Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Friday 14th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for intervening. If there is a difference between us, it may be one of emphasis and not substance, because, respectfully, I do not disagree with anything she just said. As I said in my opening remarks, the Official Opposition’s position from the Front Bench is that we want this House to be able to do proper scrutiny.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

In making that last point, does the noble Lord accept that, in essence, we need to be given more days in Committee so that we can go through this Bill in detail but do so in the way that the noble Baroness suggested? The issue is that, at the moment, there is an assumption that we are going to get only four days in Committee; frankly, that is not enough for such a complex Bill.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for that point from the noble Lord.

I do not want to bring my own personal circumstances into it, but the plain fact of the matter is that I will not be able to participate in the next group because, for obvious reasons, I have to leave. I am a practising barrister. I set aside time to contribute—usefully, I hope—to the work of this House, but there are other pressures on time. If this were a government Bill, we all know how government Bills work. This is well beyond my unpaid pay grade, but it seems to me that we are perhaps trying to pour a quart into a pint pot by doing this Bill as a Private Member’s Bill; as I say, though, that is way beyond my pay grade.

I will sit down in a moment but, because of the exchange we have just had, I want to place on the record the fact that I will not be here for the next group. Having said on this group that the two groups are interrelated, I hope that that will not be a discourtesy to the Committee—certainly not to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, who is the sponsor of the Bill.