Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd Excerpts

Friday 20th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)]

Would the noble Baroness perhaps like to make it clear whether she believes that it is inappropriate for the sponsor of the Bill to reply to the question I have just put in Committee?

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I hope I will be permitted to say something about Wales. I was going to make a much longer speech but my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, made an excellent argument on the merits of the issues relating to Wales.

The short point to which I wish to draw attention is the issue in this case. Is it an issue about criminal law? This often arises in questions within a federal form of government, which in reality we have here: how do you characterise this issue? Does anyone really think this is about the criminal law? The criminal law is part of finding the solution, but it is a debate about a moral issue and how to use the resources of the NHS. The criminal law should not be seen as an impediment.

I would have said a lot more about other things but, being accused of wasting time, I will not make that speech. I just draw attention to the problem that arose in 2016-17. Wales wanted to pursue its own policy in relation to what is old-fashionedly known as the chastisement of children. Of course, the chastisement of children is governed by the criminal law. As Wales wanted to do it at a time when there was a Conservative Government in London and a Labour Government in Wales, there was an intergovernmental discussion on how this issue should sensibly be dealt with. It was decided that an exception ought to be written into the Government of Wales Act and the very complicated schedules, permitting Wales to make its own decision. So it was excised from the reservations of powers to Westminster.

All Amendment 844 seeks to do is to make a minor alteration to look at the issue for the people of Wales. Should they be entitled to deal with this issue comprehensively? I say nothing about what happened in the Senedd—enough has been said about that. I remind noble Lords that there will be a new Senedd after 7 May, before the Bill is dealt with, and a very different attitude may be taken. Having heard what has been said about the desire that the people of Wales should not be entitled to make their own decisions, I very much hope we are able to try to focus. What is the issue? Is it one that Wales ought to be able to make? If it is not, the simple solution is a technical one, which can easily be made through Amendment 844.

[Lord Gove (Con)]

My Lords, the inference from some comments during the course of this debate has been that somehow the issues raised in Wales and by the Senedd are peripheral to the centre of this legislation—not at all. The issues that have been raised by the debate are absolutely central to the legislation, as we have heard throughout the debate.

The Bill seeks to change primarily the criminal law, and it goes into some specificity about that. But as has been pointed out very effectively by the noble Lords, Lord Stevens of Birmingham and Lord Goodman of Wycombe, and others, the Bill carries with it certain consequential and potentially hugely consequential changes to the National Health Service—changes that will be made by regulation and are not in the Bill.

That is precisely the point that was at issue when the legislative consent Motion was debated in the Senedd. As my noble friend Lord Harper pointed out, when the Senedd voted on the broad principle of assisted dying—not this legislation but the broad principle—the Senedd was against it. When invited to vote on the legislative consent Motion, the Health Minister in Wales, Jeremy Miles MS, explained to the Members of the Senedd that a legislative consent Motion would be necessary because in the absence of a legislative consent Motion, as he understood it, it would be criminally possible to assist someone in dying, but he would not be able to provide the appropriate detail about whether the NHS would be responsible for that service. The spectre was raised in the minds of those legislating in the Senedd that, in effect, there would be assisted dying but it would be provided privately.

Jeremy Miles might have been confused in his interpretation, but he is the Health Minister in the Welsh Government and was previously the Minister responsible for constitutional relations between the Welsh Government and the United Kingdom Government. It is hardly the case that he is a naif stumbling into this argument without a background in the two most telling areas that the legislation covers.

It was also the case that the Senedd, in that same debate, voted by a clear margin to say that the whole issue had been constitutionally mishandled and that the way in which criminal legislation was being used as a Trojan horse, as has been pointed out, to potentially dramatically change the constitution and the provision of the NHS, was simply not good enough. The Senedd was very clear in voting in that way.

This brings us again to the heart of the problem with legislating for these measures through the Private Member’s Bill procedure. In a previous incarnation, I was the Minister for Intergovernmental Relations. I may have been a bad Minister or a good Minister, but I was a Minister conscious of the fact that the devolution settlement relied on government-to-government operation. When there were disputes between the legislative or the executive decisions of devolved legislatures or devolved Governments, they were resolved by intergovernmental relations and, in particular, by means of a dispute mechanism. As has been pointed out, a variety of questions have been raised specifically about the nature of regulation to do with the NHS that Ministers at the Dispatch Box cannot answer, not because they are unwilling, truculent or obstinate but because, as they clearly say, they are neutral on the Bill.

The Welsh Senedd granted the legislative consent Motion because it feared that it would not be in the driving seat of a vehicle, the ultimate destination of which they were uncertain of and the design of which they had little part in. It felt that this was the only way of ensuring its continued relevance. It was not, as supporters of the Bill in Wales have made clear, an endorsement of the principle of assisted dying, let alone an endorsement of this legislation. It would be dismissive of the people of Wales and reckless in regard to the devolution settlement to interpret that vote as endorsement of this legislation.