Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Moore of Etchingham Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I could not possibly attempt to compete with the forensic skill of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, which is so impressive. I simply want to add to this excellent debate one striking comparison which I hope may illuminate it.

Near my home in Sussex stands the beautiful cliff of Beachy Head, which is the most popular National Trust property, with 2.5 million visitors every year. Unfortunately, it is also the number one suicide spot in the world. Online suicide forums instruct people exactly how to get there and jump to their death. At least one such candidate arrives every single day. Also every day, however, a remarkable charity—the Beachy Head Chaplaincy Team—is there, based five minutes’ walk from the fatal cliff edge. The team’s purpose is the opposite of assisted suicide: they try to persuade those who have come to die to live. They are astonishingly successful. I have the latest figure from Gerry Howitt, the team’s CEO. So far this year, they have engaged with 271 people who have come to kill themselves. Of those, only four have jumped.

The chaplaincy team also works tirelessly with Sussex Police, the council, clinical mental health professionals, the local pub, the local taxi service and the National Trust at all practical measures of dissuasion. This means, for example, that lay-bys close to the cliff are blocked, pushing people to park nine minutes’ walk from the edge. Such preventive actions work. The total of those who arrive intending to jump has fallen by 32% since 2023.

As these potential suicides make that nine-minute walk, the chaplains, who are well trained in spotting symptoms and often carrying intelligence about individual arrivals, try to engage them in conversation. Their carefully honed technique starts by showing empathy and moves through establishing rapport to suggesting behavioural change and walking them down to the team’s building for a cup of tea.

Studies show that suicidal ideation, the overwhelming presence of thoughts of death and suicide, is never continuous for more than four hours, often for much less. Offered the right mixture of professionalism and human kindness, people change their minds. Of those 271 with whom the chaplaincy intervened this year, only 57 even reached the cliff. As I say, only four actually jumped.

I am sure your Lordships’ House will admire this moving example of co-operation between private charity and public services and this triumph for life itself. Indeed, the police intervene against suicide attempts under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights—the right to life. Some may object that the sort of suicide being assisted by the Bill before us is very different from that being prevented on Beachy Head, and in some ways that is true. But I end by asking your Lordships to consider the following thought.

The Bill does not support the freedom to kill yourself: that, we already possess. It confers a right to kill yourself with the active assistance of the state and doctors, and at public expense. It also reverses the operation of that power of human persuasion which works such wonders on Beachy Head. Under this legislation, the professionals will, by definition, be people wishing to fulfil a person’s wish to die. No one will be present to advocate the choice of life.

I do not believe that our country, particularly our National Health Service, can successfully contain such a contradiction in public policy and morality. If the Bill is enacted, the same hospital whose professionals help rescue potential suicides will contain other professionals who give gravely sick people the substances to kill themselves.

On Beachy Head, the chaplains say, “Please don’t jump”. In regard to this Bill, my Lords, I say the same to you.