Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 12th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, the strength of feeling on this issue is understandable. Rarely do we get to debate such a truly momentous issue. But in the end, this is a question of personal choice. No one is suggesting that assisted dying should be mandatory, nor even that it should be widely available. In fact, under this Bill, few might be eligible to ask for it, let alone choose to take up the option. All that this Bill would do is make it possible for a dying person to die the death they want. I do not believe that it is my right, or the right of any of us in this House, to deny another individual that option.

Could anyone have been in Milbank House on Tuesday listening to Nathaniel, now battling with pain in order to continue walking while he can still move his cancer-riddled body, and deny him what he craves: the certainty that, when he can cope no longer, he can have the death he chooses? It is, he says, his dying wish that this Bill should become law. Barely 40, until very recently a music teacher and marathon runner, he says that he is receiving excellent palliative care. He does not wish to die yet, but when life becomes intolerable, he wants an assisted death. He is anything but suicidal, and the use of that word is an emotive effort to confuse two very different things. Nathaniel does not want to kill himself; he is dying already.

Many noble Lords have talked of the need for investment in palliative care. That is not a matter for debate. We all want investment in palliative care. Assisted dying should be viewed as merely part of a palliative care package. Palliative care cannot always deal with all pain. One of the many letters I received on this subject said: “No matter how good we can make palliative care, there are always those for whom the experience of terminal illness and dying involves suffering that cannot be alleviated nor endured … We need both good palliative care and assisted dying to be available”. The author of that letter was a former hospice director and consultant in palliative medicine.

Sophie Blake has been a vigorous campaigner for better palliative care and for assisted dying. She does not want to die, despite the pain that she suffers from multiple cancers, but she is allergic to opioid painkiller, which makes pain relief difficult. She is terrified of going through excruciating pain when she does die. But worse still is the fear of her daughter watching that, so while she fights for better palliative care and for her life, she is desperate for the right to have the peaceful and dignified death that this Bill could deliver for her. I want to be able to reassure Sophie, Nathaniel and others that I will help to give them the reassurance they crave, and that I could not give my own mother when she was dying.

During the course of this long and balanced debate—and we are only halfway through—many have voiced concern over a lack of safeguards, but there are safeguards, and there will be more. The Bill is not perfect, and this House will do its job: scrutinise it and improve it where possible. But we need this Bill to move ahead quickly. I support it.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 21st November 2025 Lords Chamber

I am sure that it is possible to draw up measures in this legislation and more broadly to ensure that we absolutely minimise the risk of those who are already victims becoming victims of an even greater crime. I hope that the sponsor of the Bill can reassure us that those measures will be in place.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

The point that the noble Lord has just made—that people are committing suicide because they are in abusive relationships—is absolutely dreadful. But would he accept that there is more likelihood of their death being prevented under this Bill?

[Lord Gove (Con)]

I profoundly disagree with the noble Baroness on that, but I am grateful to her for making that point, and I am more grateful still to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, for raising this issue. It is precisely the nature of coercive and controlling behaviour within domestic settings, as part of domestic violence and abuse, that needs to be addressed in this legislation. I have an open mind as to how it might be, but it must be.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 12th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

These things can happen, but we should have a process or an alternative mechanism. I am not going to deal with exceptional cases. My GP is still in situ, and I can see my GP when I want to; other practices could aim to do the same thing. We have very great demands on the practice in Cambridge, with many students registering.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

Can the noble Baroness tell the Committee whether she actually listened to what the GP in our midst said about how practices work?

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question, but I would like to press on. There are other GPs who want to see the same patients; they want to build up the patient relationship over time because they say it makes for better diagnosis, care and treatment for their patients. We should not put up with the worst-case scenarios simply because it does not happen or because we think a multi-doctor practice works well. It may work well in some cases, but there is no replacement for knowledge of a patient over time.

The letter gives the multidisciplinary panel an assessment of the patient’s illness and state of mind by someone who knows them. If anything raises suspicion that there has been pressure or that the patient is not in a state of mind to make the decision, the panel can investigate further. Moreover, unlike the other matters and activities in the process, the letter is not a matter of ticking boxes. The demand is for something that doctors are used to doing; to write a coherent letter about one of their patients is something that requires thought and careful concern for the individual case. It is standard practice in referring a patient to a consultant for specialist care where there are letters passed to and from. Doctors and consultants write letters.

If the Bill is to have real safeguards in the form of coherent and analytical evidence from a doctor who has known a patient over time, such amendments are needed. I ask the sponsor of the Bill to require it.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 23rd January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I put my name to the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, and I will not repeat what she said. She opened the debate on these amendments with superb clarity, characteristic of her contributions to your Lordships’ House.

I have been shocked by what I have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Markham. I ask him just to reflect on two contributions made earlier in this afternoon’s session by my noble friend Lord Mawson, who, from his own experience, described what happens in poorer neighbourhoods, which he has experienced very directly, in which people face different problems and are more likely to want to die for reasons to which their terminal illness is just an ancillary point.

I have been involved in these debates since I came into your Lordships’ House at least. I was on the Joffe Bill Committee with my noble friend Lady Finlay. In the Committee on that Bill, in all the other Bills I can remember since, and particularly in all the case law that I have followed over the years—mostly very celebrated cases—the purpose of asking for assisted suicide has been to alleviate terrible suffering. That has been the sole purpose for demanding a change in the law: to alleviate terrible suffering. I do not believe that the noble and learned Lord wishes to achieve anything different from that. It is just that it does not say in the Bill that the purpose of having assisted suicide should be to alleviate terrible suffering.

Of course, there may be other issues at work in that person’s mind when they ask for assisted suicide—we cannot read every synapse in their brain—but we are here to legislate to save people from terrible suffering, if the Bill is to pass. I am very concerned that the Bill should be amended so that the capability to have assisted suicide does not arise as an opportunity to commit suicide. The reason to commit suicide, the absolute cause, should be the intolerable suffering.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

Would the noble Lord accept, however, that it would be deeply unfair if somebody whose major wish was to end their terminal illness, and the pain and intolerable suffering that was coming with it, was to be denied that right because they were also concerned about numerous other things? Very few people have a perfect life, even when they are close to death. To deny that person the right to an assisted death because they might have concerns beyond their suffering would seem to be cruel in the extreme.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

I do not think there is much difference between what I am saying and what my noble friend is saying. I am saying that, if this law is passed, people should be able to obtain assisted suicide because of intolerable suffering. I am not seeking to exclude other matters that might be in their mind, but the cause of asking for assisted suicide should be that suffering. The medical profession, lawyers and judges in particular—if we have the judicial option rather than the panel option—are perfectly capable of reaching a decision on the facts that would lead to the appropriate conclusion.