Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Baroness Grey-Thompson and Lord Birt

Committee stage
Friday 23rd January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, I will try not to keep us too long from our lunch. This has been a lively and helpful debate, and I think it has exposed a fair number of critical issues that are yet to be resolved.

My past has caught up with me in this debate. How many people here knew that I used to be the boss of the noble Lord, Lord Gove? It was not my fault. He was a genuinely distinguished young BBC journalist, in all seriousness, and hugely admired by his colleagues. The debate has also revealed that the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, and I went to the same north Liverpool grammar school, so anybody who objects to anything that she or I put forward can blame the Irish Christian Brothers.

I cannot possibly deal in any detail—and noble Lords would not want me to—with the many points raised over the past three hours. I approached the construction of these amendments, with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, with a truly open mind, and I retain an open mind. The Chief Whip often tells us that his door is always open. My door is always open—not that there is one, because I do not have a proper office—and I am completely open to discussing any issue that has been raised. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and I will wish to return to these matters when we come to Report.

I will just say a few things now. I approached the Australian practitioners with a completely open mind. I was in favour of assisted dying but I wanted to understand what real-life experience was like. I am very data-driven, as the noble Lord, Lord Markham, has often pointed out, and wanted to immerse myself in the Australian data. It was my learning, and then discussions with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that caused us to frame our amendments in the way we did.

The central thing that emerged from those discussions, which has been lost in our debate so far, is that, actually, people are not coming forward. They already have palliative care. Their pain is more or less controlled. The central point that the Australian practitioners wanted to get across to me, over and again, was that this is about misery, and people running out of time and wanting to end their life. Hence the key Australian data I shared was that, roughly speaking, 25% of people who come forward for assisted death die within nine days.

That is why I told the Committee about the Nicholas Dimbleby experience, because I thought that was indicative of the kind of people who want it. It is at the end of a very painful, prolonged process of suffering that people want an expeditious end. That is why the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and I have sought to retain the process that is in the Bill but tried to make it more flexible, to deal with what can be genuine emergencies. And it is an emergency. There is a part of the National Health Service that deals with emergencies on Christmas Day—it is called A&E. We are talking about a service that will deal with genuine emergencies.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My apologies for intervening, but my noble friend mentioned the number of people who access palliative care. The state of New South Wales promised £743 million in extra funding for palliative care over a five-year period, but, when the law was passed, it cut that funding by £150 million and diverted money to assisted suicide. Does my noble friend accept that, although he says people are getting palliative care, big promises are being made and then ripped away from people? It limits the choice they have, because there is not as much palliative care support as they originally thought. There is a feeling that that was promised just to get the Bill across the line.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

The one issue that unites the whole Committee is that we have to have an effective service of palliative care in this country. The data in Australia, which varies from state to state, tells us that somewhere between 70% and 90% of people who come forward already have palliative care.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, talked about navigation. It is a complex process, even in the Bill as it stands. If you analyse the likelihood, you will find that it will probably take, without the right process involved, 30 to 60 days, which is completely inappropriate in the context of the Australia experience. By the way, the navigator is an administrative role to help the person manage a complex system with multiple practitioners, who themselves have real authority.