Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Frost Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I am against the Bill, because it is legally and practically defective in many ways, as many other noble Lords have already said. I am against it for philosophical and religious reasons too. For the first time ever, a Bill seeks to give a person of sound will and mind the right to act contrary to a fundamental element of the ethical tradition that has been fundamental to this country—Judeo-Christian morality, and the view that our life is not our own possession to dispose of as we see fit, nor to be taken from us by others, even at our own request.

Noble Lords may ask, as many have done so already, why this should matter to them. They say that they are not religious and that they do not share that ethical system. We have heard some noble Lords say that they have the right to free choice, autonomy over their own life and to protect the dignity, as they see it, of those close to them. I want to briefly explain why I do not think this argument is sufficient and why even those of no religious belief should still be concerned by the prospect of going down the road set out in the Bill.

As I see it, the problem is that the values used to justify the Bill—those of ensuring dignity and preserving autonomy and personal freedom—are also derived from that Judeo-Christian ethical system. As my noble friend Lord Roberts of Belgravia reminded us last week, there have been in the past, and there still are today, many societies that do not fully share those values. They are not self-evident, however much many of us would wish they were.

The Bill is proposing to dismantle part of that inherited ethical system by allowing the state to engage in killing innocent people at their request. Once we have dismantled one part of that system, because we think we know best, what then is the status of the rest of that moral and ethical system? Once you have introduced utilitarianism into our society’s decisions, where do you stop? The ultimate destination of this journey is a utilitarian society with a utilitarian Government, one where there are no free-standing, inherited moral principles of any kind, only the principles that we think we are clever enough to create.

The problem is that in such a society none of us is really safe. The only protection for any of us then are the collective wishes of society, whatever they are at any given moment. In such a society, the rights of those who are inconvenient—the disabled, the ill, the elderly or maybe those who are just unpopular—have no robust defence and are potentially vulnerable. Any of us might one day fall into any of those categories. At that point, your only protection against the general will of society comes from an appeal to the same ethical system that you have just decided is merely contingent, capable of being disposed of if it is inconvenient. Noble Lords may think, as I do, that human dignity and autonomy and freedom are important, but what if the general will of society does not? What ground do you have to stand on there? That is why it is so dangerous to continue dismantling this ethical code, as the Bill does.

I urge noble Lords to think hard about whether we are really confident that we are the generation that is so sure of its judgment and so wise, knowledgeable and confident that we can create a good society on foundations not that we have inherited but which we ourselves have designed. Are we so sure of all those things that we can casually cast aside 2,000 years of our moral tradition and tell ourselves that it does not matter? Noble Lords should look around our country and ask themselves that question. I do not think so, and this is why I hope the Bill will founder.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Frost Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 5th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I rise to introduce Amendment 23 in my name. This amendment obviously goes with the thrust of some of the other amendments that have already been proposed and deals with some of the issues that have come up in this debate. It takes a slightly different route from the others by simply adding a new criterion, paragraph (e), to Clause 1, and would therefore restrict access to assisted dying support to two well-defined and well-understood categories of people: British citizens and those with indefinite leave to remain.

The purpose of couching it in this way is twofold: it is designed to do two things. First, it is designed to provide a way of cutting through the eligibility problem that we have been discussing and the ambiguity of some of the definitions by providing two very clear definitions that avoid the border issues and potential uncertainties of meaning in some of the other definitions. It could be read, as I have drafted it, together with the criteria of ordinary residence—in other words, you must satisfy both these criteria to be eligible for assisted dying support—or we could simply remove the ordinary residence criteria and rest entirely on the fact that you have to be a British citizen or have indefinite leave to remain. Both of those are well-understood categories: they are not susceptible to debate and they are both easily proven. That is the advantage of looking at it in this way.

The other purpose is to provide a very clear barrier, for similar reasons, to death tourism for people who obtain short-term visas, or no visa at all, for the purpose of obtaining an assisted death. It would stop England and Wales becoming destinations for this. I want to briefly summarise why we want to avoid that: the reasons have been taken slightly as read in this discussion, but I want to recall them, although not in great depth.

First, without such a provision as my amendment would provide, it becomes more difficult to enforce the safeguards, whatever they are, that end up in this Bill, for example on past medical history and mental health capacity. It can be difficult to obtain international medical records, they are not always written in exactly the same way and they can, from some countries, be relatively easily forged or faked. It is also difficult to confirm that somebody who has a short-term relationship or no relationship with the UK is not being coerced by people abroad or has consistent capacity. So there is that angle to it.

Secondly, there is also the risk of diplomatic complication, taking in non-permanently resident foreign citizens to commit what may be an offence in their home jurisdiction. Some countries will probably feel more strongly about that than others, but the risk exists and this would exclude it.

Thirdly, there are pull factors, an obvious problem that we are very familiar with in the UK: the global appeal of the English language, the ease of registration with a GP, and, as I have said, the laxity of some of the definitions.

Fourthly, there are resource constraints: our healthcare system has finite capacity for end-of-life care, whoever ends up providing it. This amendment ensures that those who end up being eligible are those with a very clear connection to the UK, either with citizenship or the clear right to remain here for as long as they wish.

Finally—

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend is making interesting points, but I am somewhat worried. He is particularly well-equipped to recognise that there are possibly as many as 1.5 million people from the European Union in this country with pre-settled status who are neither British citizens nor have indefinite leave to remain. There are also probably somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 Irish citizens living in this country who have neither of these qualifications.

[Lord Frost (Non-Afl)]

That is certainly true. The noble Lord makes a good point. The principle that is in my amendment could be expanded to take in other well-defined categories. I will be more convinced about the Irish category than the EU pre-settled status, given this issue was not anything like an issue when we negotiated the EU treaties that created that status, but that is for discussion if the principle is agreed.

Finally, I will just note that the amendment I have put forward reflects norms elsewhere, notably in Australia and New Zealand. It is quite closely based on Section 9 of the Victoria Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017, which, whatever its manifold other weaknesses, is at least clear on this point. I will stop there and look forward to the discussion and the views of the sponsor. I offer this amendment as a potential way of providing more clarity and reducing the level of ambiguity in what is obviously going to be a very important provision in the Bill.

[Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly in support of Amendment 23, which was spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Frost, bearing in mind that amendments in Committee very often are probing amendments to test the view of the sponsor.

It is important to recognise at the start that it is, in fact, not clear from the Bill whether the NHS will provide voluntary assisted dying services. This was a point in relation to which the Bill was criticised very heavily by the Delegated Powers Committee, on which I sit. But it clearly is the intention of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, that it should, and I want to assume for the purposes of this debate, very briefly, that it will.

My noble friend Lady Coffey raised at the start of this debate a problem, which was the question of whether someone might seek to obtain residency under the terms of the Bill in order to obtain what has been referred to as death shopping. This is clearly a problem. The virtue of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Frost, is that it would deal with this, imperfect though the amendment may be. I would like to hear from the sponsor of the Bill, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, what his view is of the problem raised by my noble friend Lady Coffey. I think he accepts that death tourism is a problem. Is his view, like that of my noble friend Lord Lansley, that residency remains the only sensible way of determining these matters? If it is, why has he put the additional safeguard into Clause 1 of the Bill? Or, if he thinks residency is not sufficient, what additional safeguards might he be able to offer? I look forward to hearing from him when he responds to this debate.