Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Baroness Whitaker and Lord Stevens of Birmingham

Committee stage
Friday 20th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

Most of the amendments in this group relate to Wales, but some of them also relate to Scotland. Notwithstanding the noble Lord’s sensation of Groundhog Day, there has been an important development since we met last Friday, which is that the Scottish Parliament, by a decisive majority of 69 to 57, has chosen against assisted dying. In that context, therefore, a number of the provisions in the Bill need a significant rethink; in particular, references to Scotland in Clause 57(2) and (3), which would extend the provisions to Scotland, surely should no longer apply.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. There is a substantial difference between the Bill that was not accepted in Scotland and the Bill that we are debating now. The Bill that was debated in Scotland had fewer safeguards; it is not the same Bill and therefore the noble Lord’s premise is not quite as he said.

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

The noble Baroness brings me neatly on to the second point I was going to make, which is that the lack of safeguards in Scotland precisely demonstrates the constitutional and practical difficulty of trying to legislate in Scotland while a number of those key safeguards are reserved matters to Westminster. Part of the reason the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the pharmacists came out decisively this week against the Scottish Bill was because it was not able to include enforceable conscience protections for health professionals that would, for example, have enabled them to refuse an instruction from their employer to participate in assisted dying. Instead, the mechanism that was forced, as it were, on the Scottish legislation was a Section 104 order, which would be subject to a future Westminster Government changing their mind.

The Scottish Parliament was being asked to legislate for assisted dying, absent any Scottish safeguards for conscience and dependent on the future decisions of a Westminster Parliament. The noble Baroness neatly illustrates the point that there is a fundamental problem when one part of the United Kingdom seeks to go its own way. It is incapable of getting the necessary protections and that is one of the reasons why the measure was defeated. Amendment 887 in this group, which would withdraw the reference to Scotland from some of the measures, clearly makes sense given that the Scottish Parliament has just decided that it will not go down this path.

Health and Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Whitaker and Lord Stevens of Birmingham

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Thursday 3rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

We await insight from the Minister himself on that point; it is indeed, of course, what the chairman of the cross-party Health and Social Care Committee, Jeremy Hunt, suggested in the House of Commons. We have an immediate litmus test before us, which should help us answer the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. As your Lordships will remember, we noted in Committee the fact that, just 10 weeks before the start of the financial year, when it should have been planning 10 years out, Health Education England still did not have its operating budget for the year ahead. My understanding—I hope to be corrected by the Minister—is that, certainly, as of 10 am, Health Education England still does not have its workforce operating budget for just 29 days’ time. That is precisely because of a set of behind-the-scenes discussions—no doubt courteous, but nevertheless fervent—between the Department of Health and Social Care on the one hand and the Treasury on the other.

Health Ministers are more sinned against than sinning on this, frankly, and in that sense this amendment will strengthen their hand. I suspect that, privately, they will welcome the mobilisation of your Lordships to support their negotiating case. The very fact that Her Majesty’s Government oppose this amendment is proof positive that it is needed. We need it because we need to look beyond the end of our noses. To vote against this amendment would be to cut off our noses to spite our faces.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, this whole group is worthy of government action, and I support Amendments 80 and 81 in respect of speech and language therapists. The NHS Long Term Plan itself states that speech and language therapists are a profession in short supply. The Department of Health and Social Care, in its submission to the Migration Advisory Committee’s review of the shortage occupation lists, argues that speech and language therapists should be added to them because of the pressures facing these professions, particularly in relation to mental health.

The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, for whose advice I am grateful, suggests that a minimum increase in the skilled workforce is required in the region of 15%. In recent years, the profession has grown by 1.7% in a year. The Government themselves recognise that they are clearly not delivering the speech and language therapy workforce that we need. No national assessment has been undertaken of the demand and the unmet need for speech and language therapy, which, I remind noble Lords, is essential for people to be able to communicate. Will the Government accept Amendments 80 and 81 or explain otherwise how they plan to improve workforce planning so that speech and language therapy is no longer a profession in too short supply?