Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 6th February 2026 Lords Chamber

Cooling-off periods are there for a reason: people change their minds and may need time to think and talk it over. In Oregon in 2023, 28% of assisted deaths took place in an expedited waiting period. The same problem could happen here. We therefore need to consider all the ramifications. My amendment is a probing one, but I do not think the Bill, as it stands, recognises the role of VSED. As it stands, we could have a situation where VSED is openly promoted by campaigners as a way to help ensure eligibility and to avoid a safeguard and get on to the fast track for an assisted death.

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, we have agreed noble Lords would benefit from a short lunch break. It is going to be some time before this group is finished, so this seems the most convenient point to take a break. Therefore, I beg to move the debate on this amendment be adjourned. Colleagues in attendance should make sure their name is registered at the Table for the continuation of the debate after lunch.

--- Later in debate ---

Amendment 121 not moved.

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg to move that the House be now resumed.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, before the Committee decides on that question, I put two points on the record. First, we are finishing slightly early. I make the point that some of us would have been perfectly happy to continue to six o’clock to make some more progress, so this is the Government’s decision. However, I understand that we had some confusion on the adjourned group. I flag to the Chief Whip that, when we have an adjourned group and we have a list, perhaps the list could be published in some way so that there is clarity before we start proceedings about who was and was not here at the beginning of the debate on the group. That would avoid the problem we had this morning.

The other issue is that, if we had started the group today, because of the lateness of the hour and the necessity for a significant number of Members to leave early because of travel arrangements to get home, a significant number of people who might have wished to contribute to the debate would not have been able to, even if we had adjourned and continued it next week. Given that the Government Chief Whip said that it was okay for Members to leave early because of those travel situations, can he give some thought to whether, if we start a group to make progress and then adjourn, those Members could still be able to participate in the debate on the group when we resume on the following occasion? I recognise that that is a variation in procedure, but it is about trying to work with the unusual circumstances we face to make sure that people can participate, but also making the best use of the time while complying with the House’s ruling that we make more time available to make progress on the Bill.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I shall refer the noble Lord’s comments to the usual channels.

House resumed.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brennan (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, on Saturday last week the Times newspaper ran a centre-page editorial with the headline:

“The flaws of the assisted dying bill may prove irreparable”.


The editorial stated:

“It should not have fallen to the Lords to protect the public”.


What follows is, putting it kindly, harsh but, putting it bluntly, necessary to be done by this House or in some other way.

The Bill in its present form is not conducive to the common good, for the following reasons. First, we have no idea of its scope in medical terms. Cancer, cardiac, cerebral, immobility, mental—where is the end? Who is going to be trained in these different specialities? Which one is going to be preferred if preference is suggested by the Government? None of the royal colleges has plainly adopted support for the Bill. The psychiatrists are against it, particularly regarding the mental state of a patient to whom assisted dying is offered and what the effect would be. So the scope is big.

Who is going to pay for it? Is this part of the NHS budget? If so, how much? If it is private, how are the two going to divide? There’s a section in the draft Bill about advertising. Do we want to finish up with a system, private or public, of death clinics?

What do the professions say about this? Are doctors going to sign up to do this task, when they might have thought their job was to cure? Nursing staff who might help, or technical staff who might assist in the preparation of the poison or lethal dose of whatever is given to the patient to kill that person—what are they to do? This is putting people to death, whether they want it or not. In Clause 32, we find that we have to amend the Suicide Act, otherwise we will be legislating for unlawful killing, aiding and abetting the person who wants to die.

So the scope is enormous, the effect on the professions is unknown, and the cost, the effect on palliative care and so on could be deeply damaging to all our communities. This is a topic of in-depth complication and the highest level of importance, in which Parliament’s duty is to serve the people it represents here in these two Chambers, no matter what. We can start with the attempt by the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, to put coherence to it.

What about the Hippocratic oath? Several thousand years ago, Hippocrates said, “First, do no harm”. Doctors, and to a similar extent nurses, take that oath to serve us. How does assisted suicide fit into, “First, do no harm”?

I am concentrating on the difficulty because this is probably one of the most serious matters that can affect the public, brought forward to be considered by Parliament. In the House of Commons, both the Justice Minister and the Health Minister were against the Bill. The system rejected it. How on earth will this be resolved.

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

I remind the noble Lord of the advisory speaking time.

[Lord Brennan (Non-Afl)]

If we vote, let us vote at some further stage when we have something serious, coherent and plausible to consider.