Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackinlay of Richborough (Con)]

My Lords, I will present five bases of rejection to the Bill. The first is the evolution of the Bill in the other place, which we can hardly call Parliament at its best. It was deemed to be a Private Member’s Bill, but I am sorry to say that I think we are being fooled here; it is quite obviously a government Bill in disguise. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, indicated this last week in his fine speech, when he referred to the Civil Service assistance he had had to date, which is more than unusual for any Private Member’s Bill.

From the start, Committee in the other place was stilted in its composition, and many respected institutions that will be operating in the space of the Bill were denied their opportunity for input. What worried me more than anything else were the joyous, tear-flecked celebrations by some parliamentarians of the passing of the Bill in the Commons; it is a Bill of death. I found that quite bizarre and chilling. I should not be surprised, however, as many of the same people are jubilant about the opportunity to home-conduct abortions up to full term without sanction. I celebrate life rather than death.

The Bill as originally drafted had 16 Henry VIII clauses; that has now grown to 42, including many that will allow ministerial powers and secondary legislation to create criminal sanctions. Noble Lords will be aware that this is just not right in legislation; this should not happen without great cause, to create criminal sanctions by secondary legislation. It is usually widely condemned.

My second objection is the reality of what we have seen in other jurisdictions, where we have seen a loosening throughout—whether that be in Australia, Canada or most certainly Belgium. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, predicted last week that only 1% of deaths would be through legalised suicide within 10 years. That does not fit very well with Australia’s 3% and Canada’s just under 5%. In all jurisdictions, “I don’t want to be a burden” has become bigger and bigger. In Belgium, children as young as nine are being euthanised under similar legislation—let me repeat that: in Belgium, children aged nine are being euthanised. I have grave concerns about the human rights industry in this country, where whatever happens in Parliament gets overturned through judicial activism. I am absolutely sure that this would be watered down to death on the state on demand in due course. That is my great fear.

My third grave concern is inheritance. I am professionally trained and licensed to do probate work through the Institute of Chartered Accountants; believe me, post-death battles over inheritance can get very ugly. I am fearful of the coercion of the elderly and the vulnerable. It is so obvious.

Fourthly, I am worried about the six-month time limit. We have a similar thing in the DWP for end-of-life PIP, where you have to have an assessment that you may live for only up to 12 months. The reality is very different: the average is over two years, and very commonly people live for three when the assessment was just a year. Are we really going to terminate lives earlier than may be the case? The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, gave a fine speech last week: a personal account of his father. What he is looking for, and what I would be looking for, is that very end-of-life solution where things can be put right, the making a person comfortable, that we know happens, sort of, today. If that is the bit that needs codification into legislation, that is fine; we should be considering that.

Fifthly and finally, I am concerned that we want to embed an option for death within the NHS, where its modus operandi should be for life and for doing its bit, obviously, when palliative care is needed. To have this as an option is very dangerous. I would like to see—if we have to have this at all—a separation, because unfortunately the NHS would have skin in the game in terms of costs and staff problems. This is an unwholesome Bill, and I will oppose it.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 14th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, I shall be even more brief than the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, but I put on record that I am quite in favour of Damascene conversions on this occasion. This last hour and a half have shown us that this is irrespective of the aims of the Bill. The way the Bill is written has so many flaws that I do not think that, however long we debate it, this House will be able to get it to a stage where it is legislatively fit to be passed, and that is our role: we should not vote for anything that cannot legislatively be properly implemented.

[Lord Mackinlay of Richborough (Con)]

My Lords, I am in favour of the amendments from my noble friend Lady Coffey. This has been a fascinating debate about the issues that we have with the devolution settlements across our United Kingdom. It is not only about the issues across the English-Welsh border, which have been so ably demonstrated and described by my noble friend Lord Harper, who has experience in this matter from the other place, but we have other strange dynamics going on in this country on the English border over into Scotland, where things are very different. There are other differences between England and Northern Ireland. We are not proposing to usurp the settlement with Scotland or to usurp the settlement with Northern Ireland.

I am quite interested to hear, at the appropriate time, whether the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, will declare whether he is no longer quite so keen on the old devolution settlements that I can but assume he was part of during the Government that he served in, in that it is not quite as convenient now in this Bill to do the things required by those devolution settlements.

I was interested to hear the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Weir, because the Northern Ireland arrangement has a further dynamic, between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, where there is, again, a swapping over and a commonality of health provision, and it is quite commonplace that people come and go.

The matter of abortion was also raised. That has had a different dynamic across our United Kingdom over many years. My voting record in the House of Commons will show that I took no part in the rather heated debate on abortion that happened some years ago. I abstained because I appreciated that the devolution settlement was a matter for the Northern Ireland Assembly to come to its own conclusions on.

We have to ask ourselves what this Bill is. Is it a criminal justice Bill? We have 42 Henry VIII powers, exercisable by Ministers, so the Bill before us is not actually the Bill that will affect people’s lives; that will be written later because this Bill has so many of those Henry VIII powers in it. Many of those powers, as I described at Second Reading, should not really be there. We should not be having Henry VIII powers to create criminal matters under statutory instruments and delegated legislation; that is just not the way we do things.

So is this a criminal justice Bill? I do not think it is, because it has now morphed very much into a health Bill. It seeks to amend the NHS Act. I think it is the intent of many of the Bill’s supporters that it is the NHS that does these things: advise, provide the medical staff and do the deed. I do not know which chemical might be used. It may be barbiturates in England; it might be heaven knows what in Scotland. These are serious matters.

Is this a medical Bill? I believe that it is. Because it has morphed increasingly into a medical Bill, whether or not we agree with the devolution settlements, we have to respect them. As my noble friend Lord Harper highlighted very clearly, this is the danger of a Private Member’s Bill that is so interwoven with and entrenched in the complications of a devolution settlement. Whether you are for or against this Bill, or whatever, these are complex matters. These are matters of a different potential life or death, depending on which border you are close to in this United Kingdom. This is a matter of health in Wales.

Looking back to Covid, I know that it is a period we all rather like to forget, unpleasant as it was. At that time, I and my noble friend Lord Harper—I am sorry to keep mentioning him—were somewhat active in the space. Do noble Lords remember? These were matters of life and death; I mean, Covid was deemed to be. I was not quite so keen on the measures and voted against them all, but they were deemed to be measures of life and death; that is why they were so draconian.

I remember very clearly that I came up with what I called the Wilkinson conundrum. It is not a good conundrum now, because Wilkinson has subsequently gone into liquidation, but I made the point that because Wilkinson sold everything—fresh fruit and vegetables, tins of beans, and pots and pans—it was allowed to open. The lunacy was that the independent trader next door who sold only pots and pans was not allowed to open. We did that for whatever reason—it was deemed to be a matter of life and death—but Wales did something entirely different. In Wales, Wilkinson had to hide the pots and pans; one could buy beans and everything else, but a cover had to be put over the pots and pans. In matters of life and death, we allowed Wales to have its way.

This is most seriously a matter of life and death. We have a devolution settlement, and it has to be respected.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests in this debate: I chair Sport Wales, which is an arm’s-length body of the Welsh Government; I am the president of the LGA; and I am a director of Living and Dying Well. I also spoke recently at a fundraiser event for a hospice in Wales.

A fundamental part of why we are here is to debate legislation, including looking at how this Bill might impact various parts of the UK—most specifically, England and Wales. I am concerned that we could end up with vastly different systems in England and Wales. Generally, there is a lack of understanding on devolution. In sport, I seem to spend quite a lot of time in meetings asking, “What about devolution?”, and we have to be careful about what we do in Westminster and what should be a matter for Wales when the health service is devolved.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 21st November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, may I just say that other views are available in the legal community, including among many distinguished judges who I will not name. There are many law reports that question this distinction, not least for the reasons that have just been given.

[Lord Mackinlay of Richborough (Con)]

My Lords, the debate on this matter this morning has been enlightening from all sides, with many with many distinctive speeches that will stay with me, including that of the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, who brought a very personal account, though he is no longer in his place.

We are talking about concepts and words—whether it is encouragement, coercion or pressure. They are in a similar collective of words, and I worry that we are dancing with words a lot in this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, brought the word “autonomy” to us this morning, which is very important. I know it has been described earlier in Committee and on the Floor here today. I would be significantly more encouraged and relieved if I could be absolutely sure that autonomy and freedom of action, freedom of movement, freedom of thought and of decision were clear, unambiguous and untainted. I cannot be assured by the Bill, as it stands, as it is weak on the coercion nature.

As I left the Chamber earlier—my wife had arrived— I thought back to the cases of Ruth Ellis and Derek Bentley, which were very significant as they stopped the death penalty in this country. It was a long time ago when the morality and thoughts of this country were in a very different place to today. One might talk about the deterrent effects of the death penalty—which is a whole different debate—but we were willing to put that aside because of the potential of getting things wrong, and we did not want miscarriages of justice. That was so powerful. However, here we are discussing this Bill with lots of suggestions on how we could strengthen the coercion measures and make sure that people are not being pushed towards an early death that they did not want. We are almost flippant about that because the unsaid words are, “They’re old and ill anyway, so they don’t really matter”.

In support of Amendment 58 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, my noble friend Lord Deben—with whom I do not always agree on everything—made a very powerful point. If you were to look at the bell curve of the wealth and status of us in this Committee, we are probably to the left of the public politically, but certainly to the right in terms of wealth and influence as a whole. There is a world of difference between how, if we were to face this, we would be treated—the voice we would have for ourselves and the way in which our families would know they have agency and power to speak—compared with others in society. It could be that the wealthy family would be in a different place, because they could afford the help at home and the support in a care home as necessary.

However, for those in the middle who perhaps have children who work away, which is increasingly likely in this country, the children are feeling guilty. There are lots of cases that have been talked about the real situation of how people feel. In cases of that type there may be no problem of wealth, but problems of support by children and others. The “I don’t want to be a burden” debate would be coming to the fore.

One of our Northern Ireland colleagues mentioned the issue of saying, “Do you know how much this costs the NHS?”. I will be exploring that in greater detail. I think Amendment 3 touched on having an independent person; I have laid amendments for another day examining whether the NHS should be part of this process at all.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that I could be encouraged but I am not sure how we can overcome the facets and dimensions of autonomy and coercion, because people and families are complex. One’s situation in life is complex. Just as we were willing to change a major piece of criminal legislation on the back of two errors, we seem to be not so interested in looking after the vulnerable in this Bill. I wish I could advance an amendment that would satisfy me—a lot of these amendments would make me a little more satisfied—but, no matter what we do, I am tempted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, in saying that we need to look at this whole area of coercion and pressure all over again. It is absolutely apparent across this Committee that this is the sticking point for many of us, so please try to satisfy us.

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, in their various ways, the amendments in this group seek to protect those who are terminally ill from being coerced or pressured into a decision to seek an assisted death. One of the most worrying concerns that have been raised by opponents of this Bill is the risk of especially vulnerable people being encouraged or coerced into ending their own life. The noble Lord, Lord Dodds, was right about that. For that reason, I do not think the Committee should feel embarrassed about having spent the time on this debate that we have.

As has been pointed out, the Bill already seeks to cover the coercion issue in its existing drafting. However, given that it creates a totally new role for medical practitioners in a situation where a terminally ill person wishes to end their life, in my opinion noble Lords are surely right that a laser focus should be applied to delivering protections designed to prevent any such coercion or pressure.

As a number of speakers have pointed out, coercion can come from anywhere—family members, friends, neighbours, other trusted people in our lives or an institution—and it does not have to be overt. It can and often does take the subtlest of forms. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and my noble friend Lord Deben vividly described situations of that nature. Of course, the vast majority of family and friends of someone suffering from a progressive terminal illness will act in good faith to support their loved one through what is in many if not most cases an incredibly difficult time. However, when framing legislation around a decision as momentous as whether to opt for an assisted death and, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, pointed out, human nature being what it is, it is doubly incumbent on us to look for ways of safeguarding those who might be most susceptible to external pressure.

Amendment 3 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, would state more clearly in the Bill that the decision to end one’s life must be made independently. I hope the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, will look favourably on this amendment, as it seems to me in tune with the Bill’s aims and purpose.

The question, though, as posed by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, is whether it is necessary. As far as I can see, in no part of the Bill is there any indication that where a person finds it difficult to make a decision about an assisted death, or where the possibility of an assisted death has not even entered their head, it would be appropriate for their thoughts to be influenced or guided by another individual. Indeed, the Bill contains specific prohibitions on advertisement and promotion, as well as the offences set out in Clause 34 in respect of inducing a person to seek an assisted death by dishonesty, coercion or pressure.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 5th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackinlay of Richborough (Con)]

I raise a mirror to the noble and learned Lord regarding his comments in 2021 during the passage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. His view was very clearly that 21 is the unequivocal age of adulthood. I assume that he has heard the views across the Committee. The noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, had an alternative—18, 25 and 21 were advanced. Would it not be a useful compromise if he were to declare to the Committee today that he would actively consider 21 as the right age—as he did when considering whole-life orders in a previous Bill? That would be very helpful.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

On the comments that the noble Lord refers to, in relation to whether you should impose a whole-life term on somebody under 21, I recognise, as the Sentencing Council does, that issues of immaturity might make that inappropriate in certain cases. However, on this position, the question is: what is the age at which you might be capable of taking a settled decision? The concerns that the Committee has expressed about people aged between 18 and 25 make me think that the right course is to consider whether there are ways to deal with that that the House would feel are satisfactory on Report. I think that is the right course.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Meston (CB)]

I seriously question whether Amendments 11 and 11A are necessary or useful. Following on from what has just been said, my experience in the courts is that the concept of ordinary residence stated in the Bill is well established in our law, workable in practice and well understood by practitioners and judiciary, particularly in family law, where it most often appears. It is a tried and tested expression.

To impose the more stringent precondition of permanent residence, requiring, in effect, unbroken physical presence, could unnecessarily—and, I suggest, unkindly—restrict the mobility of those who are seriously ill, or becoming seriously ill, who might be entitled to the benefits of the Bill if it is enacted. Such people, particularly those who have a clear, stable and lasting residential connection to England and Wales, should not be left to fear that they cannot make even a brief visit away from home, fully intending to return, in case that visit away is said to have changed or interrupted their permanent residence and thereby stopped the clock on their eligibility for assistance under the Bill’s provisions, requiring the qualifying period of 12 months to restart from the beginning. That, I suggest, would be a great disservice to such people and would not be any improvement to the Bill.

As for “domicile”, as others have already said, it is a notoriously difficult concept to define. You can have only one domicile at any one time. It can be a domicile of origin, a domicile of dependency or a domicile of choice. In the explanatory statement to the amendment seeking to introduce the concept of domicile, it is suggested that it would tighten the eligibility requirements. In reality, it would do little more than complicate them—indeed, in some situations, it could loosen them.

You can retain your domicile of origin in this country even if you have not lived here for years. You can also acquire a domicile of choice or revive a domicile of origin immediately on arrival in this country with no minimum period of residence. I therefore suggest that the substitution of “domiciled” for “ordinarily resident” would not be helpful to anyone. I suggest that we should adhere to the concept of ordinary residence.

[Lord Mackinlay of Richborough (Con)]

My Lords, too often we have vague legislation that comes out of our Houses of Parliament, with phrases such as “shall have regard to”. I remember that the Speaker’s Counsel examined this at some length and when I was on the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission he said, in rather easy speak, “It doesn’t really mean much”. The other term that we hear is “reasonable”.

Now, I am sorry, but in Clause 1 we have “ordinarily resident”, so what does that mean? I am rather disappointed that the Bill has seemingly had a lot of investigation and clarification in the other place, but it comes here with that rather vague phrase within it, which has been examined at some length here and is the reason for this multitude of amendments. Is it a common-law or case-law interpretation? The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, eloquently opened the debate by saying that it was a vague term and offered some case law. In the Barnet case, it was far from clear.

I have come up with five different types of “ordinarily resident” where there are different rules. There is case law: the one that has been mentioned today, as it should be, is the residence tool that is advanced by the Department of Health. That gives us the closest attempt at explaining what “ordinarily resident” means in healthcare, but it is peculiar because its purpose is to keep people away from healthcare if they are not resident, and hence we charge them, rightly, for those services. One wonders whether that operates as effectively as it might but at least it tries to codify what it means, with guidance.

The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said that that was easy; I have the guidance here, strangely enough. There are 14 pages, which is blissfully short compared with some guidance, but it has in it the golden phrase: “This list is not exhaustive”. I am afraid that that, in itself, is not that clear, but at least it attempts to be. The legislation before us would restrict the availability of assisted dying to England and Wales, so I support what my noble friend Lord Lansley said about the UK being mentioned in the residency tool, so why not keep that concurrency in considering whether people are validly able to access secondary care?

Then there is the availability of DWP benefits, which are restricted in a wholly different legislative way. If people who are fully domiciled but are away from the country fairly briefly return to it, they would face another mountain of rules to be able to claim universal credit, for instance. That is a whole new raft of interpretation about what “ordinarily resident” is.

Voting is a whole different ball game; that came to light most graphically in the 2014 Scottish referendum on independence. Your Lordships may have noticed that my name is Mackinlay, which one would think had some Scottish connotation, but that is long gone in the mists of time, and I had no part in that vote. However, there could be a family who have had generations of attachment to Scotland, which, merely by dint of living in England for a short period, would have disqualified them from having a say in that rather extensive constitutional referendum; whereas had anybody in England decided to go and live in Scotland for the briefest of periods, within a short time they would have gained the qualification to take part in that referendum.

In election law, we have a whole new raft of interpretation as to what “ordinarily resident” is. We see that in live action quite regularly, whenever there is a parliamentary by-election. Parties seem to aim the finger at other parties and say, “Your candidate has lived here for only five minutes; he is renting his auntie’s flat and is not properly resident”. So even in electoral law, there is complication, but if we are really looking for complication, that would be in tax law.

I support my noble friend Lady Coffey’s attempts to assist us by adding “domicile” into the interpretation, a position that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, does not seem to agree with, saying that it is infinitely complex. If we look at tax, I am afraid that the whole issue of “ordinarily resident” is the stuff of true complication. There was an attempt to codify it in the Finance Act 2013, where we introduced the statutory residence basis, and even that is not without complication. I should know, because I have exactly such a case on my desk professionally, as a chartered accountant, at the moment: HMRC is trying to claim that somebody who has been out of the country for 10 years has suddenly reacquired UK ordinarily resident status and hence tax status.

We therefore have conflicts across those five different interpretations, and it all depends on whether the state is trying to deny money, such as DWP benefits; deny healthcare, such as by qualification for secondary care only; or trying to get someone into the UK as resident because the state will then be able to claim a lot more tax from them. I am afraid that I have to express to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, my gross disappointment that we have had an hour and a half of debate on this legislation about one concept of what “ordinarily resident” means. Having listened to a wide-ranging debate by people who have infinitely more experience in the law than I do, we are still all at sea as to what this actually means.

When we come back on Report, we must have a properly defined qualification for assisted dying under this Act, whether that is by a helpful amendment, as proposed by my noble friends Lord Goodman and Lord Frost, which adds a little more to at least determine the qualification, or whether it is properly and very clearly under a case law interpretation, which I think my noble friend Lord Moylan has tried to advance and examine. As it stands at the moment, I am none the wiser, after this expansive debate, as to what that phrase actually means. I would appreciate it if, in his summing up, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, could say which of those five interpretations is meant by the Bill. I have a sneaking suspicion that it is an attempt to copy the healthcare definition of what “ordinarily resident” means. If that is the case, let us have it explicitly stated in the Bill, so that we at least know what we are talking about.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My noble friend Lord Mackinlay of Richborough is all at sea. Let me try to provide a little tabula in naufragio, as we say.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 12th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackinlay of Richborough (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak for just a couple of seconds as I am very mindful of time. I support Amendments 24 and 458 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. We have had very little debate about the issue of pregnancy. I am quite shocked by that, given that there are administrations around the world with many years of experience, such as Oregon, which had similar legislation in 1997, and Belgium, which had it in 2002. They considered the issue of pregnancy during these very delicate discussions on assisted dying.

I am somewhat disappointed and concerned that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, has not addressed this, and I really hope that this can be addressed on Report. There is a world of difference between a very early pregnancy and a baby close to full term, which is reflected in our Abortion Act. May I therefore give the noble and learned Lord some advice? When this does come back on Report, the issue of pregnancy should be addressed, as it has been in other jurisdictions.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, as Amendment 24 has been tabled and pregnancy has been spoken about, I now feel that I ought to just make one point very quickly. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, quite rightly presented a lot of statistics about cancer, but that she did not address the issue of cancers of the pregnancy itself. That is a serious issue. Choriocarcinoma, for example, is a fatal disease; it is rapidly metastatic, can cause issues all over the body and is not easily treatable. It could easily be that somebody who was pregnant with that, who would test pregnant with that condition, would be eligible. I therefore ask the noble Baroness to consider not pressing her amendment and to reconsider the wording of it, because I do not think that it would be an acceptable amendment later on. Both early in pregnancy and in late pregnancy, this would be a real risk.

[Lord Mackinlay of Richborough (Con)]

I will just come back on that, if I may. I would also say that the wording in the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, is insufficient, because it is a far more complex issue than that. As I said, there is a world of difference between a very early embryo in the first few weeks and a close to full-term pregnancy. I certainly hope that this Committee would agree that point.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I really had hoped that we would get to the next group but, as it is clear that we will not, I will raise a couple of points and some questions. The increasing number of older prisoners has already been mentioned. This is largely driven by sexual offences, particularly those of historical sexual abuse. While we of course need to treat people appropriately, I suggest that, wrongly, the majority of the public would not care if sexual abuse offenders or murderers killed themselves. It is, however, our duty as stewards of the Crown to consider these matters carefully.

It so happens that, in the next group, we would have got to a particular situation about halting treatment, or what could happen as a result of halting treatment. There are situations in Australia where prisoners who have been diagnosed with cancer have then declined treatment and have been able to take up assisted dying. One thing that is happening is the rise in prisons of natural deaths. In the 12 months to September 2025, there were 221, and that is with the Ministry of Justice not even knowing and waiting for further information. That is a significant increase from 123 in 2010, which reflects the older age.

It is important that we have compassion, so it is surprising to me that there has been a yearly average of only 9.5 early releases of prisoners on compassionate grounds over the last 15 years. There was just one in 2022, seven in 2023 and no figures yet for 2024. The policy framework is deliberately sparing. Meanwhile, a legal ruling earlier this year allowed an applicant, Mr Khan, out. It is worth considering—it may not be possible at this stage in the response by the Minister or the sponsor—and thinking ahead to Report. Where are we going with this? It should not just be that the ECHR does not allow this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

It is just such an obscure proposition that we should not determine our policy in relation to it.

Moving on to pregnant women, the amendments say that no pregnant woman should have the right to an assisted death and that everybody who wants an assisted death must have a pregnancy test. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, made it clear that the second was a probing amendment and not a serious proposition. In relation to pregnant women, I completely accept what is being said, particularly by my noble friend Lady Berger, about what the statistics show. Again, safeguards can adequately deal with this and I am not in favour of any change in relation to it. We should remember that what we are dealing with here is somebody who has only six months to live. Homeless people—

[Lord Mackinlay of Richborough (Con)]

There is a big issue here. Other states around the world which have had assisted dying for some time have differences of view. In Oregon, which has had assisted dying since 1997, there is a requirement to keep the mother alive for as long as possible, particularly when there is a viable foetus. The Netherlands takes a completely different view, with foeticide—where the foetus must be terminated by one means or another, often by intracardial injection of potassium chloride—before the mother can be euthanised.

At which end of the scale does the noble and learned Lord prefer these things? The royal colleges are against this whole system, yet we will be relying on them to fill in the gaps in this legislation. It is incumbent upon us to fill in those gaps for them, because they are not keen on this.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

The noble Lord puts it accurately. Some countries have taken one view and other countries have taken another. It is clear from the choice that I am supporting that we take the view that pregnancy should not be a bar to it, though inevitably, as the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, said, there should be questions in relation to appropriate people, whether they are pregnant or not, which may have an effect on the result. On the more detailed questions, based on what I am saying, they would not arise in the Bill.

Going on to the third category, homeless people, again with six months to live or less, will very frequently, as my noble friend Lady Gray said, have complex needs and complex lives. I am very strongly against that right to an assisted death being taken away from them, but the safeguards will apply, to be sure that it is their clear and settled view and not the product of coercion.

Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, raised the education, health and care plan. The range of people with an EHCP is very wide, as everybody knows. I am again very against excluding everybody from the significant provisions of the Bill, because the protections are there. They can go up to the age of 25 and, as I indicated last Friday, for people aged 25 and under we should think of whether there should be enhanced protection. That would include everybody up to the age of 25, including those under an education, health and care plan. In the light of those indications, I hope—