Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Friday 30th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, for the reasons given, mainly by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, and despite what the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, has just said, it seems to me highly desirable that there should be face-to-face contact if such an enormously important decision is being made. I therefore support face-to-face contact at both stages, other than for reasons where it cannot happen.

[The Lord Bishop of Newcastle]

My Lords, taken together, the amendments in this group highlight the importance of contact with people at the hardest time in their lives—a time when we must be most vulnerable, clinically and personally. This must not be a process in which anyone is made to feel rushed or that can be completed entirely online.

If we are content to enable access to a slick service as quickly as possible, an online service may be acceptable, but if we are to continue to take seriously our duties of suicide prevention, of assessing and meeting unmet need and of safeguarding, the human contact of being face to face is part of that.

During the Select Committee sessions, we heard evidence from the chief executives of Mind and Standing Together Against Domestic Abuse, who said that an online or pre-recorded consultation was not an adequate safeguard to assess a person’s emotional state. This must be especially true in complex cases. I remind your Lordships that prisoners are still eligible under the Bill. As we engage with every group, we must consider how the particular issue might play out in a prison context. All the challenges that we are worried about, including the assessment of unmet need and the presence of an undiagnosed mental disorder, are more difficult in a prison environment. So I would be grateful if the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, could outline whether he thinks in-person assessments should be even more important in a prison context.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

I do not think that it justifies a new equality assessment. The thing about equality assessments is that lawyers can constantly write to clients and say, “You haven’t considered this and you haven’t considered that”. Having read in detail the equality assessment, I say that it deals properly and adequately with the issues.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I wonder whether it would be possible to get to the next group of amendments.

Clause 1 agreed.