Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Alexander of Cleveden Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Alexander of Cleveden (Lab)]

My Lords, it is not easy to be speaker 108, but it is presumably even harder to be speaker 168. As a relatively new Member of your Lordships’ House, for me, last week’s debate was a privilege: arguments about choice, autonomy and the sanctity of life, leavened throughout by extraordinarily moving personal experiences and stories. For this Lords novice, it seemed in every sense a classic Second Reading.

Yet today’s debate seems to call for something slightly different, and to focus on what is being asked of us as legislators. For its supporters, the Bill provides choice, alignment with public opinion, respect for the other place and no compunction on anyone to do anything they do not wish to do. But for the 40-plus opposing speeches, it was more nuanced. The opposing speeches fall into two main categories. First, there are those who oppose the Bill in principle because they believe in the sanctity of life as a universal value in all circumstances, and it is an honourable position. Yet more opposing speeches focused on the Bill’s details. These noble Lords professed no philosophical objection to the right to end one’s life under agreed conditions, but they nevertheless expressed profound concerns about the Bill’s provisions.

For those whose concerns lie with the details, a week has indeed been a long time in politics. We now have a new and exceptional Select Committee—a space to probe whether the protections for the vulnerable are the right ones; whether the safeguards against coercion are appropriate; whether any of the processes are over-complex; and time to interrogate those 42 delegated powers.

As a Scottish resident, I will not be subject to the Bill. The sister Bill making its way through the Scottish Parliament has different safeguards—for example, it also involves two doctors, but no panel and different timelines. As a supporter of the Bill, I recognise that all these aspects and more will be up for scrutiny in the Select Committee and at Committee and Report stages. Our scrutiny really matters because our postbags are heaving with legitimate but also misplaced anxieties. It is proper to be awed by the responsibility of scrutiny—of interrogating the detail and making the Bill as good as it can be in our less than perfect world.

I say to noble Lords with practical reservations: please do not kill off the Bill because the details are demanding. Has the time not come to bring together all those who recognise, as the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, the former DPP, did last week, that our current laws are not being enforced? We no longer prosecute family members for offering support and we permit indefinite sedation. As we have just heard, people take their own lives, and those who can afford to do so go overseas. It is time to bring the law up to date.

To conclude, I recognise that, for some, the Bill is a personal moral red line, but I believe that, for most noble Lords, for the Commons and certainly for the country, it is time to make the choices currently available to the few available equitably. In the service of a quiet and loving end, it is time to do what this place does best: interrogate, scrutinise and improve. It is time to move forward with compassion, care and kindness.

Healthy Life Expectancy

Baroness Alexander of Cleveden Excerpts

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Alexander of Cleveden]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to reverse recent declines in healthy life expectancy, and to address poverty-related inequalities in life expectancy.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)]

My Lords, it is unacceptable that who you are or where you live can impact healthy life expectancy. Reversing the decline in healthy life expectancy is a core part of this Government’s health mission. There is a long way to go but we are making good progress—exceeding our pledge to deliver an extra two million operations, scans and appointments by delivering well over three million, and addressing major health risks that particularly impact more deprived areas.

[Baroness Alexander of Cleveden (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for her Answer. She may be aware that, this morning, the Health Foundation published a new international benchmarking report. It highlights that, in the 2010s, in all parts of the UK outside London, mortality rates increasingly lagged behind progress in the other 21 countries in the study and that, by 2021, mortality rates in the north-east and north-west of the UK were 20% higher than in the south-west. In light of this, will the Government heed the Health Foundation’s call for a new health inequality strategy that has a particular focus on those parts of the country that have faced long-term industrial decline?

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My noble friend raises an extremely important point about inequality. The Health Foundation report focusing on the 2010s shines a light on the need to drive action, which we are doing across government through our missions, with a very ambitious goal and the right approach of halving the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest regions. Although I am certainly very interested in what the Health Foundation report says, further strategy is not needed at this time because of the approach we are taking. But I assure my noble friend that in addressing health inequalities, including in areas of past industrial decline, we will be driving economic growth and removing health-related barriers to health, wealth and prosperity.