Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Sassoon Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon (Con)]

My Lords, my reason for speaking in this debate is that I also feel that the many people who have written to us deserve to know where each of us stands. I support the introduction of a carefully circumscribed assisted dying regime along the lines of the Bill.

I have seen two very severely ill immediate family members have the times of their deaths determined by a combination of medical practitioners and other close family members. If such decisions can be made on behalf of individuals who are very ill, who are not capable of making the decisions themselves, why should we deny a similar right to people who can make such decisions? I firmly believe that any moral or religious Rubicon over the determination of the time of a person’s death was crossed long ago in this country.

If I have significant doubts over the Bill, they are very much those of the noble Lord, Lord McDonald of Salford, on whether the safeguards within it risk imposing excessive bureaucracy to the detriment of the effective protection of the individual. Many have criticised the Bill for the extent of its delegated powers and, if this were a government Bill, I would also be appalled. But in this case—it is a Private Member’s Bill and there is clearly not a question of the promoters taking powers for themselves without proper scrutiny—I am not unduly concerned. The committee raises important questions and those delegated power issues will, quite properly and importantly, be carefully considered in Committee.

On the passage of the Bill through the House, I feel strongly with others that we must return it to the other place. It is a Bill that has already been through the other place and that has wide public support. It will be extensively scrutinised and, no doubt, improved by this House; it should then be returned to the other place in the normal course. In that connection, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, and to the promoters of the Bill for agreeing to an improved scrutiny process.

So I believe that this is an important Bill. It needs much more scrutiny, but it would further improve the dignity of dying in this country. I hope the House gives it a Second Reading.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Sassoon Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 20th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, as a Welsh-speaking Welshman, who has, in this House, consistently supported Plaid’s perfectly right demand that there should be fairer funding for Wales—I am not a Plaid supporter, but I support that aspect—I hope that the House will have listened carefully to the fundamental comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. If the Bill is passed, the Welsh Government will have to make arrangements for its implementation in Wales. In Wales, the provision of palliative care is not as good as it ought to be—this is widely understood. Yet we would be imposing on the Welsh Government the necessity to make particular decisions about health in Wales, when they have no powers to make those decisions for themselves.

That is a very simple issue, and I recognise the problems stated by the noble and learned Lord. But the truth is that we have an underfunded Welsh Government who spend half their money on health and know that there are real gaps in the provision. Last week, the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, told us that assisted suicide was part of palliative care. That, of course, has solved the case—we now know that it is just part of palliative care. But those of us who do not think that it is part of palliative care recognise that, in Wales, the issue is sharper than anywhere else because of the lack of funding, which is about the misuse of the way that funding from the centre is put out.

I beg this House to take very seriously what the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, has said. If we were to ignore the amendments we are talking about here, we would be saying to the Welsh, “You just stuff it because we are going to decide”. We have had that issue before on abortion in Northern Ireland: they decided what they thought and we chose a moment when we had the power to decide they could stuff it. I believe in devolution, and I do not believe that this House should tell the Welsh people to stuff it; we should let them make their own decisions.

Finally, I will turn to what the noble Lord said. I know perfectly well—

[Lord Sassoon (Con)]

Would my noble friend, who as ever makes passionate and eloquent interventions, first accept that point about the need for additional resources for palliative care across both England and Wales has been made repeatedly through these debates? I think the Committee does not need to hear more about the need for additional resources for palliative care in Wales or anywhere else. That is entirely clear.

The other point that I wonder if my noble friend would accept is that the need for a Bill on assisted dying—the desire for one—is as popular in Wales as it is in the rest of the United Kingdom. To make arguments, therefore, about imposing something on the Welsh people or on the Welsh Senedd, as other noble Lords have made, seems to be wholly inappropriate. The Welsh people have clearly expressed a view that they would like to see legislative provision for assisted dying.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

First, it is said on both sides that they want more money for palliative care, but we now know that palliative care includes assisted dying. I therefore do not accept that the demand for more money for palliative care from those in favour of this Bill is the same thing as those of us who are asking for more money for palliative care so there is a proper choice.

Secondly, the issue is not whether the people of Wales should make the decision on the issue of assisted suicide; the issue is whether decisions made on that subject—which have to be made, because the noble Lord is perfectly right that the legal issue is not devolved—should be made in circumstances in which the application and implementation of those decisions are excluded from the powers that the Welsh Government have. All we are saying here is that those are two different things. I accept entirely what the noble Lord said about the need to make a national decision because of criminal law. However, I am saying that the sponsors of this Bill have got to face that it will ask the Welsh to give up the important control they have in circumstances in which they are already impoverished by the way in which they are supported and where they have particular difficulties with what we call palliative care—not that which the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, calls palliative care.