Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Moore of Etchingham Excerpts

Friday 5th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I understand very much the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Winston, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. I come to this issue from a rather different position. I used to try a lot of cases, some of terminally ill young people, generally from the ages of 15 up to 25 or more. There were a number of cases of those with terminal illness, undoubtedly with capacity, who were also suffering from depression, not very surprisingly, or were confused as to what they really wanted. They came before me for all sorts of reasons unconnected with whether they should live or die from their perspective. What I was looking at was the medical evidence as to the sort of support that they ought to have.

Despite the neuroscience issue, which is important, and despite 18—or down to 16 under the present Government—being the age at which you are able to vote, I just raise whether you are looking at how much you care about the future of this country and what you care about for yourself. Do you want to die because you are going to die in the next few months? The doctors may be right or wrong about six months; we know that many diagnoses are inaccurate. This may be the most important decision of all to make: life or death? Consequently, I am concerned about the age of 18 from my own experience. Whether it should be 21 or 25 is arguable, but I am worried if it sticks at 18.

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Berger. It is reasonable to have these considerations about the different ways people think and feel at different times in their life. One of the big discussions we have more broadly about the Bill is about the cognitive capacities of old people, which are very important in their freedom of decision.

In a similar way, it is reasonable to talk about the cognitive capacities of very young people. In particular, one of the things that makes very young people different from older people is that they naturally have very little encounter with death; they are much less likely to have come across situations in which people die and people they know have died. They simply do not know what it involves. If it were banned throughout the world that anybody under the age of 25 would fight in a war, we would hardly have any wars. One reason why soldiers are prepared to fight in wars is that they do not understand death when they are very young. They are ready for anything.

There is often a very strong culture of suicide in young people, because it is a romantic idea. The poet Keats expressed it absolutely beautifully in his “Ode to a Nightingale” when he speaks about being

“half in love with easeful Death”,

and the joy of ceasing on the midnight with no pain. He knew of what he spoke, in a sense, because he was suffering from a terminal illness, and he died before he was 25.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, and others have brought out, we need to think about the influences on young people who may go in that direction. If they suffer from a terminal illness, that becomes even more acute. Because of their lack of experience in these matters, they will be under greater pressure, quite possibly, to feel that suicide is the way out and is somehow a noble thing to do.

I remember, at school, there was a very brilliant boy who was 18 and wrote a very short poem that just said, “If I should die, think only this of me: ennui”. It was a very clever thing to write, and he subsequently committed suicide aged 19. I ask noble Lords to think about what it might be like in such a situation at such an age.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, the people we are talking about are dying, in suffering and in pain. They are not being offered; they are going to be asking. I think of a 23 or 24 year-old in pain and about to die, possibly within weeks or months, and we turn around and say, “I am really sorry. You have had children, taken big decisions in your life, taken career decisions and seen whatever has happened to your parents, but you cannot be helped in your last few days, weeks or months because you are only 24”. I find that extraordinary. The age of 18 is probably the right one. Can we remember that these people are dying, and they are suffering? Those are the people who will be applying for this.