Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Friday 12th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, I cannot support the Bill, and I am also opposed in principle to assisted dying. Those in favour have spoken today of those who face physical pain at the end of their lives having personal autonomy. That is not a view that I share, but I do believe that more needs to be done to address the state of palliative care in the UK to improve the treatment of those at the end of life.

However, of most concern to me is that the Bill poses an inherent risk to the elderly and disabled. Decisions to end life are complex and not simply procedural. They take place in the context of individual daily lives. The context of many elderly and disabled people today should raise red flags about how we are caring for them and whether they will face abuse and pressure to end their lives. It is a context where 46.6% of those who have died in Oregon have cited being a burden; and where 21.1% of those who died in 2023 in Canada whose death was reasonably foreseeable cited isolation or loneliness as a factor in their decision-making. Age UK reports that 1.4 million older people in the UK are often lonely. According to Hospice UK, 90,000 of our citizens die in poverty every year—that is 247 people daily who have faced the financial impact of a terminal illness.

It is also a context where, as Disability Rights UK has observed, the Government, sadly, do not have a good track record of protecting the vulnerable and disabled—I am talking about all Governments in the past 30 years. The Bill poses a danger to disabled people. The British Geriatrics Society says that many of its members are not confident that effective legal safeguards could be developed to protect older people from unwarranted harms. Perhaps most worryingly, research from The Other Half in June stated that we should prepare for one in seven of those being assisted to die in a single year being a recent victim of elder abuse.

This is all is especially pertinent in a nation that is rapidly ageing. In 2022, 19% of our population was aged over 65, and this is expected to rise by 27% by 2072. With several millions more elderly and sick people to be expected in the coming decades, what will be our message to them? Will it be that they are a burden on our NHS and economy and should therefore consider ending their lives before they get worse? As a House, we have a duty to protect the vulnerable. Should not our response to the elders of our nation be to reverently love and support their need? Should it not be to invest in our care services such that they do not have to suffer alone?

I am not persuaded by the apparent procedural safeguards contained in the Bill. None of them does anything to ameliorate the concerns I have raised for the elderly in particular. I will be supporting the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, and my noble friend Lady Berger. I believe in letting us fulfil the duty of the State to protect the vulnerable and not encouraging them to die.