Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Baroness Butler-Sloss and Lord Moore of Etchingham

Committee stage
Friday 16th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

I am not at all sure that they are. If Parliament has passed regulations or primary legislation, judges apply it; they certainly do not try to move the goalposts. That is the only point I am making.

The last point I want to make is that as the recipient of a lasting power of attorney, which is in the hands of my children, I certainly do not want them to decide when I die.

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support the point about lasting power of attorney that the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, has made and the noble Lord, Lord Harper, has reinforced, but I also want to look at it another way round. The fear—which is a very justified fear—is that the power could be abused in the case of assisted suicide, but I also think it is important to look at it from the point of view of the person who has given the lasting power of attorney.

Many noble Lords will have lasting power of attorney—I declare that I do myself—and it carries certain responsibilities. One thing that surprised me when I first got lasting power of attorney was that I might be asked to take a view about whether a “do not resuscitate” order should be given. Of course, that was an intimidating responsibility and something that I needed to establish with the person concerned. I understand why it had to happen, but it was pretty difficult and anxiety-inducing. Imagine if we who possess lasting power of attorney had some responsibility to take a view about whether the person over whom we have those powers should have an assisted suicide. It would seem a very unpleasant responsibility, and therefore it is important that both sides—the person who transfers the powers and the person who receives those transferred powers—should be quite excluded from this.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Baroness Butler-Sloss and Lord Moore of Etchingham

Committee stage
Friday 5th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I understand very much the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Winston, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. I come to this issue from a rather different position. I used to try a lot of cases, some of terminally ill young people, generally from the ages of 15 up to 25 or more. There were a number of cases of those with terminal illness, undoubtedly with capacity, who were also suffering from depression, not very surprisingly, or were confused as to what they really wanted. They came before me for all sorts of reasons unconnected with whether they should live or die from their perspective. What I was looking at was the medical evidence as to the sort of support that they ought to have.

Despite the neuroscience issue, which is important, and despite 18—or down to 16 under the present Government—being the age at which you are able to vote, I just raise whether you are looking at how much you care about the future of this country and what you care about for yourself. Do you want to die because you are going to die in the next few months? The doctors may be right or wrong about six months; we know that many diagnoses are inaccurate. This may be the most important decision of all to make: life or death? Consequently, I am concerned about the age of 18 from my own experience. Whether it should be 21 or 25 is arguable, but I am worried if it sticks at 18.

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Berger. It is reasonable to have these considerations about the different ways people think and feel at different times in their life. One of the big discussions we have more broadly about the Bill is about the cognitive capacities of old people, which are very important in their freedom of decision.

In a similar way, it is reasonable to talk about the cognitive capacities of very young people. In particular, one of the things that makes very young people different from older people is that they naturally have very little encounter with death; they are much less likely to have come across situations in which people die and people they know have died. They simply do not know what it involves. If it were banned throughout the world that anybody under the age of 25 would fight in a war, we would hardly have any wars. One reason why soldiers are prepared to fight in wars is that they do not understand death when they are very young. They are ready for anything.

There is often a very strong culture of suicide in young people, because it is a romantic idea. The poet Keats expressed it absolutely beautifully in his “Ode to a Nightingale” when he speaks about being

“half in love with easeful Death”,

and the joy of ceasing on the midnight with no pain. He knew of what he spoke, in a sense, because he was suffering from a terminal illness, and he died before he was 25.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, and others have brought out, we need to think about the influences on young people who may go in that direction. If they suffer from a terminal illness, that becomes even more acute. Because of their lack of experience in these matters, they will be under greater pressure, quite possibly, to feel that suicide is the way out and is somehow a noble thing to do.

I remember, at school, there was a very brilliant boy who was 18 and wrote a very short poem that just said, “If I should die, think only this of me: ennui”. It was a very clever thing to write, and he subsequently committed suicide aged 19. I ask noble Lords to think about what it might be like in such a situation at such an age.