Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Lord Harper and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Committee stage
Friday 30th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I had not intended to say anything, but I was provoked—in a nice way—by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and his advice, which was well meant, to the sponsor of the Bill, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. I agree with him, but I think a bit more work is required.

I referred earlier to the letter that the noble and learned Lord sent to Members of the House. I urge him to test his mailing list, because it did not go to all Members; I received a copy of it only from another Member, and it would be helpful if we all received a copy. I now hear from my noble friend Lord Deben that he has not received it at all.

I have two things to say. First, I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, about the Delegated Powers Committee’s recommendations. It was pretty scathing about the number of powers the Bill gives to Ministers with very little oversight. If I am being fair, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, has engaged extensively with the recommendations of the committee in what he has set out. That is the good bit.

But I do not think the noble and learned Lord has really taken on board the point the committee made because he has largely, as I see in his amendments, preserved the Bill’s delegated skeletal architecture. Rather than limiting executive power and putting safeguards and limits in the Bill, he has added in all sorts of things, such as scrutiny and consultation, at the back end. He has not actually got the point, which is that the Bill should not have those delegated powers in the first place. Exactly as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said, I humbly suggest accepting what the committee said and following its recommendations. That would be helpful.

The second point is about pace. The Delegated Powers Committee reported in September last year, and only half way through Committee we got a letter from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, setting out his response to it. My experience as a Minister was that if we had received the report from the Delegated Powers Committee, as the Minister I would have been expected to have my response ready at the start of Committee—or, frankly, Members of your Lordships’ House would have stood up and said some very disobliging things.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

The noble Lord would have had a whole department and civil servants behind him at that time.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

I have two points to make on that intervention from the noble Baroness. First, on several occasions the noble and learned Lord has made reference to quite a significant number of officials that he has had working with him, helping him draft clauses and so forth. If the argument is that that is still not enough resource, that rather supports my contention—which I have made from the beginning—that the extent and nature of this legislation makes it absolutely not suitable for a Private Member’s Bill, and it should have been a government Bill. As I said, the noble and learned Lord has had extensive support from not just one but a number of government departments in helping him draft it.

My second and final point is on the issues that have arisen so far in Committee, particularly the issues that have arisen on Clause 1, which I think is why it is relevant to bring it up on the Clause 1 stand part debate. The noble and learned Lord referenced them in his letter, but he has not yet been in a position to set out what his amendments are going to be. He said that he will make them available as soon as he possibly can. That is good, and I welcome that, but, until we see them, we are not in a position to know whether further amendments need to be tabled for later in Committee or on Report. I finish by saying that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. The extent to which we can now make progress is going to be largely governed by the extent to which the noble and learned Lord the sponsor of the Bill engages with the very fair criticisms that have been made across the Committee. We will listen carefully to what he says in response to this debate and in subsequent groups.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Lord Harper and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Committee stage
Friday 21st November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I just remind the noble Lord, Lord Empey, that of course I did vote for the Brexit legislation and in fact led the Labour Party into the Lobby to support the final agreement on Brexit.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I support the thrust of the amendments in this group, but first, I want to say a word or two on one of the issues that has come up in this morning’s debate. I hope the Committee will indulge me if I just quote a few lines from yesterday’s maiden speech by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester. The House was a little less well-attended for the debate on the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill in which he spoke, but I thought his words yesterday, the ones I am going to read, are very relevant to the debate and the tone of it, so I hope the Committee will forgive me. He said that

“communication is a vital gift for those of us who nurture and curate community. In communication, we need to learn to speak and to listen. This is almost always done in person and directly. Indeed, I argue that one of our primary vocations in this noble House is to be with and to listen, for few disciplines are more vital in the search for wisdom—the search I so often witness in your Lordships’ House. The question for me is not so much how we can be great again, but how we can be kindly present. Greatness is great, but grace is greater”.—[Official Report, 20/11/25; col. 965.]

I think those were wise words. They moved me and I think they are relevant to how we conduct ourselves in this debate on these vital issues.

The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, referred to how useful this debate was, and I believe that it is vital. That is why I quoted those words from the right reverend Prelate. We have raised a range of issues, all connected to people’s capacity to make an informed choice. The point of the debate is for us all—but especially the Bill’s sponsor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton—to listen to the concerns that have been expressed. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, that the noble and learned Lord will then have the opportunity to talk to noble Lords and to bring forward on Report amendments that deal with these issues.

Part of the problem here, and the reason there are many amendments on the Marshalled List and the debate will be lengthy—the noble Lord, Lord Watts, referred to that—is that the House of Commons spent, I think, 17 hours in Committee, focusing on just the first three clauses of this legislation because they are very important. That involved just 23 Members of Parliament. Almost all the proposals that we are discussing were brought up in the House of Commons, but almost all were rejected or disposed of. If some had been accepted and dealt with in the House of Commons, all we may have been doing here is tidying up some of the wording or improving the amendments. However, we have to address them from scratch because they were not dealt with in the House of Commons.

It is our job in the House of Lords to scrutinise legislation and to deal with the things that have not been dealt with. We do that on behalf of people— a number of today’s amendments deal with vulnerable people who do not have the same opportunities that we have. The one thing that we all have in common in this House is that we are all privileged. I am referring not to our material circumstances but to the fact that we have a voice. Many people in this country do not have a voice. Many of the people who have been touched on in these amendments—people of poor material circumstances; people undergoing coercive control, as my noble friend Lord Gove suggested; and people who have severe disabilities—have no one to speak for them. It is our responsibility and duty to make sure that we test these issues and make sure the Bill is as good as it can be.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, asked whether the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, would support the Bill if some of these things were dealt with. That is not really the question. I have been very clear that I do not support the change, and I will set out why in a moment in relation to one of the amendments. However, I have to confront the possibility that the Bill may become law; I will not find that welcome, but the noble Baroness will. If it becomes law, it is absolutely my responsibility—and the responsibility of everyone in this House—to make sure that the Bill has in it all the protections for vulnerable people. If we were to fail to do that, we would have failed the people of this country, whom we are supposed to support—that is our duty. There will be some people in this House who will, if the Bill is improved, support it; there are some who will not, but that is not the point. The point is to get the Bill in as good a shape as possible.

Let me now turn to the amendments. I will deal first with Amendment 45 on encouragement, so powerfully spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. The reason that word is important was demonstrated in the short debate between the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Carlile, on the present position. I hesitate, as a humble accountant, to trespass in the debate between those learned noble Lords, but I will make two points. First, there is a fundamental difference between someone refusing treatment or not having treatment and someone taking deliberate steps to kill themselves. Those are fundamentally different things, and trying to elide them is not helpful to the debate.

The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, talked about the status quo. As I understand it, the current position if you assist somebody to take their own life and the DPP investigates is that the guidance contains the concept of encouragement. There is a specific point, when the DPP is considering whether to prosecute you, about whether you have encouraged somebody to take their own life or tried to talk them out of it. If you have encouraged them not to take their own life but you have, none the less, assisted them, the current position is that that is treated much more favourably than if you had not tried to discourage them. That subtle position in the status quo is something we should maintain, because something very important will happen if this legislation passes, which is why I do not support it: it will, effectively, change society’s view of suicide. In some circumstances it will, effectively, support suicide where currently we do not. In those circumstances, the use of “encouraged” is vital. That is why I support the amendment.