Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 24th April 2026 Lords Chamber

I apologise to the Stubbs family and all the supporters of the Bill that we have been denied the fair, proper constitutional process that could have made that choice possible here.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, this debate has become very personal at times, and perhaps I might indulge in that. First, I apologise to my noble friend Lord Sandhurst for trying to get in the way of his valedictory speech. He is a friend of mine and will remain so, and I shall miss him very much. There are many other opponents of the Bill, which I so fervently support, who are dear friends of mine, for whom I have and will continue to have great respect. That includes, for instance, a previous Chief Whip who I can see, and who am I to argue with the wiles of a Chief Whip?

Five years ago, when I was diagnosed with the cancer that had killed my father and my brother, one of the first people to come to me to say, “Michael, come and have a cup of tea”, and to give me a hug, support, sympathy and advice was the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff. I am very sad that she is not in her place today because I would have liked to express my affection for her and my gratitude to her in this House to her face.

This has been a Bill of passions and disagreements. I will continue to respect all those of my friends who disagree with me on this, but—there is always a “but” in life, is there not?—while this has not been a filibuster, I was silly and went and looked up how a filibuster is defined, and it is “to talk something to death”. There is a certain irony in that definition, is there not? Look, it is not a filibuster, but if something looks, sounds and smells like an elephant and it is standing on your bloody foot, you can be forgiven for believing that it is indeed an elephant—but, of course, it is not a filibuster, is it?

It is not the job of this House, as we have heard so many times, to bury a Bill in distractions, which is what so much of the last few weeks and months have been about. I believe that we as a House have let ourselves down by failing to come to a conclusion on this Bill. We have harmed our future by failing to do our duty. There are people out there, opponents of this House, who would bring this House down and use this debate and our failure to deal with this Bill properly as a reason for doing so.

No one wants a bad law, but we already have a bad law. It is a law which is cruel. It is a law which is callous. It is the law of Dignitas, whereby people are forced—only if they can afford it—to go off to a strange land and die there. We have a law of suffering and excruciating pain. It is the law of humiliation and degradation, which far too many people have to endure, totally unnecessarily. I fail to understand how anyone can suggest that the current law in this country is acceptable. We must find an alternative. We should not be made, as individuals, to go on that longest journey we will ever take, to our deaths, racked with pain and stumbling in fear.

To know that you can and may die in peace is to live in glory. This Bill will fail, but it will be resurrected. It will return and it will succeed—and I personally will rejoice.

[Baroness Berger (Lab)]

My Lords, I am dismayed at the decision to spend some time today on process instead of continuing to consider the raft of outstanding issues that we otherwise would have considered, so that the substantive challenges could be addressed in any future legislation. Today we would have considered how an assisted death would interact with the NHS constitution.

As we take note of the overall progress that has been made in this House, I will respond to a number of the claims that we have heard today, in some cases more or less from the moment the Bill arrived before us last summer. The claim today has been that the scrutiny that has taken place has been unnecessary or unusual and that in any event, the elected House had already undertaken sufficient scrutiny before we began. The Bill was first published in the way any Private Member’s Bill is. We have heard in this Chamber today some attempt to equate it with government Bills such as the Crime and Policing Bill and the welfare rights Bill, but there was no prior public consultation on this Bill. There was no pre-legislative scrutiny, no Green Paper, no White Paper, no international comparison. Even at the earliest stage, when the Bill was first presented, it was several times longer than any other Private Member’s Bill, weighing in at 43 clauses. It has now been expanded to 59 clauses and three schedules. The House of Lords Library tells us that this is the longest Private Member’s Bill ever.

This is in stark contrast to previous well-known Private Members’ legislation on issues of conscience that supporters have sought to use as precedents, such as the seven-clause-long Abortion Act and the four-clause-long Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act. Both benefited from a commission which fulfilled the pre-legislative scrutiny role that this Bill has sorely lacked.

After Second Reading, the amending stages in the other place began in Committee with the overwhelming majority of amendments being rejected by a Committee made up of 14 Members who supported the sponsor, in contrast to nine MPs who raised concerns about the Bill. Two-thirds of the way through Committee in the Commons, about 62 hours in, the most significant safeguard in the original Bill—the High Court stage at the end of the process, involving a judge—was removed. It was replaced by the new untrialled process, involving non-judicial panels overseen by a new, tsar-like figure, the voluntary assisted dying commissioner.

This seismic change was made without any input from the 627 Members of the other place who were not on the Bill Committee. Significantly, no evidence was taken on that totally new process. On Report in the Commons, scrutiny was limited to just over two days, and of 77 amendments tabled—

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.

Prostate Cancer

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

The biopsy was not much fun. Stuck in those stirrups, my dignity dangling in the breeze, a charming lady nurse asked me if I was comfortable. We both agreed that that was a profoundly stupid question and laughed our way through the prodding and the poking.

Prostates raise many questions. I got through it thanks to my GP, Dr James Banfield, and support from others, particularly my noble and very dear friend Lord Kirkham.

Too often, men shy away and leave things too late. We need more encouragement, and perhaps more courage, like that of Sir Chris Hoy. When I was a guest editor of the “Today” programme and devoted it to prostate cancer, I interviewed Bill Turnbull, so full of regrets. He had tried to ignore it. He had only a few months to live. We know it does not need to be that way.

When my turn came, I chose radiotherapy. On day one, I gave the young technicians a large box of House of Lords chocolates. “What’s that for?”, they asked. I told them it was to encourage them to aim straight. That was five years ago. I caught it early, which is the key, not only to an extended life but to one without the mucky, yucky side effects, which is not possible without supportive GPs and timely testing. Testing may not be foolproof, but it is better than being a fool. So I am grateful to my noble friend for this short debate. We are helping save lives.