Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Friday 19th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, the passage of this Bill owes much of its existence to my grandfather in your Lordships’ House. The Voluntary Euthanasia (Legalisation) Bill 1936, introduced under the society’s aegis, was fathered and written by my grandfather. Berkeley Moynihan was the leading surgeon of his generation. As surgeon-general in the First World War, he had the unenviable job of overseeing medical treatment along the Western Front. He spent many months organising treatment for the 2.5 million military personnel who were wounded.

My grandfather introduced the Bill at First Reading. Days later, his wife of over 40 years died peacefully. He was grief-stricken in his Leeds home. He sat in his office, wrote a letter about her to his son and died a few days later from a broken heart, never to speak at Second Reading. It was left to the great grandfather of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, to move the Second Reading and give the opening speech. Berkeley Moynihan’s commitment was borne of a lifetime dedicated to caring for patients, to surgery and medicine, for which he became the first man from outside London to be elected president of the Royal College of Surgeons and the only one to be elected twice.

Like my grandfather, I believe that the right to die within the law is a matter of ultimate importance, and the ultimate compassion and human dignity for those approaching the end of their lives, with any decision to exercise that right to die to be taken only with the most robust legal safeguards possible, and above all to protect the vulnerable. I will quote him:

“Briefly our desire is to obtain legal recognition for the principle that in cases of advanced and inevitably fatal disease, attended by agony which reaches, or oversteps, the boundaries of human endurance, the sufferer, after legal inquiry and after due observance of all safeguards, shall have the right to demand and be entitled to receive release””.—[Official Report, 1/12/1936; col. 468.]


Of course, medicine has moved on and we are blessed with ways to address many instances of the agonies such as those suffered by those fighting in the Great War. In no case is it a question of this being a trade-off of palliative care, or whether palliative care should be made available or not—in all cases palliative care should be available. I believe it is for those facing imminent death to do so at a time and place of their choosing, rather than in ways which they fear, and that may cause intense suffering. This is not a Bill compelling anyone to act against their conscience.

I was deeply moved by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice—a man of deeply religious beliefs who comes from a Christian perspective and can reach a different view from that of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London. I welcome the decision of the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, working with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, that a Select Committee should be set up to hear evidence. Her proposal respects the right timetable to allow, should both Houses wish, the Bill to go through all its parliamentary stages.

I believe my grandfather was right about providing a patient who is terminally ill, where all the legal safeguards are met, with the choice that they, like us all, should have about how to die. That is why I support this Bill and the opportunities we have to improve it.