Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Friday 5th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her intervention.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I have not spoken in Committee at all so far. I briefly say to those who are objecting—and who take the view that the intervention of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, should bring the debate to an end—that the debate we are having is about 18, 21 or 25 year-olds. The noble and learned Lord has not said that he is willing to compromise on any of those; as I understand it, he wishes to persist with the age of 18, although he is willing to look at additional safeguards. It does not seem to me, therefore, that his offer of discussions—welcome though it no doubt is—addresses the core question in the debate. So I do not see why the debate should be brought to an end simply by his intervention.

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[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly to my Amendment 9 in this group. Before I do so, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thornton, for making clear his intentions as regards moving his amendments in Committee. I wrote to him twice about this without getting a clear answer, but there has been a clear answer today, which is that he is not going to press amendments to which there is objection. It is good to know what his intentions are because otherwise we could end up in a situation, which I think would not be convenient to the Committee and would certainly contradict our normal practice, of having to hold Divisions in Committee that normally would be deferred, very properly, to Report. I welcome what he said.

My Amendment 9 is fairly easily disposed of because the noble and learned Lord has explained that both he and I, and indeed the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, in her Amendment 8, have identified one of a number of blatant errors in the Bill where it says two different things in two different places, and we have drafted amendments to correct that. That is essentially what they do. We have drafted them differently. I think the sensible thing would be if the noble and learned Lord did not press his Amendment 6 today because it would pre-empt mine. Instead, I think the sensible and normal thing, the courteous thing, would be to say that he will discuss the drafting with the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, and me outside the Committee between now and Report so that we have agreement on the appropriate amendment. I prefer not to have my amendment pre- empted, since I say, with some humility in front of the noble and learned Lord, that I think mine is better drafted than his.

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 405 because the Equality Act is relevant to it. It provides a legal duty to provide reasonable adjustments for disabled people, which is defined quite broadly and I think would include a person who was terminally ill. The amendment is currently worded that the doctor must

“take all reasonable steps to ensure that there is effective communication”.

Will the noble and learned Lord consider changing his drafting to say that the doctor must “ensure reasonable adjustments are provided to ensure effective communication”?

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[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

I was addressing the wider issue, the one that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, was talking about. But it goes to those ordinarily resident in Scotland, who come to England for their medical advice—and if the medical advice says, “Go back to Scotland if you want an assisted death”, would that be a crime? But I also wish to deal with the GP point. If you live in England but have a GP in Scotland, does it debar you from getting it here? I am more than happy to include that in the discussion.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Amendment 14 in this group seeks to expand eligibility for those of pensionable age who have retired from the UK and gone to live abroad. It is a probing amendment, of course; it is not my intention particularly to expand eligibility under the Bill. I am trying to raise a question of equity and fairness but also legal defensibility. I want to approach the issue from a slightly different angle. I endorse everything said by my noble friend Lord Lansley, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and the noble Lord, Lord Beith, in raising practical issues, but I want to approach it on a slightly different basis.

The intention of the sponsor, I think it is fair to say, is that in creating this Act we do not turn England and Wales into a sort of international capital for quick assisted death. That would be an appalling thing to happen. So we try to put some borders and parameters around it and say that this service is here for the use domestically of people who are established here. One way of looking at that is to put the criteria in about having been here for 12 months and so forth, and being ordinarily resident, and all of that. As I say, I agree that those things raise very serious practical issues, but it seems to me—here I tread very carefully, because I am not lawyer—that they raise legal issues as well. Are we to some extent fooling ourselves into thinking that we, although we are the legislature, can create these boundaries and that they will remain firm?

I am thinking about what the Minister said in her reply to the debate on the first group today, in which she was very careful to draw noble Lords’ attention to the fact that certain amendments in that group might be challenged under human rights law or on the grounds of the Equality Act. She said that she could not give assurances that they would not be challenged; that was her being cautious and proper in expressing the Government’s view while being neutral about the Bill. But that raises a flag. How many of the limits that we are discussing now would actually withstand legal challenge? I chose my own example on precisely those grounds.

What if you have lived all your life in this country and paid all your taxes in this country and reached your pensionable age and decided to retire to Spain, say? Unfortunate developments lead you to want to come back and you qualify under the Act for an assisted death; you have a terminal illness and six-month prognosis, and you want to come back to the UK to take advantage of that, maybe because it is not available in Spain or because you want to be with other members of your family—who knows, but you want to come back to do that.

Under the Bill, as I understand it, you would be excluded from doing that. But would a court agree that that was a firm parameter; in other words, would a court agree that the criteria we have established are sufficiently rational that they have a sufficient basis in other legislation, in their understanding of human rights or in practical considerations? There might be all sorts of reasons why courts might say, “Yes, these are rational limitations”. But it could equally be the case that the court would say, “No, that is an injustice. This person has paid their taxes all their life. They’ve only been gone from this country for a few months. Of course, they should be allowed to come back and take advantage of it; it is irrational to exclude them”. That is the point I want to raise.

The noble and learned Lord the sponsor of the Bill has to put in place criteria which not only sufficiently exclude the possibility that we are going to become an international shop for assisted death—which we would all agree with him is something that we do not want to see happen—but are sufficiently rooted that they will be defensible and durable in a judicial context. That is the matter that most concerns me, apart from the practical considerations, about this whole eligibility debate.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, when considering this group, in particular, perhaps, Amendments 300A and 306A, I realised that the small number of noble Lords who have tabled most of the very large number of amendments to the Bill recognise compassion as their guiding intention. I hope they are being reassured by my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer’s comprehensive and expert reassurance on the many safeguards now inserted into the Bill—more safeguards, I believe, than in the legislation of any other country.

However, I am concerned that very extended delays will betray the hope of the woman who nursed both her parents through agonising and protracted deaths, and who now faces the same fate herself. She mourns the fact that her parents were never given the choice this Bill provides. Her words to me as a legislator were: “Have mercy”. Mercy is what this Bill is about, and noble Lords will surely seek the path to mercy. Surely only those whose motives are ideological would want to prevent this Bill from passing, rather than working out the best amendments on a reasonable timetable.

I remain profoundly uneasy at the prospect of Members of this House abrogating to themselves the right to deny the choice of mercy to that large majority of our fellow citizens who want this choice to be available, as reflected in the decisions of our elected representatives. “Have mercy” should be our watchwords.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, that nothing is impossible in human rights law. But it would be exceptionally surprising if the courts were to say that a criterion as well established as ordinary residence were not a justifiable criterion to address the difficult problem of which people ought to benefit from the advantages that this Bill, if enacted, would confer. One other point—

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I agree that the notion of ordinary residence is very well established. I am more concerned about the subsection which requires a 12-month prior residency. That does not apply to anything we do in any other aspect of the NHS, for example. You might have been resident here a fortnight, but if you get knocked over in the street, you will be looked after and looked after for free. It is more the latter than the former that I was concerned with. I am grateful to have the noble Lord’s legal assurance but, as he said, it is not absolutely certain. One might retain him if the case came up.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

If I were advising the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, as a client, I would say that a court would recognise that Parliament, when it enacts legislation of this sort, has to make a choice and decide what is an appropriate and reasonable period to require a person to have satisfied in order to benefit—to prevent a health tourism that we all wish to avoid in this legislation. We should also remember that if Parliament enacts this legislation, the courts will have no power to strike it down in this country. The most that they could do is make a declaration of incompatibility, but that is extremely unlikely in this context.

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[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt this fascinating debate between our lawyers. I have no legal experience, but I have investigated the notion of domiciliary status at some length for different reasons. I absolutely agree with anyone who has tried to work their way through the 93 pages of conditionalities and various different criteria.

I come back to the central point in the excellent contribution by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, about the need for consistency with the NHS and the implications of not being consistent. The terminology is not just about domiciliary status. What is the notion of permanence? We could have an equally long and problematic debate over that other element of the terminology. I completely respect that this is a probing amendment, but just as we had the beginnings of a debate on mental capacity and the necessity for consistency and trusting that what we already know works, because we see it every day in practice, so the notion of ordinary residence should simply, as far as I am concerned, end the conversation. I think there is a welcome consensus around the Committee that this is the only definition that is going to be practicable, workable, known and acceptable. I hope we can move on with the debate in that context.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

Does the noble Baroness accept that ordinary residence does not end the debate because the Bill goes on to impose an additional qualification about having lived in this country for 12 months prior to the date of signing the first declaration? If it were just ordinary residence, legally no issues would arise—there might be other issues—but we also have a 12-month requirement, which appears to me to be arbitrary and risky.