Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Lawlor Excerpts

Friday 24th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gerada (CB)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords—

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[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, as a fellow Catholic, I make a confession. I have learned an enormous amount from listening to almost every moment of the Bill. The argument that most distresses me is that which suggests that this has been subject to a filibuster. I have learned a great deal, and I am the better for it, although not the happier for it. I want, therefore, to explain something that I find extremely difficult and that we have not really faced. The problem is not the problem that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has raised; the problem is the nature of the process right from the beginning.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, said that this could not be a government Bill. It is perfectly possible for the Government to have said in their manifesto that a Bill would be prepared, but people would be able to vote on it as they believed to be right. That would have meant that we had a Bill that answered the fundamental problems that many of us have.

The noble and learned Lord knows that, in principle, I disagree with the Bill, but my fundamental problem with it is that I cannot ask about or understand a whole range of things, because they are not in the Bill and are left to a Government to decide how they shall be done. That is why the Minister, with commendable and continuous patience, has had to say, “I cannot answer that, because that depends on what the Houses say, and we will have to answer that afterwards”.

This is not a satisfactory way to proceed and nor is blaming the House of Lords in our debates, when the fundamental issue is that what really happened—and we know what happened—was that the Prime Minister made a promise and then did not do it in the way it should have been done. He arranged for a Private Member’s Bill to be produced. That Bill has been produced. Now, we are told, it is a very good, robust and safe Bill. Well, a robust and safe Bill would not be the only Bill I can remember in 50 years in politics that is opposed by every representative of the disabled movement. What other Bill would we bring forward, saying that it is a suitable Bill, even though every disability organisation is opposed to it?

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[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords—

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords—

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

My Lords, we have now been debating this issue for just short of four and a half hours. It is my intention to bring proceedings to a close at around 3 pm. Both the Government and Opposition Front Benches have indicated to me that they wish to make contributions, so after the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, we should be looking to bring proceedings to a close. Maybe we will have one more speech after her—but then we want to hear from the Front Benches. Then we need to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, and my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer before adjourning around 3 pm.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, the amendment this morning from the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, to the noble and learned Lord’s amendment asks us, when we note the progress of scrutiny today, to recognise the recommendations and findings of both House of Lords Committees: the Constitution Committee and the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee.

The Constitution Committee is very concerned that, as a Private Member’s Bill, this Bill has not had the same kind of pre-legislative scrutiny and debate. It has not been in a manifesto and has not had the discussion or attention that a government Bill would have. Indeed, the committee points out—and we know this to be the case—that the impact assessments, which have been mentioned this morning, reached the House of Commons only after the Committee stage was concluded, on the first day on Report, 16 May 2025, after which it had two more days on Report. That is just over a month before the Third Reading in the Commons, which took place on 20 June.

In the words of the House of Lords Constitution Committee:

“The degree of deliberation, assessment and scrutiny is therefore significantly less than we would expect to see for an equivalent government bill”.


That is especially concerning given the subject matter of the Bill.

I point out, in response to the many people who have drawn attention to the fact that we have spent a lot of time scrutinising, that one of the bold print recommendations in the Constitution Committee’s report is that not only does the House of Lords play an important role in the legislative process but it is

“constitutionally appropriate for the House to scrutinise the Bill and, if so minded, vote to amend, or reject it”.

I shall not go into that point any more, but it is therefore wrong of the protagonists of the Bill to denounce the process of scrutiny that we have been doing and to accuse people who are trying to amend the Bill to make it better and safer, and indeed constitutionally to bring it up to the standard of a government Bill that has, as has been said, had all that time. I do not like the fact that reports have been given to the media suggesting that. In my experience in the House of Lords—I have not been here very long—people have been given a lot of time, including on government Bills, and Governments of both complexions have bent over backwards to be polite and take account of what Members have tried to do.

Apart from that, I will mention only one other point: delegated powers. There are many of them—we have heard today that there are 42 in the Bill, which is a particular problem. I will mention just one instance of a Henry VIII power that is worrying. It is just a technical one, but I was glad to support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, on Clause 27, and later I had my own on Clause 37. These are to protect and regulate the supply of drugs that are designed to bring about death. They are called “approved substances” in Clause 27. We are not given any detail about the substances—no list or anything else—but are given just the meaning of an “approved substance”, without any details other than the meaning of a drug or other substance specified in the regulations in Clause 27, referred to again in Clause 37 with more about the powers to make provision on these.

These substances, as the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee notes, will be

“inherently dangerous and indeed necessarily lethal”.

What happens if someone has taken the substance but changes their mind? How rapidly would it work? Is it reversible, and how? What would the side-effects be? Bringing up such points as these may seem to protagonists of the Bill a matter of time-wasting and obstruction. But they should remember that this Bill will give Ministers—and often officials, as advisers—power to make very serious laws about regulation and determining safety, which we debate every day of the week in every other Bill that comes our way. We take a great deal of time on them, whether on the environment or anything else.

So it is very important that these matters be debated and gone into. It is important that there are answers in the Bill, as both committees want. With that, I beg the noble and learned Lord to regard the good faith with which people have tried to make his Bill better.

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

My Lords, we have had over four and a half hours of debate, and I want to begin to close as soon as we can after 3 pm. I will call three more speakers from the Back Benches and then move to the Opposition Front Bench. We will have three more brief contributions: the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, and my noble friend Lady Jay, former Leader of the House of Lords. Then we will move to the Front Benches.