Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Friday 12th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London said this morning that to change the law is to change society. The reality is that society has already changed, and it wants us to change the law. When the House of Commons passed the Bill, the Daily Express newspaper hailed the success of its campaign. Some 21 years ago, when I lodged my Bill in the Scottish Parliament, the entire front page of the Sunday Express—coincidentally on 12 September—shouted:

“MSP in bid to change law to kill patients”.


The death threats I received as a consequence seemed rather ironic to me. So some people have changed their minds over the years, even in the Church, as up to 2017, it denied someone a Christian burial if they died by suicide.

However, the Bill does not concern people who choose to end their life; it concerns those whose life is ending and the choices that they are denied to make that ending better. The arguments I heard in opposition then asserted that palliative care was either the answer or part of the answer, but I think we all know that, even with comprehensive and universal palliative care, there would be times where someone would prefer not to die through sedated starvation. You can prescribe morphine, but not personal dignity. A common argument I heard then was just to allow doctors to quietly ease the passing of people—do not interfere. I do not want an approach to the permanent turning of a blind eye to potential coercion and denial of transparency and protections.

Twenty-one years ago, police and prosecutors rigorously investigated and prosecuted those loved ones for travelling abroad because this enforced the law on assistance. I argued then it was unjust. Now, as we just heard a few moments ago, this is considered unheard of. I have not heard any calls today to return to the approach taken before then, nor have I heard any argument to return to the approach where a patient did not have the right to an advanced directive, to reject a doctor’s insistence on resuscitation or to refuse food and hydration. In their own right, all these changes are accepted by opponents of the Bill, but they provide for an inconsistent, unfair, confusing and, too often, inhumane legal framework.

These inconsistencies within England and Wales will be alleviated by the Bill, but they also exist where I live in Scotland. Liam McArthur MSP is, with great care, taking his measure through the Scottish Parliament. I hope it passes, as I hope this Bill will here. Perhaps because I live on the Scottish border, I note that we will need to address the cross-border issues of residency for those who live in one country and receive services in another. This concerns adult competences laws, the interaction of devolved and reserved competences and the relationship between health bodies south and north of the border. None of the issues that we need to resolve is prohibitive or should in any way block progress. Indeed, it is the reverse, as they will assist operability.

I do not question the motives of those who have principled objections to the Bill, but I note that they favour the current legal right to allow a patient, either by choice or through persuasion that they are a burden, without full reporting or transparency, to decline food and water and to die of sedated starvation. I do not want this carrying on for another 21 years.

The Bill is not about people choosing to die. They are dying. Indeed, the point missed by many is that this debate is about people who do not wish to die. How someone dies impacts on how their loved ones live the rest of their lives. A better final few days, with dignity, love and care means that loved ones remember their life lived and less so how it ended.