Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Carlile of Berriew Excerpts

Friday 27th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harper (Con)]

I think that is right and that that is a concern. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, set it out very well. There are two approaches in this group of amendments to deal with that issue, and I want to explain why I have come down on one side rather than the other. There is the approach that my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier set out, which is to take it away from the Prime Minister and make it an appointment by His Majesty the King on advice from the Lord Chancellor. The alternative approach, set out in the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Beith, is a better one, which is to subject the person concerned to a pre-appointment hearing of a Select Committee.

That is a better approach because it is more transparent. As the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, set out, it is actually quite a tough process whereby the candidates can be grilled about their views and their qualifications, how they intend to use the role and whether they intend to use it to advance the law in any way. They can be questioned on that. There is also a precedent, as has been mentioned in the debate, I think by my noble friend Lady Coffey: appointments to the Office for Budget Responsibility not only have a pre-appointment hearing by the Treasury Committee, but the Treasury Committee has a veto and has to consent to those appointments before they can be made by the Government. That is a good model.

So rather than changing who makes the appointment, I am content for it to remain a prime ministerial appointment, with the amendment to consult Welsh Ministers, but before the Prime Minister can make such an appointment, we should ensure that there is a pre-appointment hearing by a Select Committee of the House of Commons. I am not convinced that it should necessarily be the Health and Social Care Select Committee, as there is an argument it should be the Justice Committee, given the nature of this role. That is a secondary question, but there should be a pre-appointment hearing where the person’s qualifications and motivations can be interrogated in public, and then that committee can make a decision. It would mean that the Prime Minister could proceed only with the consent of a cross-party committee—whether it should be a committee of just the House of Commons or a joint committee of both Houses may be an issue worth considering. That would achieve what my noble friend Lord Deben was arguing for: a transparent process held in public so that the public can have confidence in the person appointed, and the Prime Minister can then move forward with that appointment, knowing that it is not going to generate an enormous amount of partisan controversy, which is the last thing we want for this important appointment.

So, on balance, I am happy if the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, moves his Amendment 131. I would certainly have no problem with adding that to the Bill. I am attracted to the solution proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Beith: pre-appointment hearings, with the Select Committee having a veto on the appointment, and only when that has taken place can the Prime Minister move forward. If we do that, we will have a robust process in which we can have tremendous confidence.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

I have listened to two and a quarter hours of debate on this group. I was not really intending to speak, but I am afraid I cannot resist an “I told you so” moment. I am speaking not because I was name-checked by a number of noble Lords in various parts of the House, but because I think it important to emphasise the background for that name-checking.

First, we have been focusing on the appointment of the commissioner, looking only at Clause 4. I say in credit to the noble and learned Lord that it looks as though a large number of your Lordships have not read Schedule 1 to the Bill, because it is an absolute clear fact and matter of law that if the appointment of the voluntary assisted dying commissioner under Clause 4 was done improperly and not objectively, it would immediately be opened to a host of judicial review cases, which would be brought by every interested party or group looking at this issue.

I want to say something quite different, and here comes my “I told you so” moment. Some noble Lords may just about recall that, early in Committee, I proposed Amendment 120, which proposed returning to a court-based model architecture for the Bill: among others, the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, referred to that earlier. If we were to follow the provisions of Amendments 120 and 137, which would remove Clause 4(4)(b), (c) and (d), we would have a clear, court-based procedure. Amendment 120 could of course be improved, and I think I am going to be given some facilities by the noble and learned Lord to talk to officials in the near future about that and how it might be designed, but it would mean that the voluntary assisted dying commissioner would then have a much more limited role, which would be to monitor the operation of the Act, receive documents under the Act and report, just as other independent reviewers report, on functions that they are placed in some position of authority over.

I suggest to the Committee that we would not need to have spent the last two and a quarter hours having the debate we have had if we had that simple architecture, which would inspire the confidence of being supported by the courts, knowing that this would be subject to normal court, appeal and evidential procedures. Maybe we should come back to that at a later stage. I hope that the noble and learned Lord may change his mind about that once he considers carefully and in detail what has happened this morning.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to address the issue of mission creep. I have tabled amendments that come so late in the procedure that I do not think we will ever reach them, but I am concerned that the Bill, if it becomes an Act of Parliament, will morph into something entirely different from what we have all voted on.

I have a confession to make. I voted in the early 1980s for amendments to Lord Steel’s Abortion Bill, which went through at that stage. One of the concerns we had with that Bill was that it would morph into abortion on demand, and abortion on demand was not what we voted for in Parliament. We therefore have to be reassured that this Bill will not do the same thing. I am very concerned that, if it morphed into a euthanasia Bill, we would have a consultant in geriatrics walking through a ward saying, “I want to see those three people in those beds dead by the morning because there’s a bed-blocking issue”, and so forth. I am sure that nobody in the House wants to see the Bill become a euthanasia Bill.

Can we have an explanation from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, about what happened to the Abortion Bill and why it morphed, without Parliament having any input whatever, into abortion on demand? I am concerned that it might happen with this Bill as well, under the commissioner whom we are talking about. What checks can Parliament have to ensure that the Bill does not go down the same road as the Abortion Act?