Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 12th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, the strength of feeling on this issue is understandable. Rarely do we get to debate such a truly momentous issue. But in the end, this is a question of personal choice. No one is suggesting that assisted dying should be mandatory, nor even that it should be widely available. In fact, under this Bill, few might be eligible to ask for it, let alone choose to take up the option. All that this Bill would do is make it possible for a dying person to die the death they want. I do not believe that it is my right, or the right of any of us in this House, to deny another individual that option.

Could anyone have been in Milbank House on Tuesday listening to Nathaniel, now battling with pain in order to continue walking while he can still move his cancer-riddled body, and deny him what he craves: the certainty that, when he can cope no longer, he can have the death he chooses? It is, he says, his dying wish that this Bill should become law. Barely 40, until very recently a music teacher and marathon runner, he says that he is receiving excellent palliative care. He does not wish to die yet, but when life becomes intolerable, he wants an assisted death. He is anything but suicidal, and the use of that word is an emotive effort to confuse two very different things. Nathaniel does not want to kill himself; he is dying already.

Many noble Lords have talked of the need for investment in palliative care. That is not a matter for debate. We all want investment in palliative care. Assisted dying should be viewed as merely part of a palliative care package. Palliative care cannot always deal with all pain. One of the many letters I received on this subject said: “No matter how good we can make palliative care, there are always those for whom the experience of terminal illness and dying involves suffering that cannot be alleviated nor endured … We need both good palliative care and assisted dying to be available”. The author of that letter was a former hospice director and consultant in palliative medicine.

Sophie Blake has been a vigorous campaigner for better palliative care and for assisted dying. She does not want to die, despite the pain that she suffers from multiple cancers, but she is allergic to opioid painkiller, which makes pain relief difficult. She is terrified of going through excruciating pain when she does die. But worse still is the fear of her daughter watching that, so while she fights for better palliative care and for her life, she is desperate for the right to have the peaceful and dignified death that this Bill could deliver for her. I want to be able to reassure Sophie, Nathaniel and others that I will help to give them the reassurance they crave, and that I could not give my own mother when she was dying.

During the course of this long and balanced debate—and we are only halfway through—many have voiced concern over a lack of safeguards, but there are safeguards, and there will be more. The Bill is not perfect, and this House will do its job: scrutinise it and improve it where possible. But we need this Bill to move ahead quickly. I support it.

Jaguar Land Rover Cyberattack

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord made a couple of interesting points, which are crucial, and I will try to address them. Cybersecurity of the UK is a key priority for this Government. It is crucial to protect public services, the public, our way of life and a successful, growing economy. We have been taking significant action to help protect business from cyber- attacks.

We are also providing businesses with the tools, advice and support to protect themselves from cyberthreats, including the Cyber Governance Code of Practice, which shows boards and directors how to effectively manage the digital risk to their organisation. The highly effective cyber essentials scheme prevents common attacks and reduces the likelihood of a cyber insurance claim by 92%. Before I was invited to be a part of the Government, when I ran my businesses I ensured that they all had a cyber essentials certificate. That is the basic requirement that you need to have. At the same time, businesses need to protect themselves by having sufficient cybersecurity insurance. There are a wide range of tools and support from the National Cyber Security Centre including training for boards and staff and an early warning system to get notified about cyberthreats to networks.

When parliamentary time allows, this Government will introduce the cybersecurity and resilience Bill to raise cybersecurity standards in critical and essential services such as energy, water and the NHS.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister have any information about how many companies are paying ransom demands? To what extent do the Government deal with insurance companies, advising them whether to pay ransoms or not pay them?

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that. I am sure that most noble Lords will appreciate that it would not be appropriate for me to comment on any ongoing incidents. However, the Computer Misuse Act continues to enable the prosecution of those who have undertaken unauthorised access to computer systems for a range of malicious reasons including crime and espionage. The Government are in the process of reviewing the Act and the Home Office will provide an update on further proposals once they are finalised. In recent years, the Government’s policy has focused on supporting the insurance industry, to strengthen and grow the commercial cyber insurance market. Pool Reassurance, or Pool Re, was created to ensure the effective functioning of the UK’s terrorism insurance market. The Government do not have any plans to extend Pool Re’s remit to include further cyber-related risks.

King’s Speech

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, this has been a long debate, and it is not over yet. By now, the Minister can be of no doubt that he is genuinely very welcome in his important role. Nevertheless, I add my voice to that chorus. I have long appreciated what his business can do to give a new lease of life to my shoes, but far more important is the new lease of life that it has given to so many offenders—a remarkable achievement.

The Timpson example has encouraged other companies to employ ex-offenders—companies as diverse as National Grid, Virgin, Tesco and the Royal Opera House, which all welcome ex-offenders. The charity Working Chance does great work getting women ex-offenders into employment. However, there are still some companies, including large ones, that plead that their existing staff would not want to work alongside ex-offenders, and they use that as an excuse not to take them on. The Minister may now find that he can encourage people rather more forcefully to change their minds about that. The scheme described by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, is surely a blueprint that other companies could emulate by providing work training in prisons and then employing people when they leave.

I shall address most of my remarks in my limited time to the issue of offenders, but, first, I will offer a brief thought about asylum seekers. Near my home in Kent, hundreds of migrants are housed in a fairly dilapidated barracks. They are mostly young and able-bodied, often well-educated and certainly brave. They are in limbo, waiting for their cases to be processed. Yet they could be, and most would like to be, usefully employed, filling the many vacancies in our workforce. They could be net contributors, rather than a vast cost, to our economy. As the Minister understands the value of work to morale, will he reconsider the attitude to employing asylum seekers, albeit temporarily?

Dostoevsky wrote:

“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons”.


How would the author of Crime and Punishment judge our society had he ventured inside the overcrowded institutions that, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester put it, are warehousing our vulnerable, in appalling conditions in many cases? Half of prisoners are addicts, and more than half—57%—are largely illiterate. Some 31% of women prisoners and 24% of male prisoners were taken into care as children; that figure is only 2% for the population at large.

So these are people with deep-seated problems. They need help if they are to become useful members of society. Instead, they are locked up then turfed out—with nowhere to go, in many cases—with £82.39 in cash. Recent statistics from the Government showed that 17 prisons met the target for providing accommodation on the night of release; 98 did not. Performance against the target for ex-prisoners being in employment six weeks after release was little better. Is it any wonder that our recidivism rates are so high?

We have a Minister who understands the dire failings in our prison system. I trust that he will be able to bring about change—that is what the Government came to power promising—but I ask him to look in particular at whether people should be in prison in the first place. Others have made the point that our sentencing is completely wrong. It is absolutely having the wrong effect and it needs revisiting now.