Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Taylor of Holbeach Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. We often debate and we do not necessarily agree; we do not on this occasion. I wish I were participating in the Second Reading of a government Bill, but we are where we are. Most of us will have found ourselves examining our prejudices and experiences of the issues underlying the Bill. I say at the outset that my views are conditioned by my convictions and experiences. At the bottom lies a belief that life is a precious gift from God. I think these views are widely shared, and not just on the episcopal Bench: we have heard them from my noble friends Lady May, Lord Deben and Lady Verma.

On my direct experience, a number of noble Lords will know that, for 18 years before coming here, I was chairman of Holbeach and East Elloe Hospital Trust, a community charity. In 1988, I headed up a group of concerned individuals from my hometown who were shaken by the health authority’s decision to close Holbeach Hospital, leaving us with a district general hospital 14 miles away, with no direct bus route between the people of Holbeach and East Elloe, the rural district in which it was situated.

With the support of the local community, we formed a charitable trust and bought and took over the hospital as a community hospital, providing many facilities, including nursing care, with 30 beds, including six doctors’ beds. With further local support, we now have 47 beds. Increasingly, the need for palliative and end-of-life care has become more acute, and it is very much valued by the local community. Some 25 years ago, my own father died there, and I was able to be with him and knew the care that he had been given. It was a hugely emotional experience, as many people have had and described while giving their views on the Bill.

Listening to the contributions to the debate, I conclude that the principal concern is the unavailability and lack of NHS funding for end-of-life care. The role and funding of palliative care cannot be overestimated, as the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and many other noble Lords have explained. It is self-evident that it is a key element that the NHS has not been able to fund properly. As the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, indicated, thank God for the hospice movement. We should listen to it and recognise that it is not supportive of the Bill.

The noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, described how getting old can be a messy business. As it stands, we do not have enough information, and the Bill runs the risk of too much legal controversy, too little medicine and a total absence of a funding commitment from the Government for what is needed to implement the Bill. That is why it should have been a government Bill: the Bill needs commitment from the Government for it to be safely passed.

We need time to build a greater consensus not just in this House but in the other place. I will support the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, in her proposal to set up a Select Committee to report back to this House, so that it can examine the Bill thoroughly before we set out to amend it. We need time to make it fit for purpose in the ways that almost every speaker has suggested, and we will use parliamentary processes to do so.