Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar Excerpts

Friday 24th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jay of Paddington (Lab)]

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, I was a Member of the House when we looked at the original Bill introduced by the late Lord Joffe in 2004. I have also been Leader of this House and, over the decades, I have never experienced quite the extraordinary exploitation of the procedures—one could almost say the sometimes rather relaxed procedures—of this House as on this Bill. Today, for example, I thought we were perhaps going to start again dealing with the House of Lords Act 1999. I have been through all the convolutions of Brexit, but never—I repeat “never” and, indeed, “exploitation”—have I seen the relaxed procedures of this House so negatively exploited. That is something we need to return to, and I echo the concluding remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Cashman.

I have a very big concern about the content and quality of some of the topics of the hundreds of amendments we have seen. It is about the way in which, as many noble Lords have referred to today, they have ignored the concerns of the people for whom the Bill is directed: terminally ill adults. My noble friend Lady Berger asked for examples of the way in which our lack of compassion had been demonstrated. In the interests of time, I will not go into any in particular, but I refer her to the 27 February discussion in Committee, when we spoke for some hours about the composition and the structures of the commission assessing people’s ability to take assisted dying. There was enormous emphasis on the activities of the commissioners and their convenience, et cetera, but scant regard was paid to the concerns of those people for whom this service was being offered: those who might be frail, bed-bound or concerned about their personal and emotional situation. We dealt almost exclusively with bureaucracy and administration. That, frankly, has been the tone of so much of the debate.

I am aware of the Chief Whip sitting there with his stopwatch, but I want to refer briefly to the other major and concerning omission from our discussions, which is the lack of any sort of detailed discussion about the international evidence and experience of assisted dying. I remind the House that more than 30 jurisdictions in the world have now satisfactorily introduced ways to give their citizens the choice of an assisted death. These places include our close neighbours in western Europe, major Commonwealth countries and American states, as well as the capital city of Washington and the District of Columbia. Some of those jurisdictions have voted very recently to establish new systems. In the western state of Oregon—which the Select Committee on which the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and I sat some years ago visited to establish the realities of the situation—assisted dying has been in place for nearly 30 years. I have no doubt that there have been some difficulties and some mistakes as these different places have developed their own plans—there always are when major changes in social policy are introduced on anything—but no assisted dying laws have been repealed. None of them has been challenged at that level. There has been no collapse in palliative care. Indeed, with proper choice at the end of life, palliative care has often been improved. That is certainly the case in the state of Oregon. To disregard or distort international experience, as the debates in this House have done recently, or to suggest that only the Westminster Parliament can produce a legally proper system is, in my view, a dangerous form of arrogance.

In conclusion, this is the fourth assisted dying Bill that I have taken part in and there have always been profound differences of principle, but in none of the others was there the atmosphere of unpleasant tension and antagonism at a personal level that has characterised recent sessions. Indeed, 10 years ago, when my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer introduced his similar Bill, the Times reported our proceedings extolling the serious, calm authority of the debate and congratulating the House of Lords on its deliberations as a demonstration of Parliament at its best.

I very much regret that we have today to take note that the current proceedings have greatly damaged the reputation of the House. I can only hope, like other noble Lords, that when a future assisted dying Bill returns—and it most certainly will—the issue of choice for the terminal ill will be both constitutionally and compassionately considered by this unelected second Chamber.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, this has, I can say without qualification, proven to be one of the most contentious Bills that has come before your Lordships’ House in this Session and perhaps, indeed, in any Session. One of the reasons why it has been so contentious is that it is so important. No one can deny that the Bill, if passed, would result in a profound change in the relationship between the individual and the state. It is therefore, obviously, a very important Bill.

The fact that it is such an important Bill has meant that noble Lords across the House, whether for or against the principle of assisted dying, have taken the scrutiny of the Bill very seriously, as they rightly should. I suggest that there is both a general and a specific reason for that. The general reason is obvious— it is part of our unique constitutional role to scrutinise legislation in detail. That is why we are here. It is why our procedures are both substantively and essentially different from those of the House of Commons; I will not get into whether they are better or worse, but they are certainly different. The specific reason is that many MPs voted for the Bill not only in the knowledge but also on the express basis that it would be properly scrutinised here. Indeed, it was noted by several noble Lords at Second Reading, including in my own speech, that some Members of the House of Commons voted in favour of the legislation because they supported the underlying principle of the Bill trusting that this House would undertake the heavy task of detailed scrutiny in due course.

Detailed scrutiny is separate from the question of the principle underlying the Bill. You can be for or against the principle of assisted dying and you can be for or against the Bill, but they are not the same thing. I know that there are some noble Lords who are and will always be against assisted dying on principle. Some of them have made that clear in their speeches. They would therefore be against any legislation that legalised assisted dying. But there will be others, and perhaps many, who are not against the principle of the Bill but are none the less anxious to ensure that we pass a Bill that is safe, contains proper protections and, importantly, is workable in practice.

Whether one is for or against this Bill, it is regrettable that your Lordships’ House has not been able to reach a conclusion on it one way or the other. I feel uncomfortable that the Bill has run into the sand rather than being either sent back to the House of Commons in an amended form or voted down. I would have preferred either of those options to where we have ended up, where the Bill will simply be lost when the Session ends.

The primary reason for the large number of amendments, many will say, is the large number of questions that the Bill, as drafted, left open. Many amendments raised complex issues, as those of us who have been at all the Committee days will know. It is understandable that there was a large number of amendments; some were designed to effect change and some were probing amendments designed to introduce greater clarity. However, regardless of how many amendments there have been, whether or not to legalise assisted dying is clearly a question that the public would like Parliament to answer.