Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Lord Shinkwin and Lord Bishop of Norwich

Committee stage
Friday 12th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 17, particularly in relation to the Scottish Ambulance Service, which my noble friend Lady Fraser of Craigmaddie mentioned briefly in her speech. I do so as someone who can remember just about all my journeys in ambulances—some in agony after a fracture, some with the blue light flashing, others more sedate. What marked them all was a sense that, however much pain I was in, I was none the less safe. The ambulance crew were in control of the situation, caring, competent and consistently professional. That is my abiding memory based on first-hand experience.

I am concerned, as I understand the Scottish Ambulance Service is, that there is currently no guidance on this specific issue even though its absence has significant practical implications. Simply put, from a frequent ambulance traveller’s perspective, without this amendment ambulance crews and other healthcare professionals might well not feel fully in control of the situation. That is just not where you want to be as a potential patient needing urgent emergency care.

Surely, emergency services operating across the Scotland-England boundary not only need but deserve clear guidance. For example, what exactly is a paramedic meant to do if they are called out because an assisted death has gone badly wrong, leaving the individual seriously injured but very much alive, which of course can happen and indeed has happened on occasion in other jurisdictions where such legislation has been implemented? It does happen, yet the Bill, as far as I can see, is silent on this point, which is not much use to a paramedic desperately wanting to provide care when an emergency response is requested due to complications such as choking or vomiting.

I am not aware of this having been covered in the impact assessment, or of John Grady having received an answer when he raised this very issue on Report in the other place. So, I would be very grateful if the Minister could share with the House in her closing remarks what work has been done by the Government to evaluate and address such an important cross-border issue.

[The Lord Bishop of Norwich]

My Lords, I support Amendments 17 and 309A, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Beith, and so ably explained by the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser. I declare an interest, in that my wife is a GP and a medical examiner—so the Bill has had much discussion at home.

Having spent 10 years living in Northumberland, and having friends who live along the Scottish border, I know that many of those living sufficiently close to the border have chosen very deliberately to be registered with a Scottish GP because they then receive free prescriptions. This raises a number of questions for the noble and learned Lord.

Let us say that you live on the English side of the border, at Cornhill-on-Tweed, and your GP is in Coldstream. The sense of continuity of care that GPs give to their patients is vital to that GP-patient relationship. Indeed, this House was reminded of that yesterday in the excellent maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada:

“That continuity, seeing lives unfold across time, gives general practice its unique moral and social power. It allows us to see people as whole human beings, not as isolated organs or diagnoses”.—[Official Report, 11/12/25; col. 370.]


In supporting this probing amendment, I am interested to discover more about how that continuity of care that is so essential in primary health care can be continued.

Armed Forces Commissioner Bill

Debate between Lord Shinkwin and Lord Bishop of Norwich

Committee stage
Wednesday 19th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendments 8 and 9 in this group, in the name of my noble friends Lord Minto and Lady Goldie and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich. I am really grateful, as I am sure a lot of members of the Committee are, to the Royal British Legion for its briefing on this. I speak as someone who was privileged to lead the legion’s public affairs team when we persuaded the noble Lord, Lord Cameron—David Cameron as he then was, the Prime Minister—to enshrine the covenant’s principles in law. I am particularly proud to have played a small part in that. I also very much welcome the consensus that now exists, both in this Committee and, I believe, across the House, on the commitment to ensuring that the principles of the covenant are honoured.

I wonder whether we can simply consider these amendments to be, as I think they are, self-explanatory and logical. The issues they relate to are the provision and operation of the continuity of education allowance and tuition for children with SEND, which, as my noble friend Lord Minto mentioned, is so important and is related to an issue on which your Lordships’ House voted so overwhelmingly to ask the Government to think again—specifically in relation to non-domestic rating and private schools—only yesterday. These are important and crucial welfare issues, and they should be explicitly included within the provisions of the Bill, as should provisions for pensions and death-in-service benefits to serving and former members of the Armed Forces and their dependants.

I hope very much that the Minister will listen to the Committee—and also to the legion, as the voice of the Armed Forces family—and accept Amendments 8 and 9 in this group.

[The Lord Bishop of Norwich]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, and the reflections that he has offered the Committee. I rise to support Amendments 8 and 9. I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Minto, and the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, for outlining their thinking around this issue because it goes to the heart of how we as a nation care for and see the well-being of our Armed Forces and their families, as part of the whole package that we offer to them.

As I think noble Lords know, I speak as the father of a member of the Armed Forces. It is often said that a parent is only as happy as their least happy child. On one level, I can imagine that it is also true that a member of His Majesty’s Armed Forces is only as happy as their least happy family member. So there is a pastoral duty here—one that is supported by many in the Armed Forces, including welfare organisations and our military chaplains—but both these amendments would help us really state the pastoral support that we as a nation feel is important for not only our Armed Forces personnel but their children, their families and their dependants.

As has already been said by other noble Lords, continuity of education is vital for a family that may often move around a lot during the career of service personnel, when one or both of the parents may be on deployment. We must not forget the small number of wonderful state boarding schools that offer important support for service families.

Moving on to tied accommodation, as somebody who has lived in tied accommodation all my professional life—most of it much more modest than what I live in at the moment—I know that the maintenance of tied accommodation and responsiveness to its condition and repairs has an impact on the state of morale of a family, and I am pleased to see that that is also mentioned, as are special education needs. Such needs are an issue not only when forces families move between different places and between different local authorities; this is also about CAMHS—child and adolescent mental health services. Often, the waiting list is two to three years. Moving out of an area has a profound impact on families in terms of getting crucial support for young people who are often in a very difficult state and who need support as soon as possible.

On Amendment 9, the reality is that many Armed Forces families live with, right at the back of their minds, an ongoing sense of, “Will I get a knock in the middle of the night?” The noble Earl, Lord Minto, has already spoken about the injustice of what is being built in here. We significantly need the Minister to look at this—I urge him to do so—so that that injustice is removed. If you go to the National Memorial Arboretum, there is an incredible memorial right in the centre where the names of those who have lost their lives are carved into the Portland stone, and then there is a part of the wall that is totally flat and bare; it is very moving to move your hand along it and on to that flat stone awaiting, God forbid, future names.

We owe to the Armed Forces and their families a sense of care if there is a need for a death in duty payment. So I am really grateful for the way in which the Minister has engaged around the Bill and engaged us in a really thoughtful discussion and debate about it. I look forward to hearing his comments.