Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Lord Moylan and Lord Falconer of Thoroton

Committee stage
Friday 5th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

I was addressing the wider issue, the one that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, was talking about. But it goes to those ordinarily resident in Scotland, who come to England for their medical advice—and if the medical advice says, “Go back to Scotland if you want an assisted death”, would that be a crime? But I also wish to deal with the GP point. If you live in England but have a GP in Scotland, does it debar you from getting it here? I am more than happy to include that in the discussion.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Amendment 14 in this group seeks to expand eligibility for those of pensionable age who have retired from the UK and gone to live abroad. It is a probing amendment, of course; it is not my intention particularly to expand eligibility under the Bill. I am trying to raise a question of equity and fairness but also legal defensibility. I want to approach the issue from a slightly different angle. I endorse everything said by my noble friend Lord Lansley, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and the noble Lord, Lord Beith, in raising practical issues, but I want to approach it on a slightly different basis.

The intention of the sponsor, I think it is fair to say, is that in creating this Act we do not turn England and Wales into a sort of international capital for quick assisted death. That would be an appalling thing to happen. So we try to put some borders and parameters around it and say that this service is here for the use domestically of people who are established here. One way of looking at that is to put the criteria in about having been here for 12 months and so forth, and being ordinarily resident, and all of that. As I say, I agree that those things raise very serious practical issues, but it seems to me—here I tread very carefully, because I am not lawyer—that they raise legal issues as well. Are we to some extent fooling ourselves into thinking that we, although we are the legislature, can create these boundaries and that they will remain firm?

I am thinking about what the Minister said in her reply to the debate on the first group today, in which she was very careful to draw noble Lords’ attention to the fact that certain amendments in that group might be challenged under human rights law or on the grounds of the Equality Act. She said that she could not give assurances that they would not be challenged; that was her being cautious and proper in expressing the Government’s view while being neutral about the Bill. But that raises a flag. How many of the limits that we are discussing now would actually withstand legal challenge? I chose my own example on precisely those grounds.

What if you have lived all your life in this country and paid all your taxes in this country and reached your pensionable age and decided to retire to Spain, say? Unfortunate developments lead you to want to come back and you qualify under the Act for an assisted death; you have a terminal illness and six-month prognosis, and you want to come back to the UK to take advantage of that, maybe because it is not available in Spain or because you want to be with other members of your family—who knows, but you want to come back to do that.

Under the Bill, as I understand it, you would be excluded from doing that. But would a court agree that that was a firm parameter; in other words, would a court agree that the criteria we have established are sufficiently rational that they have a sufficient basis in other legislation, in their understanding of human rights or in practical considerations? There might be all sorts of reasons why courts might say, “Yes, these are rational limitations”. But it could equally be the case that the court would say, “No, that is an injustice. This person has paid their taxes all their life. They’ve only been gone from this country for a few months. Of course, they should be allowed to come back and take advantage of it; it is irrational to exclude them”. That is the point I want to raise.

The noble and learned Lord the sponsor of the Bill has to put in place criteria which not only sufficiently exclude the possibility that we are going to become an international shop for assisted death—which we would all agree with him is something that we do not want to see happen—but are sufficiently rooted that they will be defensible and durable in a judicial context. That is the matter that most concerns me, apart from the practical considerations, about this whole eligibility debate.