Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 12th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, I speak as a cancer sufferer, as a man who applauds and supports the hospice movement and, I hope, as a conservative. I reject, as a matter of principle, the idea that the state can demand ownership of my body any more than it can own my spirit or my soul. The current law is cruel and untenable. The Supreme Court says it must be reviewed, the police refuse properly to enforce it and the public demand that it be changed.

There is the contrary argument that our lives and our deaths belong to God. I understand the strength of opinion of those who plead that case. But I suggest that you have no right to impose your view on others who do not agree. With respect, I see no hand of any God that I recognise in laws that condemn innocent men and women to die in agony even when they beg for their pain to stop.

Why are we so afraid to change? Do we really believe that there are ruffians waiting to pounce from the shadows upon their own families? That is the other argument that is put against the Bill. Are we to believe that we have become so cruel that we have turned into a society of casual killers? Is that what we are supposed to believe, what we are supposed to have become? Let us weigh that supposition—that is what it is—against actual suffering and against the reality of the totally unnecessary torments that so many are forced to endure, even when they beg for mercy. Weigh those things up, one against the other—measure fear against fact—and there is surely only one compassionate outcome: this Bill, or something very much like it, with all its many safeguards.

A nurse wrote to me: “I have never met a nurse or a doctor who is eager to end the life of any patient, but I have known many nurses and doctors who want to end their suffering. I hope and pray that the law will change and I will not be subjected to the laws dictated by those who do not agree with me”.

I wish I had had the opportunity, out of love, to help my mother pass peacefully in my arms, instead of watching her years of suffering. It would have been her choice, but she had no choice. Instead, I am left with an enduring memory of endless pain. Your body, your life and your choice—I wish all noble Lords long lives and a quiet and gentle and loving end.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 21st November 2025 Lords Chamber

Both amendments—inserting “encouraged” to put in place some of the protections that the DPP currently uses when assessing whether to prosecute people, and looking at material circumstances and the support vulnerable people get—are vital. I hope both, or variants of them, can find their way into this legislation.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

I will just follow up my noble friend’s remarks. He is a noble friend; I campaigned for him several times in his constituency when he was an MP, and I will remain a friend of his, I hope. I want very quickly to follow up on his remarks about what we might call the “Pannick paradox” between the decision to ask for an assisted death and the decision to refuse any further medication or help that will continue your life for a short time. My noble friend is right. They are not the same: a decision to ask for a death when you know that death is inevitable, and one simply to deny any further help or sustenance, with starving yourself to death the only way of achieving that end, are very different. The difference is that if someone is able to ask for a calm, assisted death, they will die with dignity and not in squalor, having forced the system to cut off any hope of further life. My noble friend knows that I do not agree with him on this, but I absolutely believe he is right in saying that there is a fundamental distinction. That is one reason why I support the Bill.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

It might help noble Lords to know that we are being followed on Twitter. This issue—I am aiming to save time—of the Pannick dilemma has been commented on by Philip Murray, who is a law lecturer at Robinson College in Cambridge. He said the following, and we may wish to seek his advice:

“I find it astonishing that various Lords”—


forgive me for the embarrassment—

“including those who should know better (Lord Pannick …), keep conflating withdrawal of treatment and assisted suicide. The act/omission distinction has underpinned morality and law for millennia”.

I hope that either of the noble Lords, Lord Pannick or Lord Dobbs, will reach out to this gentleman to aid all noble Lords so we will not spend any further time on that dilemma.