Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Baroness Falkner of Margravine and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Committee stage
Friday 30th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, perhaps reference to the Companion will help reduce the noble Baroness’s confusion about my speech. The Companion says that, once the Chair has put the Question,

“a general debate on the clause may take place”.

I am highlighting problems with the clause. Clause 1 is the substance of the Bill and an equality impact assessment is fundamental to our understanding of whether it should stand part.

To come back to the letter, it refers to the possibility of generating comparative evidence on the wider matters, but that would not have produced sufficiently robust conclusions. The matter raised was that the EIA did not deal with any detail of all those certain protected characteristics because it focused on access to assisted dying. Access to assisted dying is not relevant to the safeguarding risks that we have all spent some eight days in Committee debating. The letter says:

“We intend to update both the Impact Assessment and the Equality Impact Assessment should the Bill receive Royal Assent, once detailed implementation work has been completed”.


That will be too little too late. It is of no assistance to Parliament in considering the Bill and its potential consequences. Indeed, the whole point of an EIA is that it is done before or at the time a decision is taken. I refer again to the Cabinet Office guide to making legislation. A failure to undertake a comprehensive EIA means a failure to comply with a public sector equality duty, as post hoc analysis cannot generally cure a failure to have due regard to equality implications at the time a decision is being made.

That is what the courts consistently emphasise. R (Blundell) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions 2021 noted that post-decision equality analysis is not sufficient to fulfil the duty, as it is supposed to be a real, open-minded consideration of the equality implications, conducted with substance and rigour, not a rearguard box-ticking exercise.

In concluding, I say to the Government that an accurate assessment of how the Bill impacts people who share each of the nine protected characteristics does not betray that position of neutrality. In fact, it is the converse: withholding information is not an act of neutrality but the opposite of that.

The Constitution Committee published a report on the Bill on 11 September, lamenting that supporting documents, including the EIA, “were issued late” or were not available. In the other place, Ministers gave the excuse that the Bill was “highly dynamic” and likely to undergo significant changes during scrutiny, so it was important to wait until the committee concluded its work so that

“we know what it is that we are assessing the impact of”.—[Official Report, Commons, Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill Committee 30/1/25; col. 282.]

Now we are told that there is insufficient evidence to produce conclusions that are sufficiently robust. I suggest that the Minister review what both the EHRC and the letter submitted by 59 Members of this House have asked her to do and come back with some more positive news at an earlier date.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I beg the indulgence of the Committee to raise what I think is an important point; I hope the Committee does not think it pedantic. I had not intended to speak but was prompted to by the excellent speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, and by my noble friend Lady Coffey’s reference to the lack of insight provided by the Government—I will not criticise the sponsor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton. This—our deliberations, scrutiny and oversight of the Bill—is a moveable feast, so we need information in real time.

My specific point is not just about freedom of information but about Written Questions that the Government have received and not answered. On 1 December 2025 my noble friend Lord Kempsell asked His Majesty’s Government a very reasonable Question. He asked, with regard to the Bill and its impact assessment,

“what assessment they have made of the effectiveness of judicial approval as a safeguard in countries with assisted suicide regimes, including the proportion of applications refused in those countries and the reasons for refusal”.

Two months on, that Question has not been answered. That is unacceptable, because scrutiny and oversight require us to have all the information in our hands, including comparative legal, regulatory and medical regimes.

By comparison, the very sensible Question from the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate—I do not want to embarrass him because he is in the Chair—about the use of the Parliament Act was asked on 26 January and answered promptly on 29 January. The point is that there should be equality and a level playing field on Questions asked, irrespective of the position on the Bill of the noble Lord asking it.