Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Sandhurst Excerpts

Friday 24th April 2026 Lords Chamber

The implications of what has happened for this House are huge. I believe that the trust we place in self-regulation, which is a fragile concept, and in restraint has been fatally undermined. I believe that the House lost sight of what we are here to do, which is to use our judgment to determine what is really important, to ask the Government to think again and to give the House the chance to voice and vote on what it thinks is right.

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, the law should be changed. The current law on aiding and abetting suicide does not address the issues the promoters of the Bill undoubtedly seek to address.

The structure and detail of the Bill before the House are deeply flawed. It required restructuring and the debate we have had in the past six months. It is not a safe Bill, when you get down in the weeds. We have to remember that the original process was to be overseen and managed by the judges of the Family Division. Had that still been the case then it would have been obvious that many of the safeguards that had to be written into this Bill, in the absence of such judicial oversight and control, would not have needed to be put expressly in it. We rightly trust our judges on such delicate matters. They are used to dealing with whether to end life support, and so on.

The Family Division judges were removed from the scene. That required a proper rethink. Instead, we got this Bill. It was not the product of a royal commission. There had been no Green Paper. It has not received pre-legislative scrutiny. There was no formal consultation process on a draft or outline proposals. That is why, I am afraid, it is not fit for the very important purpose and aims which it has. Length does not mean quality.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

This is a most interesting speech. On the basis of what the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, is saying, if the judge was still there then the Bill would be okay. Why could we not have got to Report and voted on that to make a decision on it?

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

There were grave problems with having the judges. As the noble and learned Lord knows, it would have occupied far too much court time. It simply was not practicable to put it into the courts. If it was to be dealt with properly by a judge it would have been at least half a day, sometimes a day. If you had 1,000 cases a year, that would be 1,000 court days. A High Court judge has 240 sitting days a year, as the noble and learned Lord, a former Lord Chancellor, should jolly well know. Is he saying that four High Court judges should have been taken out of business permanently? The answer must be noted.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

I am not going to debate further.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

No. Sit down.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

I am sorry; I want to finish this and I shall be short.

It is, as I have said, a deeply flawed Bill on this grave issue of the administration of death—something completely new to our society. Such a policy must be carried out properly, with safeguards from the outset. We must have proper safeguards. Because it has had a flawed genesis, it is a Bill that needs great changes. We have had the reports of the Delegated Powers and Constitution Committees, which highlighted flaws and identified that we simply do not know the detail. We are talking about people dying: to leave the detail of the process to statutory instruments, without even providing draft statutory instruments, is simply not acceptable in this area. It may be all right for other things—regulation of food or something—but it is not appropriate here.

This has been a big factor in causing so many amendments to be laid. The Bill has been justifiably criticised by a large number of responsible, independent, professional and expert bodies, the great royal medical colleges among them. That is why I put forward a large number of detailed amendments. As I have explained, these were drafted by two independent bodies of distinction. One was the Law Society of England and Wales. Coming at this as lawyers, it does not have a view on the merits but it wanted to make the Bill safe. It sent me a great bundle that I then put down, having looked at them.

The other group that provided me with amendments that I have identified was the Complex Life and Death Decisions group at King’s College London. As I have explained, that is a group of multidisciplinary experts in the fields of mental health, capacity and decision-making. They know all about the Official Solicitor, the Court of Protection and everything else. Both these bodies are concerned with making the Bill safe. They are not saying no to assisted dying; they are saying that it must be managed properly. What I put forward was, I hoped, a means of avoiding risks identified by experts in the field to make the Bill effective and safe—not to obstruct but to improve.

Too little heed has been paid to those concerns to ensure that the Bill is safe. The speeches to date and many amendments identified and promoted remedies. By last Christmas, it was clear to anyone with eyes to see that the Bill needed major correction. I thought, naively perhaps, that after our Christmas break the noble and learned Lord might return with outline proposals for constructive amendments and perhaps invite discussions outside the Chamber, having heeded what the royal colleges, the lawyers—the Law Society—and others were going to say. I remind people that I am actually a barrister, not even a solicitor, so I do not have a vested interest in that.

This was a golden opportunity for review. By then, our Committee’s detailed processes had identified the many gaps that any serious person would wish to see filled before proceeding with assisted dying. As I have made clear, I am not a dyed in the wool supporter of assisted dying—I say yes to autonomy, but not regardless. My long experience in the law and medical matters has led me to know that there are many risks in this area. The Committee identified the many gaps that have to be filled. The dangers cannot just be brushed aside.

We who are concerned with the Bill do not feel we have had the open engagement that it merited. Too many serious questions remain unaddressed. There must be a complete rethink—because a Bill is bound to come back—in which those who promote the Bill look seriously at the objections that have come from this side, or from people like me, to make certain that we really have a proper Bill that starts cautiously, because this will be a major change in our lives. That is all I will say about this Bill. I have spoken for only seven minutes.

Before I end, however, may I say one more thing? I anticipate that this is my last speech in this Chamber before compulsory departure, so I just want to digress from the tumbril on one matter. What I have learned in this House is the great depth of learning and wisdom that is deployed all the time, sometimes from quite surprising sources. Speaking frankly, I had concluded well before 1999 that the time for hereditary Peers was well past. However, I believed, again naively, that our continued process would spur proper reform. That opportunity has now been lost. To me, that is a pity, because it must be apparent to any thinking person that we cannot continue on the basis of appointments for life at the whim—I emphasise “whim”, because it sometimes is—of the Prime Minister of the day. How change is to be achieved is a matter for those who remain in this House, but I suggest it might be a mixture of elected Members and others appointed from bodies such as the royal colleges and great professions for fixed terms, whether five years, 10 years or whatever, to ensure the expertise and breadth that we have in this House. Something must be done: it cannot stay in the “too difficult” box any more.

[Baroness Hunter of Auchenreoch (Lab)]

My Lords, I spoke at Second Reading to support my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer’s Bill, and I have been here throughout Committee. I am honoured to speak in the same debate as the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury and also to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, in one of his last speeches here. As a relative newcomer to your Lordships’ House—one of the newbies mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile—I am in awe, and will always remain so, of the great variety of expertise and experience of noble Lords. These last months have been proof of that writ large: powerful and persuasive arguments from some of the most eminent physicians, lawyers and other professionals in the country, as well as many noble Lords with a long history with the subject and a deep knowledge of this Bill.

I genuinely respect the views of opponents and have followed closely noble Lords’ many amendments and speeches. Indeed, there are among your Lordships long-standing and personal friends of mine, and noble Lords have made their arguments, some at great length. That is why I imposed a self-denying ordinance on speaking myself—until now. I speak up because the other aspect of this House that has so impressed me is the way in which we conduct ourselves: self-regulating, courteous, disciplined; scrutinising and improving legislation in order to fulfil our time-honoured duty of returning Bills to the other place, to our elected representatives. I am proud of our reputation and my role, but something irregular and troubling has gone on, and we all know this. There has been an atmosphere in the House on occasion, despite my noble and learned friend’s extraordinary good temper, which is not what I had hitherto known.

There have been more than 1,000 amendments, with just seven noble Lords tabling half of them. We have spent more than 100 hours—16 days—scrutinising and improving this Bill. That is on top of the 110 hours in the other place. Despite extra time for these Friday sittings and my noble and learned friend’s sincere attempts to reach agreement, here we are, on our last day, having debated less than half of the groups of amendments, never more than four a day—a snail’s pace. I welcome careful scrutiny, but I believe that what I have witnessed is procedural obstruction, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, so eloquently pointed out too. I have been baffled, dismayed and, ultimately, embarrassed that these tactics mean the Bill will fall today, before this House can even vote on the principle of assisted dying, let alone pass it back for final consideration by this country’s elected representatives, who have already supported it.