct ourselves in this debate on these vital issues.

The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, referred to how useful this debate was, and I believe that it is vital. That is why I quoted those words from the right reverend Prelate. We have raised a range of issues, all connected to people’s capacity to make an informed choice. The point of the debate is for us all—but especially the Bill’s sponsor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton—to listen to the concerns that have been expressed. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, that the noble and learned Lord will then have the opportunity to talk to noble Lords and to bring forward on Report amendments that deal with these issues.

Part of the problem here, and the reason there are many amendments on the Marshalled List and the debate will be lengthy—the noble Lord, Lord Watts, referred to that—is that the House of Commons spent, I think, 17 hours in Committee, focusing on just the first three clauses of this legislation because they are very important. That involved just 23 Members of Parliament. Almost all the proposals that we are discussing were brought up in the House of Commons, but almost all were rejected or disposed of. If some had been accepted and dealt with in the House of Commons, all we may have been doing here is tidying up some of the wording or improving the amendments. However, we have to address them from scratch because they were not dealt with in the House of Commons.

It is our job in the House of Lords to scrutinise legislation and to deal with the things that have not been dealt with. We do that on behalf of people— a number of today’s amendments deal with vulnerable people who do not have the same opportunities that we have. The one thing that we all have in common in this House is that we are all privileged. I am referring not to our material circumstances but to the fact that we have a voice. Many people in this country do not have a voice. Many of the people who have been touched on in these amendments—people of poor material circumstances; people undergoing coercive control, as my noble friend Lord Gove suggested; and people who have severe disabilities—have no one to speak for them. It is our responsibility and duty to make sure that we test these issues and make sure the Bill is as good as it can be.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, asked whether the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, would support the Bill if some of these things were dealt with. That is not really the question. I have been very clear that I do not support the change, and I will set out why in a moment in relation to one of the amendments. However, I have to confront the possibility that the Bill may become law; I will not find that welcome, but the noble Baroness will. If it becomes law, it is absolutely my responsibility—and the responsibility of everyone in this House—to make sure that the Bill has in it all the protections for vulnerable people. If we were to fail to do that, we would have failed the people of this country, whom we are supposed to support—that is our duty. There will be some people in this House who will, if the Bill is improved, support it; there are some who will not, but that is not the point. The point is to get the Bill in as good a shape as possible.

Let me now turn to the amendments. I will deal first with Amendment 45 on encouragement, so powerfully spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. The reason that word is important was demonstrated in the short debate between the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Carlile, on the present position. I hesitate, as a humble accountant, to trespass in the debate between those learned noble Lords, but I will make two points. First, there is a fundamental difference between someone refusing treatment or not having treatment and someone taking deliberate steps to kill themselves. Those are fundamentally different things, and trying to elide them is not helpful to the debate.

The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, talked about the status quo. As I understand it, the current position if you assist somebody to take their own life and the DPP investigates is that the guidance contains the concept of encouragement. There is a specific point, when the DPP is considering whether to prosecute you, about whether you have encouraged somebody to take their own life or tried to talk them out of it. If you have encouraged them not to take their own life but you have, none the less, assisted them, the current position is that that is treated much more favourably than if you had not tried to discourage them. That subtle position in the status quo is something we should maintain, because something very important will happen if this legislation passes, which is why I do not support it: it will, effectively, change society’s view of suicide. In some circumstances it will, effectively, support suicide where currently we do not. In those circumstances, the use of “encouraged” is vital. That is why I support the amendment.