Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Murray of Blidworth Excerpts

Friday 27th February 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Murray of Blidworth]

142: Clause 4, page 2, line 39, at end insert—
“(f) providing guidance regarding the practice and procedure of Assisted Dying Review Panels (see Schedule 2).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and two others in the name of Lord Murray of Blidworth addresses an issue raised by Select Committee witnesses namely that the Commissioner is not under an obligation to give guidance to the panel on procedure, which could mean it is entirely at each panel’s discretion how they work. These amendments make the provision of guidance mandatory, following consultation.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, it is a long time since I last spoke on this Bill, at about 3.20 pm on Friday 12 September, the first day of Second Reading. In that speech I outlined my concerns about the panels proposed in Clause 17. It gives me great pleasure to introduce the group of amendments to those panels. I will come to my amendments in a moment.

The concerns in my Second Reading speech, which were reflected by a number of others, were also seen in the evidence provided to the Bill Committees in the other place and here. Of course, the addition of the panels happened organically during the passage of the Bill through the Commons and, as a result, there have been adverse comments, particularly, as we will see, by legal stakeholders concerned about how the proposed system works and about the lack of detail on the panels in the Bill.

It is perhaps of note that the Justice Minister, Sarah Sackman, when asked by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, about the lack of policy definition regarding the process and the fitness of those adjudicating, said that

“the commissioner, in establishing the office of the commissioner, will be responsible for producing the procedural rules governing the panel’s activity and, potentially, guidance that will govern how they go about their work”.

She then said that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland,

“is absolutely right that what it does then is give the commissioner the powers to go away and develop the governing practices of the panel”.

The Minister suggested that that was not unusual in the establishment of bodies of similar nature, but many do not share the somewhat laissez-faire approach that she adopted there.

The Law Society raised specific concerns about how the panels would operate. Kirsty Stuart noted in her evidence:

“What is unclear at the moment is where the panels will be held and how people would know about them”,


and whether they would be public or private. In the Law Society’s written evidence, it was said that Parliament should

“clarify how Assisted Dying Review Panels would deal with and decide cases”,

and that the Bill

“leaves substantial details about how the scheme would operate to be dealt with in secondary legislation and guidance”.

Professor Charles Foster also criticised the lack of statutory requirements for the panel’s procedure. He noted:

“There is no requirement for the panel to ask anybody, including the applicant, anything at all, or to test the evidence in any way. Cases can be dealt with in private. There is no obligation to publish the reasons”.


Professor Ruck Keene—I declare an interest that he and I are in chambers together—noted that the panel’s design suffered from being developed “on the fly” and that it was “neither fish nor fowl” regarding its powers. He noted that the policy had not been formed and said that the panel had

“too few powers to deal with more difficult cases”.

With my amendments I hope to address some of the problems that have been highlighted. My Amendment 925A concerns the power to appoint the members of the panel. At the moment, the position is that the panel members would be self-selecting. By setting various criteria for the appointment of panel members, this amendment would reduce that risk. It says:

“A person may only be appointed to the list following … an independent appointments process involving tests, interviews and role-play … professional vetting”—


that is perhaps topical—

“and … in the case of a legal member, a recommendation from the Judicial Appointments Commission”.

My next set of amendments deal with the question of panel procedure. Amendment 142 would require that the commissioner, when providing guidance to the panels, has an obligation to produce that guidance. In the way the Bill is structured at the moment, there is no requirement to provide guidance; this measure would introduce that requirement. Amendment 937 would make that mandatory. Amendment 938 would require that the guidance must be produced following consultation with various relevant bodies: the Tribunal Procedure Committee; experts in domestic abuse, old-age psychiatry and neurodivergence; and disability groups. Amendment 463 is intended to address how the procedure is to work.

Finally, my Amendment 464 deals with powers of evidence gathering. As I noted at Second Reading, at the moment the panel has fewer coercive powers than a parking adjudicator. This body is going to be determining matters of life and death, and ultimately it needs to know whether there is coercion and whether the wishes of all involved have been taken into account. Amendment 464 is drafted in such a way that the panel shall have the powers and privileges of the High Court. I appreciate that it is far from perfect. It is a probing amendment so that I can hear what proposals the noble and learned Lord may have to improve the powers of the panel and to rectify the obvious deficits that exist in the current system proposed in the Bill. I beg to move.