Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Sandhurst Excerpts

Friday 21st November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I hope that the right reverend Prelate is not going to push for a vote at Third Reading. The task for this House is scrutiny of the Bill both at this stage and on Report, and I hope that that is what we will do.

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I will not be long. I speak to Amendment 726, which, as those of you who get that far in the list of amendments will see from the explanatory statement, is one of a number of amendments that I have been prompted to put down by the Law Society. They are intended to make the Bill safer in operation.

I would also like the House to know that I speak free from religious belief, but I do speak as a world-weary lawyer with many years’ practice at the sharp end in both medical negligence matters and legal professional negligence matters. I am all too conscious of my own experience of having seen things go wrong even where the people concerned were decent, honest professionals. Some of them, of course, although professionals, were neither decent nor honest. I have also sat as a legal assessor for five years at the General Medical Council, and I appeared as counsel for a north-eastern NHS trust in a very messy inquiry about 20 years ago about the misdoings of a Doctor Neale, who had featured in a “Panorama” programme—some of you may know about that. I have seen things go wrong on the ground for the past 30 or 40 years of my life.

It is with that in mind that I put down, among others, Amendment 726 with the support of the Law Society. I stress that the Law Society is neutral in principle but has looked at this Bill with what can be described as lawyers’ eyes. Its amendment is designed to make the Bill safer and better in practice. This amendment would “require” and not just permit—that is the difference—the Secretary of State to issue a code of practice in connection with what we are concerned with today; that is, capacity and so on, and the absence of coercion. A code is necessary. In Clause 39 of the Bill, there is provision for other codes of practice to be made; this is simply to add an additional code.

I suggest that this is a perfectly safe, non-destructive amendment that would improve the Bill in respect of a very important practice. As we have heard, coercion—I use the word loosely to cover a wide range of subtle pressures—must be addressed, and it should come from the Secretary of State. The panels that will oversee all this will not be enough. This must come from the Government, looking at things carefully and putting down a code of practice which says: “This is how the panels must address this”. We cannot have a postcode lottery with a panel in one part of England adopting one approach and another adopting a much tougher approach. We need uniformity.

[Lord Hay of Ballyore (DUP)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 48 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, which seeks to protect individuals from being pressurised into assisted death. As the Bill stands, references to coercion and pressure in Clause 1 are strictly related to coercion and pressure coming from “any other person”. Amendment 48 would remove these three words and broaden out the whole understanding of coercion to include more than just that which comes directly from other people.

Various forms of pressure and influence can arise very easily from various sources: institutions, the media and, of course, even oneself. Every week there are new headlines about hospices struggling for funding and the increasing costs of caring for an ageing society. The Pathfinders Neuromuscular Alliance shared a heartbreaking story in its written evidence to the Commons Bill Committee of a patient who was told by their GP:

“Have you got any idea how much you cost the NHS?”


What kind of influence will these stories have on someone who has the option of assisted death? There is currently no safeguard to protect patients from pressure to choose an assisted death because they feel like a burden on the NHS or their family, or are experiencing loneliness, depression and many other related issues.

This is not just my concern. Caroline Abrahams of Age UK said to the Select Committee:

“We worry about the lack of choice about whether you are going to get good social care or good end-of-life and palliative care … We worry about a sense that, over time, it can exacerbate a feeling that an older person’s life is not worth as much as a younger person’s”.


She spoke about

“how we could ensure that older people in particular do not feel under pressure to make a decision that is for reasons other than their own real choice”.

I remind the House that Dignity in Dying put pro-assisted suicide campaigning material in our Tube stations last year. While advertising for assisted dying will not be legal under this Bill, the promotion of this service by its supporters and its presence in our society, alongside all the problems that our NHS and hospices are facing, seriously risks sending a message to people at the end of their lives that our society is better off without them. If a patient was motivated towards assisted death for this reason, Amendment 48 would ensure that they were not eligible as a result.

I ask those supporting the Bill how they intend to safeguard those who feel like a burden, cannot access the palliative care they need and feel that they have no choice but to pursue an assisted death. What would we say to Professor Smith, who said in her evidence to the Select Committee that the key question was:

“Is the person trying to escape the abuse and feelings that they have been made to feel a burden or are they trying to escape the suffering of their illness? If we cannot answer that question, then we should be very concerned”?


If we start permitting assisted suicide because people feel that institutions and the media do not want them, leading them down a dark path in their heads towards that decision, we will have completely failed the most vulnerable in our community. I urge noble Lords to support Amendment 48, because we are dealing with a life and death situation.