Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Polak Excerpts

Friday 20th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

Of course I agree to a meeting and the noble Baroness should bring anybody she thinks appropriate to it.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I will raise 50% of a registered interest: I am 100% deaf in my left ear. The maths works, right? My right ear is quite good, thank God, but it is useful in many aspects of my life when I pretend that I did not hear at all.

I support all the amendments in this group. I was not going to speak, but I am moved to speak to Amendment 171 from the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, whom I have known for many years. I pay tribute to her bravery and courage, which has enabled her success in her life of service to vulnerable people, and to my noble friend Lady Fraser for her Amendment 167, which she so eloquently introduced. Her professional work with people who often cannot communicate for themselves is well known.

The point I want to make to people who support the Bill and want to rush it through is that this group of amendments shows the vital importance of the process that we are going through. It is a real disgrace that these people are intent on trying to rush this flawed legislation through without this sort of vital discussion. These amendments may affect one person to whom by accident, by being unable to communicate or hear, the wrong thing happens. The Bill should be, and should work, for every individual. That is why I urge the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, to find a way to include these matters and these important aspects in the Bill.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I think everybody must have been affected by the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson. She made very sobering revelations about her experience, which is very broad and much to be admired.

This group of amendments brings into sharp focus the sheer scale of the complexity of bringing assisted suicide into the NHS context. We have heard pleas from the movers of some of the amendments that specific provision be considered because of the needs of those with complex communication difficulties, including hearing, language and cultural challenges.

I will draw the House’s attention to other matters that have not been addressed in the context of a busy hospital with overworked staff. In addressing other groups of amendments, I said that many people seem to view the operation of the current NHS through rose-tinted glasses. Hospitals these days are not as they are portrayed in the TV series “Heartbeat” or “Call the Midwife”, which are set in the 1960s. Gone are the days when consultants had time to come round for friendly chats at their leisure with patients and family. Parliament and Governments have demanded that targets be met because of increasing demand and a relentless growth in our population. Meeting targets means throughput, and throughput means patients going in and out as quickly as possible. I struggle to see how the Bill, if enacted, can be safely implemented in current hospital settings.

In a busy NHS ward, consultants doing their ward rounds in the mornings have only a few minutes, maybe once or twice a week, to assess a patient and give instructions to registrars and nurses as to what treatment is to be applied. Introducing complex processes involving safety, providing the means by which patients can take their lives with poisonous substances, and co-ordinating all the relevant personnel at the right time to oversee this, will be a mammoth task in our overstretched NHS.

Let us look at some of the realities to which this group of amendments draws attention. We have discussed language. I was astonished to learn that, in London alone, 300 languages are spoken. Some 1.7 million Londoners do not have English as their first language, and 300,000 or more do not speak English at all. That is equivalent to the population of a city such as Cardiff or Glasgow.