Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Friday 20th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

I would be interested to come back to that on Report when we have had a chance to investigate that point further.

Fundamentally, this shows that there is a great problem, a structural problem, in trying to do these types of big social changes through Private Members’ Bills, be they in Scotland or England. The reason for that is that it requires concurrent action by the Governments of both nations. We have seen time and again that when these sorts of questions have arisen and we have posed these questions, we have been told by the Front Bench, for reasons we all understand, that amendments to try to deal with these problems pose workability concerns. Then we ask, “How would you address those workability concerns?” and answer comes there none, because the Government are officially neutral on the question. Dealing with these sorts of questions cannot be left to Private Members’ Bills when you cannot get to the bottom of the workability concerns or deal with the fact that, in order for the narrowly drawn legislation to work, there are a whole set of other things that have to be in place that only the Government can provide.

I conclude on that point by noting that this past week we have seen a report from the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, once again on hospice and palliative care. It says:

“There is an urgent need for reform to address the financial challenges that the independent adult hospice sector faces … The Department’s solution—the Modern Service Framework—is in the early stages of development, details are sketchy, and it is at least a year from being introduced. This is not good enough when so many hospices are announcing service cuts”.


The idea that we should legislate when that is the context right now seems to me utterly ridiculous.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, as a Welsh-speaking Welshman, who has, in this House, consistently supported Plaid’s perfectly right demand that there should be fairer funding for Wales—I am not a Plaid supporter, but I support that aspect—I hope that the House will have listened carefully to the fundamental comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. If the Bill is passed, the Welsh Government will have to make arrangements for its implementation in Wales. In Wales, the provision of palliative care is not as good as it ought to be—this is widely understood. Yet we would be imposing on the Welsh Government the necessity to make particular decisions about health in Wales, when they have no powers to make those decisions for themselves.

That is a very simple issue, and I recognise the problems stated by the noble and learned Lord. But the truth is that we have an underfunded Welsh Government who spend half their money on health and know that there are real gaps in the provision. Last week, the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, told us that assisted suicide was part of palliative care. That, of course, has solved the case—we now know that it is just part of palliative care. But those of us who do not think that it is part of palliative care recognise that, in Wales, the issue is sharper than anywhere else because of the lack of funding, which is about the misuse of the way that funding from the centre is put out.

I beg this House to take very seriously what the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, has said. If we were to ignore the amendments we are talking about here, we would be saying to the Welsh, “You just stuff it because we are going to decide”. We have had that issue before on abortion in Northern Ireland: they decided what they thought and we chose a moment when we had the power to decide they could stuff it. I believe in devolution, and I do not believe that this House should tell the Welsh people to stuff it; we should let them make their own decisions.

Finally, I will turn to what the noble Lord said. I know perfectly well—

[Lord Sassoon (Con)]

Would my noble friend, who as ever makes passionate and eloquent interventions, first accept that point about the need for additional resources for palliative care across both England and Wales has been made repeatedly through these debates? I think the Committee does not need to hear more about the need for additional resources for palliative care in Wales or anywhere else. That is entirely clear.

The other point that I wonder if my noble friend would accept is that the need for a Bill on assisted dying—the desire for one—is as popular in Wales as it is in the rest of the United Kingdom. To make arguments, therefore, about imposing something on the Welsh people or on the Welsh Senedd, as other noble Lords have made, seems to be wholly inappropriate. The Welsh people have clearly expressed a view that they would like to see legislative provision for assisted dying.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

First, it is said on both sides that they want more money for palliative care, but we now know that palliative care includes assisted dying. I therefore do not accept that the demand for more money for palliative care from those in favour of this Bill is the same thing as those of us who are asking for more money for palliative care so there is a proper choice.

Secondly, the issue is not whether the people of Wales should make the decision on the issue of assisted suicide; the issue is whether decisions made on that subject—which have to be made, because the noble Lord is perfectly right that the legal issue is not devolved—should be made in circumstances in which the application and implementation of those decisions are excluded from the powers that the Welsh Government have. All we are saying here is that those are two different things. I accept entirely what the noble Lord said about the need to make a national decision because of criminal law. However, I am saying that the sponsors of this Bill have got to face that it will ask the Welsh to give up the important control they have in circumstances in which they are already impoverished by the way in which they are supported and where they have particular difficulties with what we call palliative care—not that which the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, calls palliative care.

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I knew I would do that. I am sorry. I will not refer to the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy.

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

My Lords, could I make it clear to noble Lords that, in the best legislatures that have implemented similar legislation to this one—and I am thinking of Oregon, the State of Washington and so on—assisted dying is a small part, a very tiny part, of a good palliative care service, and it is best delivered when people who have been caring for somebody through the course of their terminal illness are enabled to make that final choice in their own time when they are ready. That is the point I was making then, and which holds today. I did not say that it was part of palliative care here. It certainly is not at the moment; I would like it to be, but it is not.

The only other point I would like to make is that we have been referring throughout this debate to the Scottish vote. Is it not lovely that the Scots could make a vote? We will not have the opportunity to make a vote in this House due to people going on and on about Wales and matters we have already discussed many times and have already had explained to us. It seems to me that we are just wasting time and we will never get to a vote. I realise that is what some in the House would like, but it is sadly the case that we will never get to the point where we can make a decision in this House about whether we support this legislation or not.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I am pleased that I gave time for the noble Baroness to talk, given that she thinks all of this is nitpicking. I remind the House that is what she said about the work we are doing. The fact is—

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

I am in a total muddle about what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, is saying. I think he is trying to say that Wales should decide on implementation. The Bill says:

“The Welsh Ministers may by regulations make provision about voluntary assisted dying services in Wales”.


We are giving the Welsh Ministers that power. Could the noble Lord make it clear that he supports that provision?

[Lord Deben (Con)]

What I am saying is very simple: the proposers of this Bill have not properly taken into account the particularities that the Welsh have put forward so nobly and well by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. I never hear from the proposers of this Bill any comprehension or understanding that some other people might have contributions to make. That is why we have had no meaningful changes to this Bill. It is a Bill which is opposed either in principle or in practice by everybody who is supposed to carry it through, and it has now caused real trouble in Wales. I am merely asking the proposers of the Bill to give this House some belief that they really are listening and are not treating our conversations as nitpicking.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, I would like to point out that my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer has in fact tabled amendments and they have not yet been debated because we have not reached them in the Marshalled List. With regard to the very interesting and important discussion about Wales, many of the facts which were quite properly given by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, are related to the devolution settlement itself. That is, quite frankly, a much wider issue than that which we are debating today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Harper (Con)]

Yes, but the problem is that the noble and learned Lord has just confirmed, I think, that whatever the Welsh Senedd said, his intention was that this Parliament would have legislated to change the criminal law in Wales because it is reserved—and that does not give any democratic say to the Welsh Senedd. That is because of the way the devolution settlement has been established, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, said, that is unsatisfactory. That is why this issue would be better legislated for in a Bill dealt with by the Government that covered all aspects of it: both the change to the criminal law and the way the necessary services would be delivered in the whole of the United Kingdom, rather than just in England.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

We are not going to change the devolution settlement in this Bill—of course we are not. That is not the issue and that is not what is before us. Instead, this comes back to the Government. I entirely agree with the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, but we are supposed to rely on the Government saying that, after we pass this, they will deal with the money. That is the problem. I do not believe them. They have to tell us what the money will be and where it will come from. They have to tell the Welsh that the money going to Wales will be increased proportionately so that Wales can deal with it. Until they do that, we cannot make proper decisions. I totally agree otherwise with what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords—