Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Baroness Grey-Thompson and Baroness O'Loan

Friday 30th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Loan (CB)]

My Lords, I express my appreciation to the noble Lords, Lord Hendy and Lord Harper, for bringing these matters to our attention. I had prepared a speech describing the awful situation of mesothelioma, et cetera. I will not talk about that but will just say a couple of other things.

This has clearly identified a huge gap in provision in this legislation: a Bill is being passed that may have consequences it does not provide for in any way. I am thinking in particular of the Fatal Accidents Act: people are dying of these industrial diseases, including military victims. I had no idea that military victims would lose compensation in that situation. I am very grateful to them for identifying such a significant gap. This is very important for members of the Armed Forces, because many of them suffer from mental illnesses as a consequence of their service, in addition to any other condition from which they may suffer. That always makes life harder for them in trying to negotiate their way through and make decisions of such a profound kind. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, mentioned the problem with insurance policies and suicides. Most insurance companies will pay out after a suicide, provided that the minimum time has elapsed since taking out the policy. If someone has an assisted suicide, we do not quite know how that will affect their insurance policy; but it now appears that if the underlying cause of death—the terminal illness which led to the granting of assisted suicide—is something such as cancer, that may send the insurer straight back to find out what underlying habits were disclosed, such as the person being a smoker. It all becomes enormously complicated for the person suffering from a terminal illness who is trying to decide whether to seek an assisted death. There is no provision in this legislation for consequences for their families in situations such as this.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, this is a really interesting group of amendments, and it has probably raised more questions for me than it has answered. When we talk about injury, I immediately think about people who have had a spinal cord injury and who have become a quadriplegic or a paraplegic.

By the very nature of my former career, I know a lot of wheelchair users who have been through various compensation cases. Luckily, these days the survival rate for someone with paraplegia or tetraplegia is very high. We also have to take that into account. I had not thought before about the impact on anyone who has been in the military. I know quite a few people who are injured through the military. Generally, the public are very supportive of the military and what they have gone through, and we would not want any unintended consequences for them.

When I was looking at conditions such as asbestosis, and others that have been debated on this group, it became very clear that in many cases these conditions present quite late and treatment is then very difficult, and many patients die before the compensation claim has gone through. We have talked before about coercion, and I know that Ms Leadbeater has said in various debates and comments that she is concerned about people being coerced not to end their life.

This is a situation where I could see this happening. If you go online and google asbestosis compensation or spinal cord injury compensation, a plethora of websites come up straightaway with calculators, so that you can have an indication of how much you could possibly gain. I had a look; it goes from a couple of thousand pounds for a back injury—which obviously would not account for this—up to £493,000 for someone with quadriplegia. The figures given as a range for asbestosis were £50,000 to £1 million. That is a life-changing amount of money for many families in this country, and it will colour the decisions they make.

It is slightly strange, because we talk about someone being a burden, but people will make a different decision because they are thinking of their children and grandchildren and protecting them for the rest of their lives. So a lot of clarity is needed to make sure that coercion does not go either way. I would be very interested in understanding what the noble and learned Lord intends to do to offer greater clarification for this group of amendments.