Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Roberts of Belgravia Excerpts

Friday 12th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roberts of Belgravia (Con)]

My Lords, the measure before us represents the possibility of the greatest alleviation of pain and suffering in this country since Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin 97 years ago. It is no criticism of our excellent hospice movement to point out that no amount of resources given to palliative care can alter the ultimate result, or abolish the fearful pain and indignity that terminally ill people have to go through unless they take so many painkillers that they become prey to weird delusions, essentially becoming different people from those whom their loved ones know.

Families gathered around death beds are presently denied the right to help to end their loved ones’ suffering because of the so-called sanctity of life, even when that life has lost any possible meaning. Hamlet wishes in his first soliloquy

“that the Everlasting had not fix'd

His canon 'gainst self-slaughter!”

However, the commandment “thou shalt not kill” can be suspended in exceptional circumstances, such as in wartime, and so it should be in the case of the horrendous pain of an irreversible, slow death. Wanting to avoid such excruciating pain is not selfish but a human right.

Going back further in history, beyond Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, the theologians who proscribed suicide, the ancient Greeks and Romans recognised that there was nothing ignoble in it if the alternative is far worse. It should be up to the individual, along with their doctor and family, protected by robust safeguards and oversight mechanisms, but not up to the state or the Church, to decide whether he or she wants to escape pain and suffering in their final days. The autonomy to die on one’s own terms, not on those imposed by others, should not be denied any longer.

The defenders of the status quo have been talking about this being the thin end of the wedge, but hardly any legislation we consider here cannot be seen as the thin end of some wedge or another. The idea that Britain is going to turn into some kind of hecatomb of grannies being killed off by families eager for bequests is ludicrous, and this Bill has safeguards against it anyhow. This is not about the disabled, the mentally ill or those with eating disorders.

Future generations will consider us monsters for stopping people from shortening their death agonies if they wish to, especially as the majority of the population and of the elected House supports the Bill. People will rightly condemn this House if we refuse a person in desperate pain, with only six months to live, the right to choose the time and method of their death. We spend a good deal of time criticising our ancestors for their antediluvian views on race, sex and class, but those people who come after us will stand aghast that we allowed some of our old people to die in pain akin to torture, rather than simply overturn a medieval and sadistic practice.