Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Carlile of Berriew Excerpts

Friday 24th April 2026 Lords Chamber

After 14 weeks, it is clear that more work is needed before this legislation can be considered safe. I am here to help prevent harm, particularly to those least heard. That is why I will continue to press for stronger safeguards. If the Bill is to proceed, it must clearly demonstrate that it can protect those in highly vulnerable situations while respecting the wishes of those it is intended to serve. At present, it does not meet that test. That is where careful scrutiny has brought us so far. In the absence of amendments, we now have a better understanding of the risks and the changes we need to make when or if a similar Bill returns to this House. That is progress.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I express my agreement with the concern of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, that the Committee stage of the Bill should have been completed. I wanted to be part of a process that amended the Bill so that we could reach Report and have some meaningful votes on certain parts of the Bill with which I disagree profoundly. I thank the noble and learned Lord for his acknowledgement of my part in some discussions we had, to which I will refer in a moment.

What a singular privilege it is to speak shortly after the noble Lord, Lord Markham, who made a moving, personal and brave speech. He illustrated that, when we debate difficult issues such as this, we should, as Members of the House of Lords, seek to embrace an agreement in the final analysis, not raise our fists in disagreement. We should have reached a conclusion on this process. It raises some questions, which I hope the Leader of the House and the Chief Whip will take into account, about the suitability of the Committee stage in your Lordships’ House for Private Members’ Bills of this general kind—major conscience issues—coming from the House of Commons.

In the technical language of this House, the noble and learned Lord is not my noble friend, but he is my learned friend of many decades. That phrase, “my learned friend”, which I use for many others in this House, reflects a bond of friendship, however we disagree. Although a number of the lawyers here have disagreed about issues, we have all been trying, I think, to find a consensus for the Bill.

If he will allow me to tease him slightly, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, has shown in this House his barrister’s skills and the skills that made him such a distinguished Lord Chancellor: his powers of preparation, knowledge of the law and facility with competing conceptual issues. He is a fine advocate, but I will let noble Lords into a trade secret, for there are dangers of brilliance among advocates. It is a fact that the very best advocates are the ones who lose the most cases, because they are given the most difficult cases to argue. I fear that this has been an example. It would perhaps be unkind to say that the noble and learned Lord has demonstrated his powers to make a silk— or Silk’s—purse out of a sow’s ear, but the Bill has many imperfections.

Not the least of those imperfections is its failure to safeguard the most vulnerable. I absolutely agree that the noble and learned Lord has made some concessions, which he mentioned, and some of them are important. He kindly mentioned the attempt that he and I made together, as I thought it, to try to bring back what was in the original version of the Bill when it started its course in the House of Commons: that the ultimate governance of the process of assisted dying should be with the courts rather than the largely unaccountable panels set up under an untested system introduced by amendments in the House of Commons. The Bill’s promoters made a serious mistake doing that. A former Lord Chief Justice, my noble and learned friend Lord Burnett, was made a Knight of the Garter this week. There is a reason why we have such confidence in senior judges: they are able to ensure ultimate governance of the laws passed by these Houses of Parliament.

I was disappointed and surprised that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, did not agree to the process available to us to meet officials and parliamentary draftsmen to try to produce an acceptable and mutually agreeable version of my Amendment 150, which was debated on the first day in Committee and would have introduced ultimate governance by the courts. I heard him say this morning that we could have achieved that on Report. Perhaps we could have, but he did not take advantage of going through that process when it was available during Committee. I believe that if we had reached an agreement—a formula was available, which we talked about—we might have shortened quite a lot of the debate on the Bill in your Lordships’ House.

I say as kindly as I can to the noble and learned Lord that it is rather hyperbolic to allege that the Bill has been delayed illegitimately by this House. It has indeed been delayed by this House, but the question is about the legitimacy of that delay. We heard earlier from the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, who moved the amendment to the amendment to the Motion. I remind the noble and learned Lord that much of the opposition has not come from old fogies like me—I am now a veteran of this House; I have been here 26 years, after 14 in the other place. Much of the opposition has come from a group of—if they will forgive me—newbies to this House but not to Parliament: noble Lords and Baronesses who were recently Cabinet Ministers and who have the spirit and intent of the House of Commons very much in their minds in the work they do in the House of Lords. We are, in general terms, very grateful for having them here.

They did not come here as newbies to obstruct the House of which they had been Members for many years, even if they had lost their seats—which I did not, by the way. I think they came here to do exactly what it says on the tin, as it were: to amend draft legislation so that it is fit for purpose and, as I stated earlier, to try to do so by agreement, not disagreement. Although I wish that they had at times been quicker and put down fewer amendments, they have been doing what we are here for: to make draft legislation fit for purpose. If there is a further Bill, we should, as a House, be less obdurate, as should the noble and learned Lord or whoever is the Bill’s sponsor. We should have a stronger critical faculty and an ambition to complete the process of the House.

My final words are to remind your Lordships of what this Bill does: it is intended to give a citizen the power deliberately to bring about the death of another citizen—something that, since the end of capital punishment, has not been available to citizens of this country except in a legitimate war. Let us not forget the importance of what is being asked for.