Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Farmer Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 12th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I want to stand back from this Bill and call out the dangers of the wider cultural drift towards hyper-individualism it epitomises. Freedom to end life on our terms—making death accessible as a personal convenience—desacralizes and cheapens death, life and humanity itself.

Professor Louis Appleby, advisory group chair of our national suicide prevention strategy, warns that our socially remarkable consensus that it is right to try to prevent all suicides will be radically altered. He also said the phrase “assisted suicide” should not be considered offensive.

At the time of Second Reading in the Commons, two of my friends who were suffering terminal conditions—one has since died—both followed the debate and news coverage and told me that the subject’s very airing made them feel that they were a burden to their loved ones.

Assisted dying is the latest blatant promotion of personal autonomy over any obligations we owe to each other as members of a shared society, and over reverence for life itself. It flouts the important “do no harm” principle underlying classical liberalism. As well as immediate harms to the disabled, those who fear becoming a burden and those vulnerable to coercion, there are long-term harms to the Bill typical of what pollster James Kanagasooriam calls “shrouded attributes” of policies: costs and liabilities, hidden at point of sale to the public, which inflict a later tail of pain.

First, there is the inevitable extension to other groups beyond those catered for in the Bill. International examples abound of legal creep, whereby mental illness, non-terminal conditions and ever-younger sufferers become eligible. Secondly, Canada has shown how palliative care withers, yet two-thirds of the public agree that Labour should prioritise sorting out palliative, social and end-of-life care before even thinking about assisted dying; less than a fifth disagree. Two-thirds of assisted dying supporters agree that our threadbare, charitably sustained hospice movement needs strengthening first, otherwise there is no genuine choice, as we have heard already in this debate.

Hospice movement founder Dame Cicely Saunders’ philosophy of palliative care was:

“You matter because you are you, and you matter to the last moment of your life. We will do all we can not only to help you die peacefully, but also to live until you die”.


Helping patients live until they die is what very many doctors want to keep offering, or to offer more reliably. Fear of missing out drives calls for assisted dying: supporters are significantly more likely than opponents to believe they will be unable to fund their own end-of-life care, and that the Government will not pay for it.

Thirdly, the cheapening of life and disregard for relationships flow from outlawing physical and mental suffering, despite these being part of our universal human condition. Although those should of course be alleviated whenever possible, actively taking the escape route of death is intensely painful for many years for close family members and friends when they have had no say in the matter. When personal autonomy trumps everything, we end up, dare I say it, deifying selfishness.

A former Chief Rabbi, the late Lord Sacks—we have heard his name already today—wrote this in his last book, Morality:

“Western society has all too often been insensitive to the dimension of time. Thinking through the long-term, unintended consequences of policy changes is imperative. Beware short-term fixes to individuals’ pain which will inflict life-long pain on those near to them—and sow seeds of destruction into our society”.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 21st November 2025 Lords Chamber

What I am proposing—I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, when he winds up, will be able to respond positively to these suggestions—is that we introduce a proactive, evidence-based method for detecting potential coercion before any irreversible action is taken. Involving formally the voluntary assisted dying commissioner and the panel in reviewing these financial safeguards ensures the oversight and accountability which are missing from the Bill.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I rise in support of Amendment 118 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and I am introducing Amendments 118A and 118B which follow it. I also support Amendments 45, 46, 47, 49 and 58.

This is an atheist Bill that assumes there is nothing after death, which is not a neutral but an ideological position. To those without an active belief that there is something after death, I would say, “How can you be so sure?” What makes the point that it is an atheist Bill? It is that it desacralizes death and by so doing it opens the door to very many evils including coercion and pressure, the subject of this group. The Bill is coercive: it gives oxygen to dark thoughts which can loom especially large when our best days seem to lie behind us, and when we are no longer contributing to family and society in the way we once did. Culturally and societally, it encourages and influences them as much as any person referred to in Amendments 45 and 46. Two of my friends with terminal conditions both followed earlier stages of this Bill in the other place and told me the subject’s very airing made them feel that they were a burden. The message that legislation and policy should amplify is, “You will not walk the valley of the shadow of death on your own”. We should encourage people to make and keep those relationships that will carry them through life and through that dark valley.

Others might also have dug out the words of the Times columnist Matthew Parris, quoted in a debate on assisted suicide in the other place in April 2024. He said that although

“‘Your time is up’ will never be an order”

to the elderly, disabled, severely ill and the others to whom assisted suicide will, inevitably, be extended eventually, it

“may one day be the kind of unspoken hint that everybody understands. And that’s a good thing”.

As the right honourable Stephen Timms said in that debate:

“I cannot see that that would be a good thing. It seems to me that legalising assisted dying would impose a terrible dilemma on frail people, elderly people and others when they are at the most vulnerable point in their lives, especially on conscientious frail people who do not want to die but do not want to be a burden. I do not think that there is any way to avoid imposing that dilemma”.—[Official Report, Commons, 29/4/24; col. 18WH.]


We have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, about the data from Oregon, where over half the people who have applied for assisted dying since 2017 did so not because they wanted to die but because they felt that they were a burden. Amendment 47 from the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, would guard against this “internal coercion”, to use the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ phrase. Further, her Amendment 49 includes,

“body corporate, institution or organisation”,

alongside “person”, which would of course catch the Government themselves. Tragically, and I declare my interests as a Hampshire farmer, there are farmers who have committed suicide ahead of the imposition of the family farm tax, choosing to die early so their land is passed on intact. Law and policy starkly influence personal decisions, hence our responsibility as lawmakers to take these unforeseen consequences into account and not brush them aside.

In her Amendment 58, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, is right to focus on lack of care as a disadvantage that pressurises. If death looks as if it might be painful and protracted then going through it alone, unmissed and uncared for, is too terrible to contemplate, but surely we can do better than help someone act on that dread thought, “No one would miss me; no one cares”.

Amendments 118A and 118B, which are my amendments to Amendment 118 in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, would ensure that wills were scrutinised and the backgrounds of friends, as well as family, were not overlooked if sinister motives suggesting financial abuse were not assumed but at least considered. Legislating for motivation is notoriously difficult, because motives are private, subjective, and easy to disguise. Instead, assisted dying legislation must use clear, objective safeguards to remove the possibility of improper motives influencing the process.

As an aside, I am not sure the Bill prevents any doctors involved profiting from early death, but Dr Harold Shipman did of course inveigle himself into the wills of some of his victims, and that would also be a red flag if found in the commissioner’s checks on wills.

Therefore, I ask the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, why the Bill does not do more to exclude anyone with a financial or personal interest, and by extension anyone who might have been under their influence. We cannot draft either for compassion or for malice, but we can protect applicants by making it clear from the outset that if anyone with suspect motives has any involvement, their application will fall.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I, by contrast, speak as an atheist and humanist, mainly to address my Amendment 45, which would add the word “encouraged” after “coerced”. I support the general theme of the other amendments in this group, which largely tackle the need to strengthen safeguards against patients being indirectly influenced into opting for assisted death—often coerced, in all but name. All these loopholes undermine any certainty that the “choice”, in inverted commas, is made autonomously.

My amendment, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, may appear to be a small change, as it would add just one word. But before anyone concludes that I am tabling trivial amendments to waste time, I note that, when dealing with a fundamental change in the state’s relationship with its citizens and the NHS’s relationship with patients, and life and death decisions, the specificity and appropriateness of the words in the changed law matter.

At present, the Bill requires doctors to ascertain only coercion or pressure. They are the only two words given in Clause 1; there is no duty even to probe or ask broader questions about more subtle, insidious influences that could affect a person’s decisions. I note that the concept of encouragement is not arbitrary; the encouragement of assistance in suicide is illegal under the Suicide Act but would not be in this Bill. Indeed, CPS policy guidance on prosecuting those who have assisted suicide acknowledges “encouraging”—it uses that word—the victim as a factor in favour of prosecution. It is also criminal to encourage a person to commit an offence under the Serious Crime Act. Therefore, the question is less about why I am bothering to table an amendment to add just one word; the question is why the sponsors of the Bill left out that word “encouragement”.

Adding the word “encouragement” would allow a shift in perception about what undue influence could look like. Even though there are real problems in spotting coercion or pressure—we have heard many examples of that—the concepts at least have a hard edge or overt sense, at least in everyday parlance, that you are talking about people doing something that they really did not want to do. You do not say, “I had a really lovely day today; my husband coerced and pressurised me into doing” something. There is a grey area of much more subtle intervention; an individual could motivate, lead on or nudge someone into opting for an assisted death, rather than making that person aware of all the ways that they might live out their limited time as comfortably as possible. This amendment is trying to get at that sort of encouragement.

As I explained at Second Reading, one of my big dreads is that, once assisted dying is normalised as a positive treatment option, that vibe shift will not be confined to medical scenarios. It can and will mean that it is popularised as a go-to option in broader society. Consider this scenario: you have just received the news that you have a terminal diagnosis and have about six months to live. You are frightened, shocked and seeking reassurance. It is a bleak time and you are depressed because you do not want to die.

But then a third party—a family, carer or friend to whom I ascribe no motivation—says, “Have you thought about asking your GP for an assisted death? I’ve been reading about it all over the place and you can do that now. At least that way you’d have dignity in dying. You know how much you hate hospitals and all those doctors fussing about you, and we all know that you are not good with pain. How would the kids cope with running around having to visit you when you’re in and out of hospital? Wouldn’t it be so lovely to choose when you go, then we could all be with you at the end?” All of this is said in soothing, kind tones. Therefore, you think, “Well, I really don’t want to die. My instincts are to

‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light’,


but I don’t want to be a nuisance either, and they know me so well. They know what I’m like and that I won’t cope. They have my best interests at heart, so I suppose so”. It does not sound exploitative or coercive, but it is an iron fist in a velvet glove.

We have some cultural reference points here. In discussions about how the Online Safety Act will tackle suicide sites, there is consensus about the problems of online influencers encouraging vulnerable people into believing that suicide is a positive way out of their suffering. There is widespread revulsion at those cajoling siren voices encouraging death as an attractive option. In that context, none of us concludes that this encouragement is not problematic because it is not explicitly coercive.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 12th December 2025 Lords Chamber

We have heard a lot of noble Lords talking about the reality of the situation. I have given cases and information that show the reality of the assisted dying Bill and of the life in which we live. I believe that the public need more clarity on all the different examples in these cases, to understand truly whether they support the Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, in giving support to Amendment 22, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, I will also speak to Amendment 30C in my name and hers. These amendments would prevent serving prisoners—those on a hospital order and remanded— and bail defendants accessing legally assisted suicide.

This group is about people in vulnerable categories having access to assisted suicide, but it must be said that anyone with a terminal illness is, by virtue of that, in a vulnerable group. I frequently came across that word in relation to female offenders when I was asked by the previous Government to chair a review on how to strengthen their family and other relationships to prevent reoffending and intergenerational crime. Hence, it seemed very important to define it. From the Latin vulnerabilis, it means wounding or being susceptible to physical harm or damage and emotional injury, especially in being easily hurt and subject to attack.

We can argue about relative vulnerability, but my now rather extensive experience of visiting men’s and women’s prisons has brought home to me that many male prisoners and men on remand are also highly vulnerable, for similar reasons to women. Without excusing criminality and overstating causality, I know that a very large proportion have had multiple adverse childhood experiences. Three-quarters of boys in the youth estate grew up with only one parent, typically an overworked mother, and one-quarter of adult prisoners spent time in local authority care. I know that adversity can develop a deep seam of resilience in a young person or adult, but research shows that it is far less likely to happen without healthy supportive relationships. This is the very ingredient lacking in the lives of very many of those sitting in our prisons. A conservative estimate is that around half of prisoners do not receive visits from anybody outside.

Few of us can imagine the despair that settles in when people enter prison: the inner turmoil and the sense that their life has been ruined. Those on remand can feel stuck in limbo for months, given the severe backlogs in our criminal courts. Sentenced prisoners at least have some certainty. Detention in prison is the punishment, and the state has a duty of care while people are detained, which is why levels of self-inflicted death are of such concern to the Prison Service. The suicide rate for prisoners on remand is approximately 1.8 deaths per 1,000 prisoners, while the rate for sentenced prisoners is less than half of that—approximately 0.8 deaths per 1,000 prisoners. My review team worked out that the cost of the inquiry that followed each suicide was around £2 million in 2017’s money. In 2024, people on remand accounted for about 34% of all self-inflicted deaths in custody, despite being 20% of the population.

Noble Lords might ask: what does that have to do with assisted suicide? The duty of care we owe to remand and sentence prisoners should disallow a death sentence being carried out when they are already far more likely to be in the frame of mind that says that they just want to end it all when a terminal illness is diagnosed. We have an ageing prison population, and one that is full of historical sex offenders. That is the compassionate reason. We should be able to promise them excellent palliative care and not play into an understandably exaggerated desire to end it all quickly on their terms—their last act of control in a life that has spiralled out of control.

But there is a more hard-edged reason: compassion to victims. We do not want sentenced prisoners or people remanded in custody while awaiting trial to have access to assisted suicide to avoid justice. Jeffrey Epstein was officially ruled to have died by suicide in his cell while awaiting trial. There is also the famous case of Goering after the Nuremberg trials. Conspiracies abound, but the principle remains that, if terminally ill adults know they can be assisted with their suicide, this implies a possible moral hazard if the cost of committing a crime is dramatically lowered.

--- Later in debate ---

The second—

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

I thank the noble and learned Lord for giving way. I will comment on the other side of the argument, which is the moral hazard. This could be an extreme case, but I will give the example of somebody who has lung cancer and has within a year to live. They also have some very difficult relationships and have wanted to get rid of a certain person for a long time. If they get rid of them, they will be sent to prison but will be within having six months to live and can have an assisted death, which takes away from the victim, the victim’s family and others any concern that justice is done. By giving them an assisted suicide, justice would not be done in that case.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

I am not quite sure I understand the point. If the position is that I have six months to live and I want to kill somebody, which appears to be the example given, I am entitled to an assisted death whether I am in prison or not. It would probably take six months before the trial took place anyway. I am not quite sure what is the moral hazard that the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, has in mind, because the right to an assisted death would be there inside or outside of prison. So, I do not see what benefit would be obtained by excluding it from somebody in prison.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

If I may try and answer that, the moral hazard is that the victim would have seen a criminal convicted, but the criminal would not serve the sentence given to them by the courts and would instead have an easy way out. You could say that he has six months to live, but as we know, in many cases —Esther Rantzen, for instance, is one of them—it can go on for years. To end his punishment would not give justice to the victim—that is the point I am making.

[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—