Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Berger Excerpts

Friday 21st November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I respectfully accept that position. The problem is that the more I speak, the more I will be intervened on, which is the opposite of what I am trying to do; I am trying to speed the process up.

All I am trying to say is that we all want the best Bill possible. I get that. If that cannot be managed, something else will have to happen. I was only trying to bring in the evidence of three former Directors of Public Prosecutions. One of them, because people had said, “We’ve had no real-life experience”, actually advanced to us, “I’ve got Parkinson’s disease and I’m going to die. I have a terminal illness”. He actually said that to the committee, and added that if the Bill passed he hoped to avail himself of it. That is just one little anecdote from probably the only person who gave evidence who actually has a condition, which he confirmed to us freely. He was not asked to do that.

All I am trying to do is balance the evidence, because a lot of people are quoting evidence. I want to try to redress that a bit and to gently move this on a bit quicker. I have completely failed, because I have been standing up for nine minutes. I apologise to the Committee for taking up too much time.

[Baroness Berger (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I will make a point that has been raised on a number of occasions, about what happened in the other place and the number of hours that were dedicated to the Bill there. It is important to put on record that this House received a Bill that is very different from the Bill as it was first presented to the House of Commons. Many hours were taken up in the other place on a Bill that was completely altered. I will point to one particular issue. The process massively changed from a judge-led process to a panel. In fact, of the 91.5 hours of debate in Committee in the other place, 62 were on a Bill that still had the High Court process in it. So we have to reflect in our deliberations that many hours were rightly taken scrutinising the Bill in the other place, but we have now received it in a very different form.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I accept the noble Baroness’s position. Perhaps a High Court judge might resolve the issue, then.