Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Baroness Grey-Thompson and Lord Winston

Committee stage
Friday 12th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for this thoughtful and considered debate. As ever in your Lordships’ Chamber, the debate did not go quite the way I was expecting. This has been quite a catch-all group trying to cover a number of very complicated issues. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, for summing up. I will not seek to sum up all the contributions, but I will pick up a few points.

The noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, asked me about pregnancy. There is very little data on the numbers and one of the challenges is that recording and reporting are very different in different jurisdictions. In somewhere such as Oregon, where the data is destroyed a year after death, it is hard to follow up and interrogate the information. Many jurisdictions around the world do not require a pregnancy test, but that puts a lot more pressure on doctors as it is then up to them to assume or guess whether or not a woman is pregnant. Whether she is showing or not, do they accept the request for assisted dying? It is really worrying for those doctors, because if it is later found out that the woman was pregnant in jurisdictions where there is a penalty for the doctors, they might find themselves less likely to want to carry out an assisted death.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

Does the noble Baroness not accept that there are certain cancers that will give a positive pregnancy test and also be killing the patient, in a very serious condition?

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

I thank the noble Lord; I will cover that later in my summing up, if that is okay, but I will come to back it. What happens in other jurisdictions makes it really difficult for doctors, which means that we need clarity in this Bill about what would happen in those situations.

Many noble Lords discussed the vulnerability of prisoners. This debate has shown that it is not that simple. I have visited many prisons and young offender institutions over the years and they are all very different places. I have met many people who have hope and some who do not. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, articulated my thoughts on the circumstances in which prisoners find themselves very well.

I debated long and hard whether to use this example. The noble Lord, Lord Farmer, talked about moral hazard. There is the case in Australia of Daniel Hume, who was six years into a 30-year sentence for paedophilia. He had a terminal condition and exercised his right to die. His daughter said that she and other victims felt robbed by him being able to access assisted dying. This highlights the complexity of the issues we are dealing with. I hope I am a kind person—I believe in rehabilitation for prisoners—but these are not easy things that we are trying to sort out or get to the bottom of. I have very complicated views on all these issues, as I know many noble Lords do. It is absolutely something that we have to come back to.

I was probably expecting the answer from the Minister on Articles 8 and 14. I am not convinced that we have Article 2 quite right. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Winston, for his intervention and I would be very happy to take his advice. I tried to keep my opening speech very close to 10 minutes, rather than the 15 minutes I am allowed, so there are lots of areas I was unable to discuss in my opening speech. I accept what the noble Lord said—he has far more experience of pregnancy than I do—but that just throws another complication into the mix in respect of what we are trying to sort out. I will welcome his advice on rewording my amendments, should I choose to come back with them.

I would like to thank the noble and learned Lord, as well as the honourable Member for Batley and Spen, who I am meeting next week to discuss some of my amendments. I hope that we can get a bit more clarity in that meeting on the amendments we are discussing. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mackinlay, for his intervention. I think there is a line—I am sorry, I am jumping back to pregnancy—when it comes to what we do and at what point we do it. I believe that the noble and learned Lord and I have agreed to disagree on the safeguards in the Bill.

I would like to make a correction. I am serious about my amendments, although I could have worded them better. I did not intend for men to have a pregnancy test, and I did not intend to get into a debate about age and the pregnancy test. The reason why I tabled the amendment on a pregnancy test was to allow women to understand all the implications of what they are getting into and to be able to make a choice. They may or may not choose to do something differently with that information.

I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate this afternoon. With that in mind, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.