Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Lord Blencathra and Lord Hamilton of Epsom

Committee stage
Friday 6th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

This is the second Friday we have had where the target has been 10 groups of amendments and we have come well below half on both those days. If we go on scrutinising the Bill in the way we have been doing, it is inconceivable that it will ever reach the statute book, so is it not time that the noble and learned Lord really considered what he can salvage from the Bill, where there is agreement on both sides of the Committee, so at least something will get through that improves the lots of people in this country?

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, once again, this has been a good little debate, with more noble Lords participating than I expected. The whole Committee admires the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for the way she described her husband’s condition and the extreme care, and possibly good luck, she has had in finding an excellent home for her husband. When we were in the House of Commons, we could never tell these personal stories about our disabilities, because we would be regarded as showing a weakness and therefore not suitable to fight for our constituents. The wonderful thing about these debates over the past few weeks is that noble Lords from all sides have been able to relate stories about their own disabilities, afflictions and illnesses and those of their close relatives, which has added a tremendous amount of wisdom and compassion to our debates.

I say to the noble Baroness that my amendment does not seek to throw anyone out; it does not excuse anyone in a care home from getting treatment. We just want extra care for them. As my noble friend Lord Deben and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said, there are good care homes, bad care homes and downright ugly care homes. Our amendments are designed to deal with those that are not quite up to scratch.

The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, made the point that dementia sufferers are even more vulnerable. The amendments from me and from my noble friends Lady Eaton and Lady Lawlor are different, but the thrust is still the same: we are suggesting that a bit more care is necessary to determine capacity in care homes.

I must come to the important point made by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, backed up by my noble friend Lord Deben, about the ECHR. I am a member of the Council of Europe. I have been elected to a specialist committee on observing elections in former Soviet Union countries. I was on the committee that elected judges. I am pleased to say that we elected—I was one of those who voted—a superb English KC, who is just retiring this year, to be a judge. I am also a substitute on the election committee. I totally support the ECHR. What I am critical of are some of the judgments we have had in the United Kingdom from some of our immigration judges, who I do not think have properly read the ECHR. I have no problems with the ECHR itself. I am totally in support of it and the principle—I am just worried about some of the judgments.

The other point that the noble and learned Lord made—he ended with this—is that responsibility for this must not rest with care homes alone, and I agree entirely. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, made the point that some care home staff are very worried about operating this. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, made a point about Mission Care and Christians in care homes feeling that they could not work it either. My noble friend Lady Lawlor made the simple point that a higher bar is necessary for care homes. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham—to whom we are grateful for revealing her father’s story—stressed that the vagaries of cognitive decline vary depending on the medication that one is on, and I have experience of that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, said that she did not want to talk about some of the horror stories in care homes. None of us wants to do that, although every other month we read about some of the appalling treatment that happens, particularly to those suffering from severe dementia. She said that there is a social care home crisis, and that is right. She was spot on about ticking the food boxes.

A few years ago I was in St Thomas’—early on in my MS days, when I had a relapse—and there was an old boy in a bed in the corner, aged 82. At that time we would tick the boxes for what we wanted the next day. Do Members recall that the Government appointed Mr Loyd Grossman to review menus at NHS hospitals? He did review them, but he just wrote them in fancy language. The choice for one morning was ground beef, suffused with basil and scented with carrot juice—or something—and chopped potatoes. This old boy did not have a clue what it meant. I managed to get to him and say, “It’s mince and tatties”, and he was able to understand it. The nurse said, “Oh, you don’t want anything to eat, Mr Smith”. He just said, “Porridge, porridge”. She said, “Oh, we can’t give you porridge. There is only the choice of mueslis”. I will not labour the point any further, but the same thing can happen in care homes, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, said. She asked, in conclusion, how can one decide capacity between a patient who is on a good day and a patient who is on a bad day? People in care homes need extra special measures to determine capacity.

My noble friend Lord Wolfson of Tredegar made an excellent point about care homes: there are good ones and bad ones. He asked the Government to spell out what the consequences would be of my noble friend’s amendment and my amendment, and what the Government think about it.

I say to the Minister that I am tempted to put down an amendment to the Animal Welfare Act to protect the poor rabbit that has been pulled out of the Government’s hat to say that all our amendments are contrary to the ECHR.

Finally, I say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, that our amendments may not be perfect, but the consensus from all noble Lords who have spoken, apart from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, was that something more needs to be done for care homes—a little bit of extra protection is necessary. When we were dealing 18, 21 and 25 year-olds, the noble and learned Lord said that we need to think about a bit of extra protection for them. He was right, and I look forward to seeing his amendment on Report on that matter. But the same goes here. We need a bit of extra protection for people in care homes, for the various reasons advanced by noble Lords. Having said that, I look forward to seeing his amendments on Report—and if not, we will table some ourselves. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Lord Blencathra and Lord Hamilton of Epsom

Committee stage
Friday 23rd January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness. That just illustrates my point that misdiagnosis can very easily be done, and we are putting an enormous weight on it in this Bill and it can so often be wrong. We should be very disturbed and concerned about that because it means that we may be passing legislation which is based on faulty information.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, this may be a convenient point to speak to two amendments in my name in this group. My Amendment 320ZA complements Amendments 39B and 39C, which I briefly touched on in the last debate, by making explicit that non-medical motivations cannot drive an assisted death. It draws a distinct line between medical suffering and social abandonment. International evidence shows that non-medical motivations dominate assisted dying requests. In Oregon, “being a burden” is cited by nearly half of all applicants. Parliament must decide whether it is comfortable legislating for that. This amendment ensures that England and Wales do not drift into a model in which existential distress, loneliness or, in the words of the noble and learned Lord, “sheer misery” or lack of care become accepted reasons for state-facilitated death. It also responds directly to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which warned that subtle pressures from lack of services can drive people prematurely towards death. This amendment ensures those pressures are addressed, not endorsed.

My other Amendment 332AA operationalises the “ask why” concession. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, said he is “attracted” to requiring clinicians to ask why a person wants to die but unless the answer has consequences, the question is meaningless. This amendment ensures that when the answer is, “I am a burden” or “I cannot afford care,” or “I am alone”, “I am fed up” or “I am miserable”, the process pauses and support is provided. It reflects the evidence from the Royal College of Psychiatrists and British Geriatrics Society, both of which emphasise the need for holistic assessment. It ensures that treatable depression, unmet care needs or social pressures are addressed before an irreversible decision is made. This is safeguarding, not obstruction. It ensures that assisted death is not used as a substitute for care.

My amendments matter because, first, they protect genuine choice. A decision driven by lack of heating, housing or social care is not the same as one driven by intractable physical decline. These amendments stop the law becoming a backdoor response to social failure.

Secondly, I believe they are a practical safeguard, not a veto. This is not a blanket ban; it is a procedural pause to address fixable problems—social support, benefits, palliative referrals—before a final medical judgment is made. Thirdly, clinicians need clarity. Doctors must be able to ask why and act on the answer. These amendments would give them a clear statutory duty to do so, reducing moral and legal ambiguity. If the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, truly believes this Bill is about free, informed choice, will he oppose leaving people to die because the state failed to provide basic support or will he back these modest, targeted safeguards?

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Lord Blencathra and Lord Hamilton of Epsom

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra]

My Lords, I, too, welcome my noble friend Lady Browning to her new responsibilities. She was a superb Minister in another place, and I am sure that she will be equally good in this House. I say to my noble friends that she is a listener and she has tremendous experience of policing. The noble Baroness, Lady Henig, said in her remarks in her excellent speech, which I much enjoyed listening to, that the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, would hear some examples today of practical policing. The Minister may now be hearing those examples from a different perspective, but if one has been a constituency Member of Parliament in the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary area, I think that one gets practical examples of policing from constituents both happy and unhappy. I welcome her to her new responsibilities.

It was a privilege to listen to the speech of my noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond, who introduced her amendment with a very passionate and well intended speech, but like my noble friend Lord Carlile I think that she is profoundly wrong. I say so to your Lordships as someone who must also declare some form, not from any past responsibilities as Police Minister but from the sabotage that I successfully performed two or three years ago when Cumbria Constabulary decided to amalgamate with Lancashire Constabulary. I am not sure who decided that or who was in the driving seat, but both police authorities—unelected police authorities—were fanatically keen that the amalgamation should happen. I urged the Cumbria Police Authority not to do it, as I think did most other Members of Parliament in Cumbria from all political parties, but the unelected police authority, paying no attention to our views or to the views of the vast majority of the public in Cumbria, proceeded hell for leather with amalgamation talks. I decided that I would do my utmost to stop it because I thought that it was wrong and not what the people wanted. After I challenged the suggested savings of £20 million, they came down a few months later to £10 million and a couple of months later to being cost-neutral. Once they got to minus £10 million, the authority began to think again. When they became a cost of plus £21 million, the unelected police authority finally abandoned all effort at amalgamation. At that point I concluded that there has to be something better than an unelected police authority driving this process forward and not caring what the local people want. Therefore, I do support the main thrust of this Bill and, with all due respect, must disagree with my noble friend on her amendment, which would stop this Bill in its tracks.

Your Lordships will be pleased to hear that I can be mercifully brief, because I entirely agree with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Dear. I had the great honour of him following me when I made my maiden speech, and he was so generous in his remarks as to be almost bordering on the untruthful. Of course, he was not—but today I can assert with all authority that he has not exaggerated his case in any iota. If we were to remove this element of the Bill today, we would do a great disservice to the agreement made between the coalition parties and to the electorate, because of the manifesto commitments of the major parties.

The only other little point that I shall pick up is one from the noble Baroness, Lady Henig. She said that she was worried that crime might go up with an elected commissioner, but I profoundly disagree, for a reason advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, who was afraid that an elected commissioner might be a bit populist. Well, I hope so; if populist means doing what the people or the electorate want, then bring on populism. If the commissioner is to be populist, he will be bearing down on crime day in and day out, because that is what the electorate will want. They want that in the rural areas, the city areas, the Tory areas and the Labour areas, as well as in the areas where people do not vote or apparently care a fig about politics. They want the police to bear down on crime, as it affects them.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Does the noble Lord also agree that an elected commissioner might well cut down on the form-filling and paperwork that seems to take place under police forces these days and put the police back on the street where they can cut the crime?

[Lord Blencathra]

I would like to hope that that would be the case, but I suspect that the only means of cutting down on form-filling rests with the Home Office. I shall put down some more amendments to remove some more of the form-filling, if I may.

I remember in my time at the Home Office that every time we asked the police to fill in a new form it was in response to our need to answer a parliamentary Question. When a colleague wanted to know the number of helmets lost in Herefordshire we would ask the police to supply that information, and inevitably the Home Office would then invent the form for every police force to fill in the number of helmets lost. So the responsibility for cutting down on the form-filling rests on us as parliamentarians not wanting to know the minutiae of policing in local areas, but leaving that to the local people.

I have pushed noble Lords’ kindness and generosity too far and will conclude my remarks. I visited Commissioner Bratton in 1996, when I was passing back through New York, and I was impressed by what he was doing. I thought, yes, that is almost as good as what they are doing in the Met already and in most of our county forces. This thing about the broken window syndrome—yes, it was wonderful. Commissioner Bratton overnight got his hands on 7,000 extra police officers, who were not very well trained because they were from the New York Transit Police and Housing Police. But overnight he put 7,000 extra bobbies on the streets, and New Yorkers saw a difference. That was one of his main successes.

The problem we have here is that the term commissioner for an elected commissioner is the same as the term commissioner in New York, but the job is totally different. Commissioner Bratton was a hands-on police officer; he had direction and control and operational policing charge, just like Met commissioners and just like the commissioner in the City of London. The commissioners envisaged in this Bill are political appointees with no direction and control over the police force—that will be the chief constable. Perhaps not today but at Second Reading there was some confusion among some of us that we were electing commissioners who would have hands-on responsibility. They will not.

There is something in what the noble Lord, Lord Condon, has said about having more resources for the commissioner so that he or she can connect with the local people. I disagree with my noble friend Lord Cormack that it would be impossible for an elected commissioner to know the views of the people in Thames Valley. If the chief constable can do it, surely a politician can as well.

I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Condon, who, interestingly, is not in disagreement with the principle of the Bill. I would be very worried if someone of his experience and responsibilities in the past was opposed to the principle, but he is not. He is worried that the elected commissioner may not have enough back up to carry out his role of assessing what the people in, say, Thames Valley, North Yorkshire or other large-spread police areas want. I hope the Government will address that issue and reassure him.

On the basis of what the noble Lords, Lord Condon and Lord Dear, have said, I, too, urge that the amendment not be pushed to a vote. If it is, with all due respect to the noble Baroness, I hope that she will be defeated.