Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Winston Excerpts

Friday 20th March 2026 Lords Chamber

We should realise that this legislation, as the Senedd has quite rightly pointed out, is not simply about criminal law, which is understandably, and I believe rightly, reserved to this place. It is about the future of the NHS. It is about resourcing, as my noble friend Lord Deben has pointed out, and it is about the constitution of the NHS, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, pointed out. Those issues were raised by me and others briefly at the beginning of consideration of this legislation. They have not subsequently been addressed, and I fear that they cannot be addressed unless and until this is a government Bill.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

I will just ask this question. I am genuinely a very simple doctor, and I do not really understand this problem. It is clearly a problem in ways that I think are humanitarian. At the moment in the House of Lords, we are discussing complex issues regarding precision medicine, which involves the use and manipulation of genetics, some of which will certainly require ethical considerations by this House. The issue is that clearly these advances in medicine cannot be denied to the people of all the United Kingdom because, although they might change healthcare in amazing ways, they will be far more expensive than assisted dying. How does that work? Perhaps the noble Lord could briefly explain to me why it seems wrong that we might be depriving the Welsh of something that is much wanted, simply because we cannot find the way through this on a legal basis.